The practice of student grade retention, or repeating a grade,
goes through waves of popularity. Today with increased public and
political pressure to improve the quality of the education in the
United States, retention has become a common practice. Despite this
fact there are strong proponents against retention. This debate has
been going on since the turn of the 20th century, why hasn't it been solved?
To retain or not to retain?
Let's start with the arguments for retention. They make
intuitive sense. If a child is failing, an extra year of instruction
should result in mastery. It follows that once these students begin
to achieve, their self-esteem will be enhanced. And what about those
immature kids, another year will give them a "year to grow." Of
course teachers will be happy. They'll have homogenous
classrooms making it easier for them to teach. Social promotion of
students who are failing results in students with poor academic
skills. Retention seems like the correct answer, yet research
Holmes and Matthews (1984) conducted a meta-analysis to determine
the effectiveness of grade-level retention on elementary and/or
junior high students. A meta-analysis is a statistical technique that
can integrate the results of several studies to examine the effects
of a variable such as retention. Results of this study found a
significant grand mean effect size of -.37. In other words the
retained students scored .37 standard deviations lower on the various
outcome measures of the 44 studies. More specifically, results
indicated significant differences between retained and promoted
students on academic achievement, personal adjustment, self-concept,
and attitude toward school. Promoted students had more preferred
outcomes on all of these measures. In sum, the effects of retention
appear to be the opposite of the goals of retention.
Foster (1993) reviewed the research on grade retention. She
indicated that the annual retention rate in the U.S. was 7 to 9
percent. At this rate a high school graduating class will be made up
of 50% of students who had been previously retained. The rate may not
actually be that high because by senior year a number of students
will have already dropped out. Foster cited Grissomand and Shepard
(1989) reporting that being retained one year almost doubled a student's likelihood of dropping out.
Foster (1993) also stated that concern was raised as early as 1909
that retention had a negative impact on self-concept. Bracey (1986,
in Foster, 1993) found that children ranked failing a grade only
slightly less stressful than going blind or losing a parent to
An argument has been made that retention is more appropriate as a
preventative rather than a remedial intervention. This argument would
suggest that children retained in kindergarten or first grade have
more favorable outcomes than a matched promoted group. Research has
shown that there are no differences in achievement between the two
groups (Johnson, Merrell, & Stover, 1990; Mantzicopoulos, 1997).
McCombs-Thomas, Armistead, Kempton, Lynch, Forehand, Nousianen,
Neighbors, and Tannenbaum (1992) found that, especially for white
students, long term effects of early retention were poor academic and
social functioning. Even though the results are somewhat mixed, the
bottom line is should we risk the chance of these students dropping
out of school?
McLeskey and Grizzle (1992) examined grade retention rates among
students with learning disabilities. They found that in Indiana 58%
of students identified with learning disabilities had been retained
before identification. It seems retention is being used as an
ineffective intervention before identification. Between retention and
being labeled LD, the risk of dropping out of school is quite high.
An effective alternative to both retention and labeling may be
Limitations of the Research
Research strongly supports the negative impact of grade retention.
There are limitations to the research though. True experiments can
not be found in the literature. Try to find an administrator and a
group of parents who will allow children to be randomly assigned to a
retention or non-retention group. As a result there has to be a
matched group of students who had been recommended for retention, but
who had been promoted. Tanner and Galis (1997) discussed the
limitation with this type of matching. They state that matching on
academic variables is not enough. It can not be assumed that the
groups are similar on other variables. The reason that the matched
group was ultimately promoted may be an important variable. For
example, is it possible that parents who would not allow their
children to be retained may make an extra effort at home to work on
academics? Tanner and Galis also mentioned the difference same-age
and same-grade comparisons. Same-age comparisons should favor
promotion, whereas same-grade comparisons should favor retention.
Studies with both types of comparisons are the best. A final
limitation, found in many areas of research, is the relatively small
Alternatives to Retention
After reviewing the research and then considering the limitations,
it is easier to understand why there is such a disagreement over
retention. There are numerous negative effects of retention, yet
social promotion results in high school students who are deficient in
basic, prerequisite skills. The question therefore is not "to retain
or not to retain" it is "what else can be done to help this student
who is failing?" The following is a list of alternatives compiled
from McDonald and Bean (1992) and Owings and Magliaro (1998).
- Require summer school
- Offer intensive remediation before and after school
- Model and relate school work directly to student interests
- Initiate academic incentive programs
- Delay testing until the fall rather than early spring
assuming no more learning will occur
- Institute an optional learning resource program
- Insist on superior quality of work from students. Require
- Stress counseling and study skills programs
- Employ suitable strategies such as cooperative learning,
mastery learning, direct instruction, adaptive education,
individualized instruction, peer tutoring, and curriculum-based
- Improve and maintain home-school collaboration
- Encourage student responsibility for self-evaluation
- Allow tests to be finished individually or cooperatively.
Amount of time should not be a factor
- Recommend smaller classes with higher levels of
For parents: Should
My Child Repeat A Grade? A paper for
parents by the National Association of School Psychologists
NASP's position on grade retention
Grade Retention and Social Promotion.
Position Statement: Student Grade Retention
Commentary: Grade Retention Doesn't Work
Educators' Notebook - Grade Retention
When Teachers Recommend Retention, What Should Parents Do?
Special Education Law - To Promote or Retain
American Journal: Schools abandon 'social promotion' Chicago sets
an example by forcing urban students to repeat grades. - 8/27/97
News: Promote or Retain? Pendulum for Students Swings Back Again
News: U.S. Kindergarten Study Sheds Light on Retention, Delayed
Special Education Law - How Principals View Learning Problems and
Foster, J. E. (1993). Reviews of research: Retaining children in
grade. Childhood Education, 70, 38-43.
Holmes, C. T. & Matthews, K. M. (1984). The effects of
nonpromotion on elementary and junior high school pupils: A
meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 54,
Johnson, E. R., Merrell, K. W., & Stover, L. (1990). The
effects of early grade retention on the academic achievement of
fourth-grade students. Psychology in the Schools, 27,
Mantzicopoulos, P. Y. (1997). Do certain groups of children profit
from early retention? A follow-up study of kindergartners with
attention problems. Psychology in the Schools,
McCombs-Thomas, A., Armistead, L., Kempton, T., Lynch, S.,
Forehand, R., Nousiainen, S., Neighbors, B., & Tannenbaum, L.
(1992). Early retention: Are there long term beneficial effects?
Psychology in the Schools, 29, 342-347.
McDonald, L.R. & Bean, L.C. (1992). Thinking of retaining a
student? Try one or more of the twenty-five alternatives to
retention. Education, 112, 567-570.
McLeskey, J. & Grizzle, K. L. (1992). Grade retention rates
among students with learning disabilities. Exceptional
Children, 58, 548-554.
Owings, W. A. & Magliaro, S. (1998). Grade retention: A
history of failure. Educational Leadership, 56,
Tanner, C. K. & Galis, S.A. (1997). Student retention: Why is
there a gap between the majority of research findings and school
practice? Psychology in the Schools, 34,