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Assessment in institutions of higher learning has been researched worldwide. However, there are gaps in research exploring the implications of assessment practices for learners' access to the kind of knowledge enabling them to participate in their communities' socio-economic transformation. This is the case in the African Great Lakes region, including Rwanda. This paper investigated the assessment practices at the University of Rwanda-College of Education to establish whether they enable students to access powerful knowledge for socio-economic transformation, which promotes critical thinking and creativity, or the knowledge of the powerful, which promotes memorization of knowledge produced by experts. The study adopted mixed methods, where 361 questions from 20 examinations papers for 2014/2015 and 2015/2016 academic years were analysed using Bloom's revised taxonomy. Interviews with lecturers and group discussions with students were conducted. The findings revealed that assessment practices heavily encourage the knowledge of the powerful, with limited focus on the socioeconomic transformative knowledge. Such practices are unlikely to lead to national socioeconomic transformation, which the government expects from education. The paper recommends revisiting assessment practices in Rwandan higher education to instil in the graduates the required knowledge for active contribution to socio-economic transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated what the school policy change from grade retention to social promotion revealed about education in Tianjin, China. I interviewed four school teachers, one academic administrator and one school counselor in Tianjin, China. The findings showed that three participants were in favor of social promotion, while the other three were strongly against it. However, no matter how different their views were, when asked how they helped low-achieving students meet grade-level curricular reqrirements, they gave the same answer, which was to increase tutoring hours without modifying their teaching method. Based on this finding, three suggestions are provided for both preservice and in-service teachers in order to improve their pedagogical skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies indicate that retention negatively impacts students' behavior, attitude, and attendance, but it is still practiced in schools around the country. Social promotion undermines students' futures when they fail to develop critical study and job-related skills; however, it too is still practiced in many schools throughout the United States. These practices are ruining public education as we know it, and unless we innovate and find alternative strategies to replace them, the US. K-12 education system will continue to underperform. This article posits that retention and social promotion are equally undesirable choices, and that schools can reduce the need for these either-or options by using alternative approaches. A review of the current literature and practice suggests promising alternatives to social promotion and retention. These alternatives focus on preventing the failure cycle that results in poor performance so that social promotion and retention can segue into an effective, high-performance methods of intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The social promotion is linked to the attainment of a new sight of school, projected, towards your environment, meanwhile the participative management it is related with the institutional step, understand as the search of the administrative and academic productivity, as of a new concept of the management action, which breaks with the vertical address and embosses the shared decision making, anticipated these contained in the educational Venezuelan project. The objective of this investigation was determining dimensions of the variable participative management and social promotion in teachers and directors of urban schools of the Trujillo municipality, Trujillo state, Venezuela. Descriptive investigation, of field and correlational, based on the inquiry and with the questionnaire as instrument of collection of information. Went 11 the directors and 38 the teachers. Result: the directors consider good and the educational mail the step and the social promotion, with positive and strong correlation between both variables. It concludes. That for the educational, but not for the directors, the step is closed in the educational affected, distant facilities of the concept of participative management and to him stops to side, the important role of social promoter that they must exhibit all involucrate actors in the formal education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two lines of research have emerged to study the causes and prevention of student failure in virtual (K-12) schools: studies of learner characteristics and studies of learning environment characteristics. To develop a useful model for predicting failure and promoting success in virtual school environments, a study was designed to measure the relation between a combination of student and environmental factors derived from previous research and successful course completion during one semester at a large (N = 4,100) virtual school. Study findings yielded a model that can discriminate between successful and unsuccessful online school students and is especially effective at identifying those likely to succeed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on the development of retarded students. There have been teachers who worked towards facing the problem of retarded pupils through a highly understanding and professional manner. Such is an act of social promotion, or the promotion of a child to a higher grade on the basis of social development when academic achievement does not warrant such promotion. The Patrick Henry school of St. Louis upgrades retarded children to a point approximating social and chronological age.