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##  Retention and Social Promotion: Research and Implications for                   Policy. ERIC Digest Number 161.                                              

The issue of whether it is better to retain low-performing students             in grade or to pass them along with their age-mates has been both               hotly disputed and heavily studied for decades. Advocates of                    retention have maintained that it sends a message to all students               that weak effort and poor performance will not be tolerated, and                that it gives lagging students an opportunity to get serious and get            ready for the next grade. Opponents have argued that retention                  discourages students whose motivation and confidence are already                shaky, and that promoted students gain an opportunity to advance                through the next years curriculum, while retained students go over              the same ground and thus fall farther behind their advancing                    peers. 
For many years, research on social promotion and retention             simply compared the two. Researchers asked whether low-performing               students who repeat a grade fare better or worse than similarly                 low-performing students who are promoted. In contrast, more recent              no promotion policies do not replace social promotion with simple               retention that recycles students through the same grade they have               failed. Instead, the policies are intended to replace both social               promotion and simple retention with identification of students at               risk for retention and aggressive intervention to catch them up to              their peers. 
This digest highlights major findings about social               promotion; retention; and newer programs that identify students at              risk of retention, give them extra assistance, and use retention as             a last resort. FINDINGS FROM THE RESEARCHOverall, neither                 social promotion nor retention leads to high performance. If the                goal is to bring low-performing students up to the higher standards             now being asserted across the nation, neither retention nor social              promotion is effective. In different studies, one or the other has              been found to offer an advantage, but neither has been found to                 offer a large, lasting advantage, and neither leads to high                     performance. 
Social Promotion 
It is impossible to tell how                  common social promotion is. Currently, virtually no statistics are              kept on social promotions, in part because few districts explicitly             embrace or admit to the practice. 
* Some evidence supports, and               little evidence disputes, the indictment of social promotion.                   Critics of social promotion argue that it frustrates promoted                   students by placing them in grades where they cannot do the work,               sends the message to all students that they can get by without                  working hard, forces teachers to deal with under-prepared students              while trying to teach the prepared, gives parents a false sense of              their children's progress, leads employers to conclude that diplomas            are meaningless, and dumps poorly educated students into a society              where they cannot perform. Some early evidence from districts that              have eliminated social promotion supports this indictment, and even             opponents of "no social promotion" policies do not defend social                promotion so much as say that retention is even                                 worse. 
Retention 
Retention is common. Nationally, no statistics             are kept on retention, but reasonable estimates based on census data            suggest that as many as one-third of all students have been retained            at least once by the time they reach high school. For boys and                  minorities, retention is even more common. Nationally, by high                  school, the retention rate for boys is about ten percentage points              higher than for girls. In the early grades, retention rates are                 similar among whites, African Americans, and Hispanics, but by high             school, the rate is about 15 percentage points higher for African               Americans and Hispanics than for whites. 
Transitions are peak                 times for retention. Students are most commonly retained at the end             of the year after the transition into elementary school, into middle            or junior high school, and into high school. 
Retention can help               sometimes, but early retention is harmful, and overall, retention is            risky. Retention may help some students in some circumstances, but              there are serious risks associated with it. Retaining students in               first grade is surprisingly common and frequently harmful. Even the             best-designed of recent studies that found in favor of retention in             general also found that students retained in first grade do worse               than expected, both academically and emotionally. There is also                 substantial evidence that retention in kindergarten is equally                  harmful. Being removed from a group of peers with whom a student has            just gotten comfortable seems to compound the difficulty of                     adjusting to school and to set the child back rather than help. 
A             recent study of Chicago's "no social promotion" policy (see below)              indicates that retention is harmful as late as third grade. While               early research on the success of the Chicago program shows that                 students, especially those with the lowest prior scores, showed                 impressive gains after a full year of intervention and intensive                summer instruction, retained third graders scored significantly                 lower than promoted third graders. 
For other grades, the research             is mixed. A few well-designed studies have found that retained                  students do better academically and feel better about themselves and            about school during the first three years after retention.                      Consistent with the Chicago findings reported here, the biggest                 advantage was found in a district that identified students early,               attempted to avoid retention through re-mediation, and gave special             assistance to retained students. Even there, as in other studies,               the advantage for retained students declined each year and washed               out altogether after three years. Other studies have found that                 retention either offers no advantage or actually harms students.                Taken together, the studies find that simple retention -- retention             without efforts at prevention and special assistance for those                  retained -- is especially risky. 
Retaining students, regardless of            the grade at which they are retained, increases the likelihood that             they will drop out of school. 
Retention is not cost effective.                Retention is expensive: at a minimum, it entails the cost of an                 additional year of schooling for each student retained. On the                  whole, retention is not a cost-effective response to poor                       performance when viewed in the light of cheaper or more effective               interventions, research findings demonstrating no advantage to, or              even harm from, retention, and the tendency for gains from retention            to wash out. 
The effects of retention vary with contexts,                     treatments, and individual student characteristics. Some of the                 differences in study findings result from differences and flaws in              research design. But many of the differences probably just reflect              variations in family, school, and community contexts; in the ways               that retained students are treated as the decision to retain them is            announced, during the repeated year, and afterwards; and in                     individual students. 
