While holding back a struggling elementary school student may seem like it would be a blow to a young child’s confidence, it can actually end up helping him, according to a new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
The study shows that students who repeat the third grade show short-term gains in both math and reading. Five years later, these gains are still significant compared to those of peers of the same grade. Compared to students of the same age, the gains fade out over five years.
Furthermore, students who were held back in third grade are substantially less likely to be held back in a later grade.
The study could not discern whether the affected students were any more or less likely to eventually graduate from high school. This is understandable given the number of outside factors that can intervene between third grade and high school graduation.
Holding back a student, also known as retention, refers to keeping a student in the same grade for an extra year to re-learn that grade’s material. For instance, a third-grader would repeat the third grade rather than move on to fourth. The authors noted that early grade retention is more beneficial to students than later grade retention. Sending a student to the next grade despite not having mastered the necessary grade-level material is called social promotion.
The study was authored by Guido Schwerdt, with the University of Konstanz in Germany, Martin West, with Harvard, and Marcus Winters, with the University of Colorado Colorado Springs.
The study looked at third grade students in Florida and their test data in later years. In 2003, Florida required schools to hold all third-grade students back if they could not achieve basic proficiency in reading, with a few exemptions.
The policy was enacted while presidential candidate Jeb Bush was governor of Florida. On the campaign trail, Bush has spoken about ending social promotion.
“In sum, our analysis provides more favorable evidence on the effects of early grade retention than found in many previous studies,” the authors wrote. “We show that test-based retention has substantial positive effects on reading and math achievement in the short run, has no detrimental effects on the limited set of outcomes we can measure, and generates educational and opportunity costs well below a full year when subsequent grade progression is taken into account.”
The paper noted that Arizona, Indiana, Oklahoma and Ohio have enacted similar policies since 2010.
About one in 10 American students gets held back at least once between kindergarten and eighth grade.
