Grade Retention

Grade retention, a practice that involves students repeating the same curriculum because of failure to master the required skills, is a practice that has been considerably researched. Rarely does an academic field have such overwhelming evidence against a practice that is ignored, almost universally, in American schools. Grade retention is the exemplar of that phenomenon. Despite the research that, over decades, has been systematically analyzed and that suggests that grade retention is not an effective practice, children and adolescents are likely to continue to be affected by grade retention. As Shane Jimerson and his colleagues note, past syntheses are controversial because the original studies are typically based on pre- and posttest designs of retained students only and not on comparisons between retained and promoted but low-performing students. Jimerson and colleagues further describe a literature that is not investigated in longitudinal fashion and fails to account for initial adjustment after the retention experience.

Thomas Holmes's 1989 synthesis of the retention literature indicated that students who were retained had lower academic achievement and more social and emotional maladjustment (i.e., social adjustment, emotional adjustment, and behavior). Any positive trends made in Holmes's analysis suggested that the results of those retention intervention studies diminished over time as students moved to higher grade-level placements. The most recent meta-analysis, conducted by Jimerson in 2001, supports the previous syntheses and provides further evidence that something other than grade retention is necessary for students who are not academically or socially successful in schools. Jimerson's updated synthesis found that retained students' academic achievement was .39 standard deviations below those who were promoted on time. Regarding students' socio-emotional adjustment, retained students were rated below their peers on every social, emotional, behavioral, self-concept, adjustment, and attendance measure.

Despite the harmful effects of retention, it is estimated that 5% to 10% of students are retained [Page 447]annually, and it is likely that grade retention will continue to be prevalent and may even increase. Many school districts and even state educational agencies have used retention as a high-stakes consequence for students who fail to make benchmarks set for a given grade level. As these schools attempt to comply with the current No Child Left Behind legislation, in an environment where economic resources are not sufficient to ameliorate the learning and behavioral challenges that students have before retention may be necessary, it is likely that the numbers of students for whom this practice is employed will increase. The following review summarizes the major areas in the grade retention literature with a focus on younger children in primary grades, grades in which retention is most likely to occur.