Retention, or the act of a student repeating a grade level in an effort to master skills that he or she lacks, has been studied many times. Using educational databases including ERIC and SAGE, keywords such as grade-level retention, social promotion, and state-mandated retention were used to find research about the practice of retention.
The research almost unanimously indicates that the risks for students who are retained are far greater than the benefits of the additional year of instruction in the same content (Balitewicz, 1998; Cham, Hughes, West, & Im, 2015; Goos et al.
, 2013; Gottfried, 2013; Lynch, 2014; Norton, 2011; Raffaele Mendez, Kim, Ferron, & Woods, 2015; Stearns et al., 2007; Tingle, Schoeneberger, & Algozzine, 2012). However, the social promotion has become the target of many policymakers who insist that in order to ensure that no child is left behind, some must keep some back through mandatory retention.
According to Cham et al. (2015) and Penna and Tallerico (2005), many studies have indicated that student retention is the “single most powerful predictor of dropping out of school” (p.
13). Dropping out of school has many more consequences for these students including a greater chance for criminal activity and incarceration, greater opportunities for family dysfunction, fewer career opportunities, and diminished lifetime earnings (Penna & Tallerico, 2005). Additionally, students who are identified as behind, even at the earliest grades, often come from lower-income families and/or English language learners (Carta et al., 2015; Kim, Mazza, Zwangiger, & Henry, 2014; Lane, Prokop, Johnson, Podhajski, & Nathan, 2014; Lee & Bierman, 2015; Schmit, Matthews, & Golden, 2014; Sylva, 2014). The research is vast and provides insight into many aspects connected with the practice of student retention.
Mandatory retention provides additional stress as teachers prepare students for standardized tests. Unfortunately, this forces some teachers to choose which students to focus their efforts on and provide the most assistance to boost scores in a way that would create the most improvement or at least the appearance of improvement. Often, this extra attention is provided to those just barely under the passing standard instead of the lowest-achieving students (Huddleston, 2015). This creates an even more profound impact when considering that the quality of the teacher-student relationship in these early grades has a significant influence on a student’s success (Diamond, Justice, Siegler, & Snyder, 2013; Sandilos, 2014). There is no clear answer; retaining a student in grade may or may not impact students’ academic achievement (Warren, Hoffman, & Andrew, 2014, p. 433).
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