On Sun, Oct 7, 2012 at 2:12 PM, Robert Hansen <bob@rsccore.com> wrote: > > On Oct 6, 2012, at 8:35 PM, Paul Tanner <upprho@gmail.com> wrote: > > Never mind that the top performing countries in the world on PISA > Korea, Finland, and Japan do not allow grade retention. > > > How can they do this? I suppose that this is part of the vocational vs > academic choice process in middle school. > > Bob Hansen
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In these countries I mentioned above that do not allow grade retention, the choice between academic schools and vocational schools is at the high school level only - it is not at the levels before high school.
Their schools at the elementary school and lower secondary school (middle school) levels are universal academic schools like ours, with universal compulsory education like ours.
I suppose that if they know that students who are failing at the academics are going to go into vocational schools, then it's fine by them to pass them along.
But other countries that do allow grade retention also have those vocational high schools.
