Assessed impact of gender, ethnicity/home language, holding out, retention, and social promotion on first-grade achievement. Found that Latino students were more likely to be promoted to first grade, despite concerns about their performance, than were Anglo students. Interventions, such as retention, yielded no positive effects. (RJM)

Over the past 10 years, kindergarten classes have escalated their academic demands in order to prepare children to begin first grade. In tandem with curricular changes, many parents have elected to "hold out" their children from first grade for an additional year, and increasingly, schools are using kindergarten retention in response to…