Social promotion is defined as the practice of passing students along from grade to grade with peers even if the students have not satisfied academic requirements or met performance standards at designated grade levels.

Bill Copin, professor of policy studies, was recently a guest on Teacher RockStar Podcast to discuss social promotions in schools.

“The bottom line is that the learner is an individual who has his or her own characteristics and by creating a school system, you automatically assume everybody can achieve the same level, and they can't. And so the answer is, well fail them because they don't maintain the standards. And then they run into the problem of they can't fit in a second grader's chair if you keep failing them. So the reality is there is no choice but to have social promotion,” Coplin says.

“It's [social promotion] done because they have to maintain the system regardless of the individual, and once students are treated as if they're a widget being made in a factory where all the standards have to be the same, you're going to have this,” he says. “You have to have social promotion. You have no choice. And the only place I would be in favor of making them repeat is if they can't read,” says Coplin.