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• Retention in the Early Grades: A Review of Research
• Retention in the Early Grades: Alternative Strategies

Retention in the Early Grades:  A Review of the Research

Beckie Anderson,
in collaboration with the staff at RMC Research Corporation

Because retention and promotion practices are expressions of beliefs about purposes of education, retention is a complex and emotionally laden issue. This guide is designed to help you examine your district’s or school’s retention policies and practices and to determine the impact of your retention practices.

Why do teachers retain young children?

A large majority of teachers interviewed by Smith (1989) viewed retention as beneficial to students. Teachers talked about children who had been retained as assuming more leadership, being more comfortable with the routine, being more cooperative, having greater self-confidence, becoming more a part of the social group, and achieving more academic success.

In Smith’s study (1989:136), almost half of the 40 kindergarten teachers interviewed based their retention recommendations on their beliefs about children’s maturity levels. These teachers "believe that, within some normal range of environments, children become more prepared for school according to an evolutionary, physiological unfolding of abilities."

There are other factors influencing teachers’ decisions to retain students. In interviews with 25 teachers, Byrnes (1989) reported that while teachers were concerned about retaining students, they often felt it would be worse for a child to be promoted because of the expectations in the following grade. Several teachers mentioned a fear of being criticized by the teachers in the next grade for passing students who were ill-prepared. Allington and McGill-Franzen (1995) describe teachers in one school who reported significant embarrassment when a student they promoted was "sent back down" for being unable to read the assigned trade book for that grade.

Research studies have shown that groups of retained children demonstrate a short-term "bounce" in performance in relation to same grade comparison groups of children who performed in the lowest quartile on norm referenced tests; however, this advantage decreases over time. Holmes (1989), in his meta-analysis of multiple studies on retention, found that after three grades there was no difference between children who were retained and those who were not, even though the retained children were one year older. This temporary "bounce" in the performance of retained students provides one answer to why teachers retain children.

However, in a carefully controlled study of kindergarten retention, Shepard and Smith (1989:105) found "no boost or academic advantage from the extra year to mature." A similar study on "transition" programs, such as junior first grade or developmental kindergarten, led to the same results (Allington & McGill-Franzen, 1995).

Some researchers such as Eads (1990) and Shepard and Smith (1988) believe that retaining students actually has deleterious effects on the school. They believe kindergarten transition programs change the composition of first grade classes to include older, more "mature" students as the younger, "less mature" students are pulled out of their age cohort and placed in the transition program. This allows, perhaps even encourages, the first grade teachers to increase the level of difficulty of what is being taught, a shift referred to as escalating the curriculum. Skills that were once considered to be appropriate to second grade, such as reading, are now being taught to and expected of first graders. Shepard and Smith (1988:37) argue that academics pushed down to a lower grade does not necessarily lead to better learning because "boring proficiencies learned by rote are substituted for conceptual learning and enthusiasm for learning."

In view of the repeated research evidence on the negative effects of retention, Smith (1989:147-148) argues that primary teachers base beliefs about the benefits of retention on incomplete and misleading information.

What the teacher lacks access to, however, is the information about what that child would have been like had he been promoted. Indeed, these unseen circumstances are hypothetical, they lack reality, and in fact, she may deny the possibility that with some acceptable level of struggling the child would have succeeded in the subsequent grade and later on would be indistinguishable from his peers.

How do children and families experience retention?

In 1989, Byrnes interviewed 71 nonpromoted children about repeating a grade in school. Half of these children were from upper-middle income schools and half were from lower-middle income schools. In private interviews, 27 percent of the retained children did not admit to the interviewer that they had been retained. When asked how they felt or would feel if they were retained, 84 percent of the responses focused on "sad," "bad," and "upset." Byrnes concluded (1989:130) that retained children viewed retention as a "punishment and a stigma, not as a positive event designed to help them."

Byrnes also interviewed principals, teachers and parents. She found that these adults viewed retention as a way to help children who were judged by adults to be unable to deal with the tasks of the next grade.

In another set of interviews, parents reported that the characteristics of the children that were used to make the retention decision, such as lack of attention and poor social skills, were not corrected by an extra year to mature (Shepard and Smith, 1989). Parents in this study also described their children as having slightly poorer attitudes toward school compared to a matched control group of children who were not retained. Yet, through interviews with teachers and parents, Smith (1989:145) found that "teachers consistently underplay the extent of conflict with parents over the decision to retain and underestimate the degree of parents’ active resistance or passive but unhappy compliance."

