MAY 20, 2014 For just the second time in my ten years as an educator, I had to contemplate retaining a student in his current grade. The first time I was faced with this decision, I had just one year under my belt. My lack of experience showed as I immediately looked at the student's grades and concluded that sub-par grades justified the decision. This student's poor attitude toward schoolwork and toward anyone in authority made the decision easy to make at the time. It was almost like a form of punishment for her, which I was glad to administer. This time, I had come across several articles about the negative effects of retention. How it damages self-confidence and self-esteem. How it actually reduces desire to improve. How it typically has the opposite effect of the one desired. Now, I'm not advocating the idea of social promotion -- the idea of promoting a student to keep him with his age-appropriate peers, regardless of failing grades. The proponents of so...