Until the 1930s it was common educational practice to require students doing poor academic work to repeat classes, to repeat entire grades, or to remain for some period of time in a grade level where they needed additional work. When psychologists and others determined that these techniques had negative psycho-emotional effects, the practices were…

Past research using a deferred imitation task has shown that 6-month-olds remember a 3-part action sequence for only 1 day. The concept of a time window suggests that there is a limited period within which additional information can be integrated with a prior memory. Its width tracks the forgetting function of the memory. This study asked if…

The authors investigated the relatively short-term and longer term effects of grade retention in 1st grade on the growth of mathematics and reading achievement over 4 years. The authors initially identified a large multiethnic sample (n = 784) of children who were below the median in literacy at school entrance. From this sample, the authors…

The role that early school retention, early childhood depression and self-concept had on levels of depression in 191 urban Hispanic adolescents was investigated. This exploratory study used a purposeful sample to study relationships and thus causality cannot be inferred. Statistically significant gender differences were found for depression with…

Background/Context: The prevailing theory of action underlying No Child Left Behind's high-stakes testing and accountability ratings is that schools and students held accountable to these measures will automatically increase educational output as educators try harder, schools will adopt more effective methods, and students will learn more. In…

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…

Growing up in an era when protest at national political conventions is carefully contained in "free-speech zones" (often physically removed from the site of the official conventions), students today may have a difficult time conceptualizing the tumultuous scene that was the 1968 Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago. Fueled by…

The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) is a bold effort to create a network of charter schools designed to transform and improve the educational opportunities available to low/income families. KIPP schools seek to actively engage students and parents in the educational process, expand the time and effort students devote to their studies, reinforce…

This report paints a collective portrait of the Baltimore City Schools dropouts of 2008-09 to summarize some of the commonalities that join their individual stories together. After examining the surface level demographic characteristics of these dropouts, researchers probed more deeply into their behavioral characteristics in the years preceding…

This document compiles a series of three policy briefs focused on the subject of grade retention. The first brief, "Grade Retention: A Flawed Education Strategy," suggests educators and policymakers caution the use of grade retention as a remedy for poor student performance. As concluded by the majority of past studies, grade retention is a failed…

Ways of combating defeatist attitudes on the part of parents and children about grade repetition are suggested. (JW)

An elementary school teacher offers guidelines for enlisting the cooperation of both the child and the parents when retention is necessary. (Editor/SJL)

According to these scenarios, the heart attack victim has a better chance of surviving than the child facing grade retention. Despite parental objections and research studies showing that children held back are three time as likely to drop out of school than children who are promoted, the antiquated practice of grade repetition continues. (MLH)

The proposals that (a) nonword repetition and word learning both rely on phonological storage and (b) both are multiply determined are two of the major foci of Gathercole's (2006) Keynote Article, which marshals considerable evidence in support of each. In my view, the importance of these proposals cannot be overstated: these two notions go to the…