AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE IMPACT OF GRADE RETENTION AND GRADE

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of grade retention and grade placement on student achievement in both reading and math over the course of five-years. A comparison was drawn amongst two cohorts of students in 3rd through 5th grade: (a) students in each grade who were retained in the year 2006-2007 due to failing report card grades or failure to meet minimum expectations on the state-mandated assessment in either math or reading, and (b) students in each grade who failed to meet promotion standards in 2006-2007 due to failing report card grades or due to failure to meet minimum expectations on the state-mandated assessment in either math or reading and were placed in the next grade level.
The research questions guiding this study were: (1) How did report card grades for math and reading of the retained students compare to those of the placed students of similar achievement levels on five different time points, years 2007-2011? (2) How did the achievement levels on state-mandated assessments for reading and math of the retained students compare to those of the placed students of similar achievement levels on five different time points, years 2007-2011? (3) How were absence rates distributed amongst the retained and placed groups of students and did the absence rate impact the achievement of the students in math and reading as measured by performance on state assessments on five different time points, years 2007-2011? And (4) How were the factors of gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status distributed among the retained and placed groups of students and did those factors impact the achievement of the students in math and reading as measured by performance on state assessments on five different time points, 2007-2011? The statistical treatment included both ANOVAs and MANOVAs. The data revealed that students who were retained consistently scored higher than students who were placed on final report card grades as well as on state-mandated assessments for both reading and math, however, the advantage dwindled from up to ten percentage points during the second year of the study down to only three percentage points in the fifth and final year.