Does retention help children close the academic achievement gap?

Numerous research studies on the long term effects of retention have concluded that retaining children does not help them move up academically. In fact, for the vast majority of students, retention has a negative effect on their academic achievement. Researchers have found that children who are overage for their grade are more likely to drop out of school. Roderick (1995) suggests three possible reasons why retention places students at risk of dropping out:

• grade retention as a remedial strategy does not appear to fix school performance;

• retention is the strongest message a teacher or school can give a student that they are not as capable as their agemates; and

• overage students become more frustrated when they struggle with school work.

Grissom and Shepard (1989:34) concluded that "retained students experience a greater risk for dropping out that cannot be explained by their poor achievement." They found that for black males in Austin, Texas, retention increased their risk of dropping out of high school by 27 percent. White females from a high socioeconomic district who were retained increased their chances of not completing high school by 21 percent. Based on their study and review of retention research, Grissom and Shepard (1989:60) stated:

For a school district contemplating tougher promotion policies, it is possible to estimate what the effect might be on the district’s dropout rate. If annual retention rates are increased, say, from five percent to seven percent, the cumulative retention rate will go up on the order of 20 percent. That is, an additional 20 percent of students will experience retention sometime in their school career. Following from the extra retentions, the district’s dropout rate will go up by three to six percentage points. A district that had a 20 percent dropout rate could anticipate a new rate of 25 percent as groups of previously retained students reached high school age.

However, in a grade retention report by the Massachusetts Department of Education (1990), the authors concluded that in individual cases students can benefit from retention. Schools are unable to predict who these students will be. A study by Sandoval and Hughes (1981) was designed to discover what types of children benefit from retention.

Children who demonstrated greater success after repeating first grade:

• displayed mastery of some academic skills (usually reading);

• had good self-concepts and adequate social skills;

• had parents who were involved in the schools and who had favorable attitudes toward retention;

• demonstrated difficulty with school primarily due to lack of exposure to the material (school transfer or high absenteeism); and

• received substantially different curricula and methods of instruction during their retained year.

What alternatives to retention are schools exploring?

Smith (1989) found that teachers within the same school typically demonstrated retention practices that matched the other teachers’ in their school. In other words, there seemed to be a school culture that affected retention practices. Some schools retained as many as a third of their kindergartners for a second year, and others retained only one or two percent.

Likewise, Allington and McGill-Franzen (1995:53) found that schools with similar student populations responded very differently to children’s difficulties with learning. Two schools they researched each had 20 percent of their children eligible for free or reduced lunch. One school had retained, placed in transitional classes, or placed in special education almost two out of every three primary grade students. In the other school about one out of ten students were retained or placed in special education. In describing the two schools the researchers noted:

The two communities were not very different, although poverty was higher in the second school. What was different was the institutional ethos in each. The teachers in the first school talked about parents and students in adversarial tones ("us versus them"). In the second school, teachers talked much more respectfully about the children and their parents. Teachers in both schools were generally cordial in their interactions with children, and the hallways of both were bright and decorated with student work (the first school even displayed banners and plaques that had been awarded to denote its excellence).

School districts also influence or prescribe retention practices within schools. Allington and McGill-Franzen (1991) found that schools with formal retention policies and plans had higher retention rates than schools with no policies.

Ellwein and Glass (1989) conducted a multi-site case study in which one district had implemented a new retention/promotion policy. They found that although the district very carefully designed and implemented a promotional program to bring order to seemingly illogical and haphazard retention practices, no one was keeping track of what happened. No one knew if the students who failed the required tests were actually being retained. Researchers inferred that the policy was being used only in part. Children who passed the tests were being promoted, but some of the children who did not pass the tests were also being promoted. This raised questions about which children were retained and how the decisions were made.

Many studies have found bias in retention practices. Specifically, children who are retained are more likely to be low-income, male, and minority (Roderick, 1995). In the end it appeared as if the district studied by Ellwein and Glass (1989) had implemented a policy to improve public relations. The degree to which the policy changed practice was not of interest to the district. In their multi-site case study, the researchers found that the circumstances in this district were not unusual.

