Grade Retention Prevalence, Timing, and Effects

Karweit, N. L. (1999, March 1). Grade Retention Prevalence, Timing, and Effects. Johns Hopkins University.

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Karweit investigates the relationship between grade repetition on student academic progress and social and emotional development using the first grade data from Prospects. This paper focuses on the issues surrounding retention, the timing of retention—when does it usually happen—who gets held back—why—and the academic and behavioral effects of retention. The data from Prospects demonstrates that the majority of children in grades K-3 do not repeat a grade; only 18.4 percent of the children repeat a grade by the end of grade 3. Approximately 90.5% of those students, who repeat, only repeat once. Various factors that contribute to retention such as: gender (male), race/ethnicity (Other), student mobility (low parent income), evidence of disability and poor health status, larger family size, living in the South, attending a high poverty school, and being a Chapter 1 student. Karweit also addresses the academic consequences of grade retention, she examined the regular year versus the retained year and discovered the two years were highly similar meaning the struggling student was not experiencing anything new that would help them catch up to their rightful grade.