Pass Is a Four-Letter Word

Keeping a kid back a year in school can lead to disengagement.

By Brenda Goodman, published on July 01, 2004 - last reviewed on November 07, 2006

Are struggling learners helped by repeating a grade?

Every year an estimated 1 million U.S. elementary school students will find themselves in the middle of this debate when they face tough new education rules, due in part to the No Child Left Behind Act. The measures are meant to end social promotion—the practice of graduating failing students to the next grade to keep them with their peers. Social promotion is to blame for high school graduates with fourth-grade reading levels, some say.

But research suggests that holding kids back is rarely helpful. In fact, it's often detrimental, says Susan Stone, assistant professor of social welfare at the University of California at Berkeley. As leader of the Consortium on Chicago School Research, Stone headed an eight-year study of retention in the Chicago public schools. The consortium's most recent report found that after one year, third graders who are held back aren't better off compared with students who squeak by into the next grade. Sixth graders who repeated the grade fared worse than those barely allowed to advance, and almost 78 percent of eighth graders who were held back dropped out of school altogether.

"Kids disengage from school because they're learning the same thing in the same way over and over again," says Stone.

Nineteen states currently tie grade promotion to performance on standardized tests, and others are aggressively pushing to hold back more students despite the growing body of research showing the practice doesn't work.

Policymakers need to find another solution, Stone says. "These are students with serious deficits. No one wants to advocate promoting someone who doesn't have the skills."

For Stone, the solution is more early childhood education. "Third grade is too late to help kids who are so far behind," she says.