Bibliography

Allington, R.L. & McGill-Franzen, A. (1991). Educational reform and at-risk children: Exclusion, retention, transition, and special education in an era of increased accountability. Final report to the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement (Grant #R117E90143).

Allington, R.L. & McGill-Franzen, A. (1995:45-60). Flunking: Throwing good money after bad. In R.L. Allington & A. Walmsley, No Quick Fix: Rethinking Literacy Programs in America’s Elementary Schools. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University.

Allington, R.L. & Walmsley, A. (1995). No Quick Fix: Rethinking Literacy Programs in America’s Elementary Schools. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University.

Byrnes, D.A. (1989:108-131). Attitudes of students, parents and educators toward repeating a grade. In L.A. Shepard & M.L. Smith (eds.), Flunking grades: Research and policies on retention. London: Falmer Press.

Eads, G.M. (1990). Kindergarten retention and alternative kindergarten programs: A report to the Virginia Board of Education. Richmond, Virginia: Virginia State Department of Education (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 320 670).

Ellwein, M.C. & Glass, G.V. (1989:151-173). Ending social promotion in Waterford: Appearances and reality. In L.A. Shepard & M.L. Smith (eds.), Flunking grades: Research and policies on retention. London: Falmer Press.

Grissom, J.B. & Shepard, L.A. (1989:34-63). Repeating and dropping out of school. In L.A. Shepard & M.L. Smith (eds.), Flunking grades: Research and policies on retention. London: Falmer Press.

Holmes, C.T. (1989:16-33). Grade level retention effects: A Meta-analysis of research studies. In L.A. Shepard & M.L. Smith (eds.), Flunking grades: Research and policies on retention. London: Falmer Press.

Massachusetts Department of Education. (1990). Structuring schools for student success: A focus on grade retention [Brochure]. Quincy, Massachusetts: Bureau of Student Development and Health.

Roderick, M. (1995). Grade retention and school dropout: Policy debate and research questions. Research Bulletin (Phi Delta Kappan, No. 15). Washington, D.C.

Sandavol, J. & Hughes, G.P. (1981). Success in nonpromoted first grade children. Final report to the National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland (Grant #PHS-28765-02).

Shepard, L.A. & Smith, M.L. (1988:34-38). Flunking kindergarten: Escalating curriculum leaves many behind. American Educator (Summer/Volume 3).

Shepard, L.A. & Smith, M.L. (1989:79-107). Academic and emotional effects of kindergarten retention in one school district. In L.A. Shepard & M.L. Smith (eds.), Flunking grades: Research and policies on retention. London: Falmer Press.

Smith, M.L. (1989:132-150). Teachers’ beliefs about retention. In L.A. Shepard & M.L. Smith (eds.), Flunking grades: Research and policies on retention. London: Falmer Press.

Retention in the Early Grades: Alternative Strategies

 As you explore and review your retention practices, it may be helpful to examine some alternative practices used by other school districts. These ideas can help stimulate your thinking about appropriate and effective educational strategies to implement in your school or district.

1. Promote all low achievers and provide additional instructional support. One-to-one tutoring programs have had good results in helping students to meet standards (See Allington & Walmsley, No Quick Fix: Rethinking Literacy Programs in America’s Elementary Schools).
2. Provide students in a transition program with an enriched curriculum designed to lead to double promotion so students can catch up with their age cohorts.
3. Keep teachers with the same students for two or three years with an emphasis on continuous progress.
4. Implement multi-age classrooms where children have more time to learn and advance to the next level after mastering the concepts at their current level.
5. Develop a summer enrichment or "bridge" program.
6. Use supplemental funds from federal categorical programs like Title I to pay teachers to tutor students individually in reading and writing after school.
7. Expand parent involvement to include family literacy programs that teach parents how to support emergent literacy.
8. Review and/or redesign curriculum for developmental appropriateness and instructional effectiveness using information from professional associations such as the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.
9. Provide intensive staff development for all K-3 teachers in emergent literacy and a common program for teaching reading/language arts.
10. Provide time for staff to examine current teaching practices. Use staff development funds to organize study groups to identify alternatives.
11. Find time to examine your collective beliefs regarding teaching and learning. Determine ways in which all students can be successful.

This page last updated: December 13, 2007