For many years, the conventional wisdom in the field was that grade retention was a bad idea. A 1997 opinion piece in "Education Week" titled "Grade retention doesn't work" reflected the prevailing sentiment in the education community and the available research evidence at that time: retained students performed worse than their…

This paper evaluates the impact on dropout rates of a policy change in Mexico that eliminates grade retention for all first to third-grade students, causing a sharp reduction in repetition rates. I use a 12-year panel of schools to exploit such variation and estimate Difference-in-Difference models showing an average decrease in dropout rates of…

Policies on social promotion and retention, although formulated to regulate academic success and failure in the field of K-12 education, have become burdensome and are now considered damaging to the public education system. The various stakeholders in education, including students, teachers, education policy makers, parents, and employers are all…

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…

In lower-income countries students face an important challenge that has not been well documented: selective teacher attention. In classes with many low-income students, teachers may concentrate on those few who can perform and neglect those who require more help. The latter may fail to learn, attend school less often, and eventually drop out.…

This paper investigates the issue of social promotion and grade repetition. The first section of the literature review examines research from the past 30 to 40 years which looks at the negative and positive effects of grade repetition. Next, recent studies are examined from the late twentieth and the twenty-first century which questions the…

Jeb Bush campaigned for governor on a clear and bracing set of education reforms in 1998. Having won office, he immediately pursued a dual-track strategy for reforming Florida's K-12 education system: standards and accountability for public schools, choice and options for parents. Florida lawmakers followed those reforms with additional measures.…

From 2006 to 2008, refugee resettlement agencies brought 4018 refugees to Chicago, Illinois. Using the example of the challenges faced by 14 refugee students from Burundi in adjusting to the U.S. school system, the authors call the attention of schools to the distinction between educating English Language Learners (ELL) and Educating Culturally…

Although schools have always struggled with student failure, retention, and attrition, the turn of the new century has produced added pressures for schools to reduce student dropout rates. In the current political and economic environment, increased costs and reduced budgets are forcing difficult choices in how best to spend limited resources.…

From 2006 to 2008, refugee resettlement agencies brought 4018 refugees to Chicago, Illinois. Using the example of the challenges faced by 14 refugee students from Burundi in adjusting to the U.S. school system, the authors call the attention of schools to the distinction between educating English Language Learners (ELL) and Educating Culturally…

Literature on retention focuses on both short term and long term outcomes for retained students. Short term outcomes typically include academic achievement, self-esteem issues, and occurrence of behavior problems. Long term outcomes include academic growth and persistence to graduation. Regardless of the focus and intent of the study, research on…

Federal education policy in recent years has encouraged state and local education agencies to embrace data use and analysis in decision-making, ranging from policy development and implementation to performance evaluation. The capacity of these agencies to make effective and methodologically sound use of collected data for these purposes remains an…

This is a long-standing problem in our "age-graded" school system. And, it continues to be one of the most contentious issues in public education. Neither grade retention nor social promotion are recipes for narrowing the achievement gap or reducing dropouts. It is time for policy that doesn't "wait for failure;" it's time for a policy that…

As this historical overview shows, viewing grade retention as a panacea for education woes ignores its negative effects on children. Today's retention rate is high, matching that of the early 1900s. Retained students are more likely to drop out, have underprivileged backgrounds, be male and African American, and have less educated parents.…

In 2002, Florida adopted a test-based promotion policy in the third grade in an attempt to end social promotion. Similar policies are currently operating in Texas, New York City, and Chicago and affect at least 17 percent of public school students nationwide. Using individual-level data on the universe of public school students in Florida, we…