State laws that mandate in-grade retention for struggling readers are widespread in the U.S., covering 34% of public-school third graders in 2023-24. This study investigates the impacts of Michigan's third-grade reading law on subsequent test scores and school progress outcomes for the 2020-21 and 2021-22 third-grade cohorts. Using a regression…

Grade retention decisions are high-risk because this practice can significantly affect students' academic and professional path and their socioaffective development. This study aimed to contribute to a better understanding of second-grade retention decision-making by exploring the factors the professionals consider during the retention…

Public policies targeting individuals based on need often impose disproportionate burden on communities that lack the resources to implement these policies effectively. In an elementary school setting, I examine whether community-level interventions focusing on similar needs and providing resources to build capacity in these communities could…

This qualitative case study examined the impacts of Tennessee's third-grade retention law on children, families, and educators through an action research framework. Using semi-structured interviews, social media content analysis, and document reviews, the study explored the lived experiences of parents, who are also educators, and whose children…

Social scientists seeking to inform policy or public action must carefully consider how to identify effects and express inferences because actions based on invalid inferences will not yield the intended results. Recognizing the complexities and uncertainties of social science, we seek to inform inevitable debates about causal inferences by…

We study the peer effects of grade retention in the context of Indiana's statewide third-grade retention policy. When a retention occurs, it changes the peer group for two cohorts: rising fourth graders who lose a peer and rising third graders who gain a peer. We identify peer effects in both cohorts by leveraging plausibly exogenous variation in…

The purpose of this qualitative study is to determine how four rural school districts in East Tennessee worked to implement the third-grade retention law within their understanding and interpretation of the law to the benefit of the students and overall communities they serve. The study used a semi-structured questionnaire format conducted with a…

We propose a novel estimator for use in a fuzzy regression discontinuity setting. The estimator can be thought of as extrapolating the traditional fuzzy regression discontinuity estimate or as an observational study that adjusts for endogenous selection into treatment using information at the discontinuity. We show that it can be motivated as…

State laws that mandate in-grade retention for struggling readers are widespread in the U.S., covering 34% of public-school third graders in 2023-24. This study investigates the impacts of Michigan's third-grade reading law on subsequent test scores and school progress outcomes for the 2020-21 and 2021-22 third-grade cohorts. Using a regression…

Retention in kindergarten involves holding students back from advancing to the next grade level due to unresolved learning gaps. This practice has been the subject of continuous research as educational experts seek to balance the potential developmental risks of prolonging kindergarten by providing students an additional year to fill their…

We evaluate the effects of grade retention on students' academic, attendance, and disciplinary outcomes in Indiana. Using a regression discontinuity design, we show that third-grade retention increases achievement in English Language Arts (ELA) and math immediately and substantially, and the effects persist into middle school. We find no evidence…

Public policies targeting individuals based on need often impose disproportionate burden on communities that lack the resources to implement these policies effectively. In an elementary school setting, I examine whether community-level interventions focusing on similar needs and providing resources to build capacity in these communities could…

The internal validity of observational study is often subject to debate. In this study, we define the counterfactuals as the unobserved sample and intend to quantify its relationship with the null hypothesis statistical testing (NHST). We propose the probability of a robust inference for internal validity, that is, the PIV, as a robustness index…

This purpose of this Research Brief is to analyze trends and general patterns of student in-grade retention among students in grades K-8 within the Miami-Dade County Public School (M-DCPS) for the 2022-2023 school year. While in-grade retention in grades 9-12 may occur due to the lack of credit in one or more courses, students often recover these…

The purpose of this study was to present, compare, and contrast data collected from rural Georgia educators concerning their beliefs and knowledge of the benefits of student retention. The researcher identified the most common areas of agreement and disagreement among educators concerning grade-level retention. Additionally, the researcher…