Think Again

Is Grade Retention Bad for Kids?

Umut Ozek, Louis T. Mariano

ResearchPosted on rand.org Oct 23, 2023Published in: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute website (October 2023)

For many years, the conventional wisdom in the field was that grade retention was a bad idea. A 1997 opinion piece in Education Week titled “Grade retention doesn’t work” reflected the prevailing sentiment in the education community and the available research evidence at that time: retained students performed worse than their promoted peers in the years that followed. This brief challenges that notion, based on more recent studies that do a better job of isolating the causal effect of retention.

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Document Details

  • Availability: Non-RAND
  • Year: 2023
  • Pages: 10
  • Document Number: EP-70276

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