This literature review cautions that the issue of whether promotion or retention is more beneficial to student achievement is especially murky when it becomes a political decision. It concludes that grade retention seems to ignore the question of instructional effectiveness, blames the child for failure, and absolves the school of responsibility.…

Retention, the practice of requiring a child to repeat a particular grade, is often presented as the answer for poor academic or behavioral performance in school. To explore the effectiveness of this approach, the long-term impact of retention is discussed here. The paper focuses on students who were retained in kindergarten and these students'…

Today's administrators must exercise caution in using student retention as a means of responding to changing social values and to the current media attention on declining standardized test scores. Recent reviews of hundreds of studies of student retention have concluded that some low achieving students do benefit from retention, but the majority…

In order to identify factors which indicate a student would benefit educationally from retention, and to provide information and recommendations to educators, parents, and others involved in the decision to retain a child, this paper addresses the issue of retention in four major areas: the historical basis of retention, negative and positive…

This general review of the relative merits of social promotion and retention examines research on the benefits of each, describes current strategies for resolving the policy dilemma involved, and considers issues raised by abolishing social promotion and establishing remedial programs. A summary of the history of the widespread adoption of the…

This information packet contains nine articles that outline current trends in kindergarten retention/exclusion and their negative impact on student outcomes, particularly for high risk students. The 1980s saw increasing numbers of children required to repeat kindergarten, attend a transitional grade before first grade, or wait an extra year before…