Rethinking Retention

The dilemma is one that many thousands of the nation's teachers grapple with each year. And the issue is becoming even thornier now that new research suggests the downside of retention may be even worse than people once thought.

Most teachers and administrators have traditionally supported holding students back a year for a number of reasons. They assumed that by forcing slow learners to repeat a grade, the students would mature, master deficient skills, and be less likely to fail when they reached the next grade. In this way, retention supporters argued, the dropout rate would actually be lowered. In addition, many educators have seen retention as a way to ensure the competence of high school graduates and bring standards and accountability to the educational system.

Support for retention became even stronger in the early 1980s. The first wave of educational reformers, driven by horror stories of illiterate high school graduates, took a get-tough stance, setting rigid guidelines that required low-achieving pupils to repeat a grade. Policies that tie promotion to test scores have been particularly common in reform-minded Southern states, such as Arkansas,...