Juan Case Study Social Promotion

1. Juan has been struggling academically in school. When it comes to Juan, the evidence that should be considered regarding promotion or retention should be based on grades, language proficiency, and learning progress. These factors should ultimately be considered when making the final decision to promote or retain Juan because they reflect his overall performance as a student.
4. Emotional maturity and physical factors appear to be another issue for Juan, however, they should not be taken into consideration when making the final decision if Juan should remain in the first grade or advance onto the second grade. Juan may cry and still talk like a baby, but it does not demonstrate his academic performance. Eventually, Juan will mature as he ages, which means that he will not talk like a baby. Though he has a lack of coordination, Juan is still developing his motor skills, which means that his lack of coordination should not be a significant issue, unless it prevents him from accomplishing his school work.

Social promotion has become a controversial topic, however, what is the definition of social promotion? Les Potter (1996) defines social promotion as “the advancement of a student to a higher grade level before the student has mastered the skills of the current grade level” (p. 268). It is similar to giving one an award simply for just participating. It also can be viewed as one teacher handing off their problems to another teacher. In addition, Potter (1996) points out that “social promotion was a failure because students arrived in higher grades under prepared for the instructional level and educators that received them were under prepared to teach them” (p. 268). The issue with social promotion is that it is not helpful for teachers because they are handed students that they may not understand how they can help, which hurts the promoted student since they cannot understand the new