Effects of first-grade retention on repeaters’ school career until age 17

• In Event: New perspectives in grade retention effectiveness research: State of the art in Flanders

Abstract

As pointed out in the session summary, research on grade retention effectiveness has a long history (for reviews and meta-analyses, see Allen, Chen, Willson, & Hughes, 2009; Bright, 2011; Holmes, 1989; Holmes & Matthews, 1984; Jackson, 1975; Jimerson, 2001; Xia & Kirby, 2009). Many scholars have shown grade retention to have a negative effect on repeaters’ academic achievement and a positive effect on repeaters’ psychosocial functioning (Goos, Pipa, & Peixoto, 2020). Less is known about how these effects accumulate over time, and influence repeaters’ later school career (for exceptions, see Andrew, 2014; Eren et al., 2017; Fonseca et al., 2017; Geng & Rockoff, 2017; Hughes et al., 2017a, 2017b; Lorence, 2014; Mendez et al., 2015; Ou & Reynolds, 2010; Ozek, 2015; Schwerdt et al., 2017; Solis, 2018), especially outside the US. The aim of our study is to evaluate the effect of first-grade retention on repeaters’ school career until age 17, among Flemish students. We used data from a representative sample of 3,624 first-grade students (121 schools), whom were followed from kindergarten (school year 2002-2003) until age 17 (school year 2013-2014; SiBO research project; Maes, Ghesquière, Onghena, & Van Damme, 2002). Relevant here, are 3 outcomes available in this project: placement in special education, later grade retention, and track choice at age 17. Two-level logistic regression analyses were conducted in R 4.0.3 (package lme4), to analyze effects of retention in grade 1 on these three outcomes. In these regression analyses, inverse probability weighting was used (Olmos & Govindasamy, 2015; Pan & Bai, 2018), with weights based on students’ conditional propensity to be retained in first grade (Rosenbaum, 2002), controlling for 64 student characteristics, 11 class characteristics, and 13 school characteristics. Results indicate that, relative to comparable first-grade students not retained, first-grade repeaters have a lower chance of repeating another grade later on (b = -0.53, SE = 0.17, p < .001), but also have a higher chance of being placed in special education (b = 2.21, SE = 0.18, p < .001) and taking classes in the professionally-oriented track at age 17 (b = 2.26, SE = 0.16, p < .001). Apparently, very small negative effects on repeaters’ academic achievement (found with the same data as in this study; Goos, Van Damme, Onghena, Petry, & de Bilde, 2013) seem to accumulate with time, creating a negative ‘snowball effect’ on repeaters’ school career. Keeping in mind the costs grade retention brings about to our economy, we advocate our educational policymakers efforts to make available more resources for schools (a) to identify at an earlier stage those students at risk for developing school difficulties, by means of a more regular, careful monitoring of their students’ progress, (b) to provide all at-risk students with targeted remedial interventions that have been proven to be cost-effective, be it inside or outside the classroom, from the exact first moment difficulties arise, and (c) to pay considerable attention to repeaters and to give them all services needed, if it is decided to hold particular students back in grade, in their best interest, whatever the reason may be.

Author

• Mieke Goos, KU Leuven