Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the Second Edition
- 1 Grade Retention
- 2 Research on Grade Repetition
- 3 Retainees in the “Beginning School Study”
- 4 Children's Pathways through the Elementary and Middle School Years
- 5 Characteristics and Competencies of Repeaters
- 6 Achievement Scores before and after Retention
- 7 Adjusted Achievement Comparisons
- 8 Academic Performance as Judged by Teachers
- 9 The Stigma of Retention
- 10 Retention in the Broader Context of Elementary and Middle School Tracking
- 11 Dropout in Relation to Grade Retention
- 12 The Retention Puzzle
- Appendix: Authors Meet Critics, Belatedly
- References
- Author Index
- Subject Index
Appendix: Authors Meet Critics, Belatedly
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 April 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the Second Edition
- 1 Grade Retention
- 2 Research on Grade Repetition
- 3 Retainees in the “Beginning School Study”
- 4 Children's Pathways through the Elementary and Middle School Years
- 5 Characteristics and Competencies of Repeaters
- 6 Achievement Scores before and after Retention
- 7 Adjusted Achievement Comparisons
- 8 Academic Performance as Judged by Teachers
- 9 The Stigma of Retention
- 10 Retention in the Broader Context of Elementary and Middle School Tracking
- 11 Dropout in Relation to Grade Retention
- 12 The Retention Puzzle
- Appendix: Authors Meet Critics, Belatedly
- References
- Author Index
- Subject Index
Summary
After publication of the first edition of On the Success of Failure, Shepard and colleagues (1996, hereafter SSM) published a critical review of the book. Our initial response (Alexander 1998) sought to correct what seemed to us the review's chief flaw, its misrepresentations of our conclusions and interpretations (e.g., SSM's assertion that we express “outright enthusiasm for retention”). Since then numerous references to the first version of Success have included disclaimers citing SSM as identifying technical flaws and suggesting that SSM's “reanalysis” of the data yielded different conclusions (e.g., Hauser 1999; Rury 1999; Thompson and Kolb 1999; Viadero 2000). Shepard, Smith, and Marion (1998) also claim they reanalyzed the data in their published rejoinder to our response. Further, they say the original review “pointed out errors in [the] analyses that allowed [Alexander and coworkers] to see some benefits for retention that were not there once their data were rescaled and appropriately analyzed” (Shepard et al. 1998: 404). In hindsight, it was a mistake not to address their technical criticisms in our rejoinder. Their criticism rests mainly on interpretation, not new evidence: SSM did no reanalysis of the data in the book; nor did they discover flaws in our analyses.
To restore balance to the discussion surrounding the book, we turn now to SSM's specific criticisms. To do so, we return to their original review, pointing out areas of agreement and disagreement. For each subsection of SSM's review we first summarize their argument, then respond to their main points.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- On the Success of FailureA Reassessment of the Effects of Retention in the Primary School Grades, pp. 265 - 279Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002