Identification and Intervention 
Chicago                recently instituted a policy that bars social promotion,                        establishes "gateway" grades where students must pass standardized              tests to be promoted, creates mechanisms to identify students at                risk for retention, provides after-school assistance during the                 school year and mandatory summer instruction for those who need it,             but does retain students who fail to meet the standards even with               the extra attention. 
Early research on the consequences of                    Chicago's policy indicates that most students made impressive                   standardized test score gains. Students with the lowest prior scores            made the largest measured gains. But third graders learning gains               actually declined after the policy was implemented. And students who            were retained were not helped by a second pass through the grade                they failed. IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICYPolicymakers considering              no social promotion policies should know that while such policies               can pay off for the majority of students, several cautions are in               order: 
* The large numbers of students retained in first grade and            even in kindergarten, together with the finding that early retention            often harms students, underline the importance of preschool programs            that prepare children to succeed in school. 
* The findings                    regarding early retention indicate that promotion gateways should               not be introduced in early grades. Rather, student progress should              be closely tracked from the earliest grades, with swift re-mediation            provided to students who are lagging. 
* The transitions into                  middle and high school also warrant special attention for students              at risk of retention--both before and after a transition is                     made. 
* Sound decisions require multiple assessments. The decision            to promote a student should not be made on the basis of a single                test, and especially not a single administration of a single test.              Standards developed by several professional societies condemn use of            a single administration of a single assessment to make any high                 stakes decision, instead encouraging the use of several sources of              evidence in making such decisions. Therefore, provisions should be              made for students to take accountability tests more than once if                necessary and for local educators to use additional evidence in                 making promotion decisions. 
* Research also confirms what most in             the current debate already recognize: if the alternative to social              promotion is simple retention, there is a serious risk that retained            students will be harmed and only a little evidence that they may be             helped. There is some evidence that with extra assistance retained              students may do better academically for up to three years than they             would have done if promoted. Yet the gains wash out after three                 years, and even these retained-but-assisted students are more likely            to drop out of school than if they had not been retained. 
* If                policymakers wish to minimize the chance that retained students will            be harmed, and maximize the chances that they will be helped, then              policy should call for special assistance to continue during and                beyond the year in which the student is retained. SELECTED                    REFERENCESAlexander, K.L., Entwisle, D.R., & Dauber,                        S.L. (1994). On the success of failure: A reassessment of the                   effects of retention in the primary grades. Port Chester, NY:                   Cambridge University Press. (ED 387 203) 
Cairns, R.B., Cairns,                B.D., & Neckerman,H.J. (1989, December). Early school dropout:                  configurations and determinants. Child Development, 60(6),                      1437-52. (EJ 402 900) 
Center for Policy Research in                           Education. (1990). Repeating grades in school: Current practice and             research evidence. CPRE Policy Briefs (No. RB-04-1/90). (ED 323                 585) 
Holmes, C.T., & Matthews, K.M. (1984, Summer). The effects of            non-promotion on elementary and junior high school pupils: A                    meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 54(2), 225-36. (EJ               307 802) 
Jackson, G.B. (1975, Fall). The research evidence on the             effects of grade retention. Review of Educational Research, 45(4),              613-35. (EJ 135 378) 
Karweit, N.L. (1992). Retention policy.                  Encyclopedia of Educational Research (Vol. 3, 6th ed., pp. 114-18).             New York: Macmillan. 
National Research Council. (1999). High                  stakes: Testing for tracking promotion, and graduation. Washington,             DC: National Academy Press. (ED 439 151) 
Peterson, S.E., DeGracie,            J.S., & Ayabe, C.R. (1987, Spring). A longitudinal study of the                 effects of retention/promotion on academic achievement. American                Educational Research Journal, 24(1), 107-18. (EJ 371 370) 
Pierson,            L.H., & Connell, J.P. (1992, September). Effect of grade retention              on self-system processes, school engagement, and academic                       performance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 84(3), 300-07. (EJ              452 399) 
Roderick, M., Nagaoka, J., Bacon, J., & Easton, J.                   Q. (2000). Update: Ending social promotion. Chicago: Consortium on              Chicago School Research. 
Shepard, L.A., & Smith,                              M.L. (Eds.). (1989). Flunking grades: Research and policies on                  retention. London: Falmer Press. (ED 307 350) 
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This Digest             was developed by the ERIC Clearinghouse on Urban Education, with                funding from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement,                U.S. Department of Education, under contract no. ED-99-CO-0035.  The            opinions in this Digest do not necessarily reflect the position or              policies of OERI or the Department of Education.                             **Title:** Retention and Social Promotion: Research and Implications for                   Policy. ERIC Digest Number 161.                                              **Note:** Based on a report that can be found at                                          http://www.consortium-chicago.org.                                           **Document Type:** Information Analyses---ERIC Information Analysis Products (IAPs) (071); Information Analyses---ERIC Digests (Selected) in Full Text (073); **Available From:** ERIC Clearinghouse on Urban Education, Institute for Urban and                  Minority Education, Box 40, Teachers College, Columbia University,              NY 10027. Tel: 800-601-4868 (Toll Free); For full text:                         http://eric-web.tc.columbia.edu.                                             **Descriptors:** Academic Achievement,  Educational Policy, Elementary Secondary                 Education,  Grade Repetition, High Risk Students, Identification,                Social Promotion, Urban Schools                                             **Identifiers:** Chicago Public Schools IL, ERIC Digests                                      
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