The Impact of Grade Retention: A Developmental Approach

Texas A&M University, College Station TX

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Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Despite the prevalence of the grade retention in US schools, understanding of the effectiveness of this costly intervention is lacking due to methodological and conceptual limitations of extant research. A primary methodological limitation is a failure in most studies of retention effects to rule out that pre-existing vulnerabilities associated with selection into the retention intervention are responsible for results. Conceptually, studies fail to specify developmental processes by which retention would affect academic outcomes. Prospective, longitudinal studies spanning grades 1-12 are rare. The primary objective of the proposal is to continue to follow a sample of 569 ethnically and linguistically diverse students (206 Hispanic, 200 White, 140 African American, and 23 Other), who were recruited on the basis of academic risk when in first grade in 2000 or 2001 and are still active, to determine the effects of grade retention on students' graduation from high school and postsecondary educational and occupational attainment, and to investigate theoretically informed models of processes that mediate the impact of grade retention as well variables that moderate its success. Drawing from results obtained to date, retention in the elementary grades is expected to negatively impact students' psychological, cognitive, and behavioral engagement in middle school, which will impact achievement and school persistence in high school. A second objective is to clarify the role of social processes and classroom and school variables on achievement and educational attainment via the effect of social processes on students' educational motivation and aspirations. Thirdly, the study investigates the role of ethnicity, language, and culture as they relate to the first two specific aims in our sub-sample of Hispanic students. Propensity matching will be used to minimize selection effects into the retention group. The availability of extensive data from teachers, peers, schools, and parents as well as annual individual assessments of students' academic achievement and psychosocial functioning across students' public school experience permits testing complex models of growth in academic motivation and achievement across schooling, change across time in sources of influence on achievement, and short-term as well as long- term consequences of grade retention as well as peer, teacher, and family variables on educational outcomes. Research questions are translated into testable hypothesized models and presented in path diagrams. The corresponding statistical powers of the hypothesized models are then estimated procedures that address both latent and observed variables as well as the multilevel nature of our data simultaneously.