Risk of retention or Avalon angsting...

If you see this through Comment Speedway or ViewMasters - I ask that you please don't leave a generic comment.  While normally I don't mind "Thanks for sharing," I'd really like a little more feedback this time.

This is a bit more personal than I usually post here at Gather, but, well, I need some input. On one hand, I'm feeling a bit like a bad parent, because every single one of my kids now is requiring some sort of intervention at school. And on the other, I know this is not something special, and it happens to a lot of kids, everyone needs some extra help in some areas, and normal is overrated. We're supposed to have a meeting with Angus's new teachers etc, because he will be going to middle school next year, and it's going to be a huge change for him (he's mildly autistic). Gareth's IEP is coming up; he's a bit over sensitive, a worrier, and is learning how to deal with that a little better in speech (which seems to be a catch-all for a lot of social things, not just talking), plus his handwriting was so atrocious, his third grade teacher couldn't read it. He has this weird way of holding a pencil, with three fingers on the top, and try as we might we could not get him to hold it differently. He's improved a lot, so that seems to be working. Now it's Avalon.

We'd had to have a talk with her once before, because when her teacher asked her why she wasn't finishing her work in class and how that might affect things later on, she very flippantly replied that she didn't have to because her family (or husband) was going to take care of her when she grew up. I sat her down and told her, even if that's what she thought might happen, she couldn't count on it. I asked her what she thought she might want to do when she got older, and she immediately said she wanted to be a veterinarian. I told her how just to get to vet school, she'd need to do really well in math and science and writing and spelling, too. She needed to keep that in mind every time something in class came up that she didn't really want to do. She listened and nodded solemnly, and promised she'd try to do better.

Then we received notice that the school wanted to have a meeting about her, with her teacher, the principal, and the special education teacher. Her teacher showed us several examples of her work, such as a math quiz with only the first row done, and a writing sample where she was supposed to have written a paragraph or two about something and there were only two lines - in both cases the teacher had allowed up to an hour's extra time. The staff's feeling is that she may have just not been mature enough for second grade, and she's just not getting it. They are pushing for holding her back. Supposedly, they only do this up until second grade, because kids seem to be fairly forgiving at those ages and forget fairly soon that someone was held back. After that time, other kids remember or they're too big to fit in - and they won't do it after third grade. They cited new studies done that suggest this type of retention is beneficial and not such a negative as has been in the past. She's a summer birthday, meaning that she's one of the younger people in her grade, and even if held back, would still be in about the middle age range for her grade - there are actually nine-year-olds in second grade because their parents decided to start them later (this statement floored me because Gareth is nine and he's in fourth grade). Finally, her teacher (and she prefaced this by saying she'd never told any of her coworkers this before) said that she'd actually been held back in second grade. She looked on it as a positive, and it really helped her self esteem because she could easily do the work when she'd had great difficulty before.

John is deadset against it (this is probably going to nix it right there, because they need the parents to be supportive or it won't work). His feeling is she's being more stubborn than she doesn't get it. All his experience with people he knew (and experiences of other people he's talked to) who were retained has been negative. They were teased, they never got any better, everyone knew because they were bigger than the rest of their classmates. He says that because the teacher withheld her personal story (supposedly even from her boss, the principal), she must consider it a stigma, even if she doesn't say so, or she would have said so earlier - as when talking with him about Avalon before the meeting. For myself, I only knew one person who had been held back, and I was never aware until we were about to graduate from high school, when someone told me a mutual friend was 18 already because he'd been held back a year (certainly in high school there's not a lot of difference betweeen 17 and 18 year olds). He's certainly seemed to do well for himself - he's a writer now and teaches writing as well - although not in a mainstream genre - still good writing though.

I am withholding judgement until I research some more. I've done some searches and I can't find any research supporting what they were telling me; everything I'm finding is titled "pros & cons" but seem to be mostly listings of cons and very few pros. I'm also aware this is pooled data for the entire country or at least very large areas, and individual cases may be greatly different. However, the most recent articles I can find are dated 2002, so maybe I'm missing it. John is insisting we can get her up to speed with tutoring (which will be a stretch to afford but we'll bite the bullet if we have to) and being sterner taskmasters about all of her schoolwork.

Does anyone else have any experience with retention? How did it affect your kid or anyone else you've known?