Is the cure worse than the disease? A longitudinal study on the effect of grade retention in secondary education on achievement and academic self-concept

Abstract

Holding students back when they do not meet a specific attainment level is common practice in a lot of countries. However, this practice is not without controversy and recent studies point at the negative effects of grade retention, especially in the long-term. The majority of these studies focused on grade retention in primary education. In our study, we focused on the effect of grade retention in Grade 8 on language achievement and academic self-concept. We matched students who were and were not retained based on their propensity to be retained and compared both groups using a growth curve analysis. The basic treatment “grade retention vs. promotion” was extended with the certificate these students received at the end of Grade 8. With this growth curve analysis, we were able to draw conclusions on the effect in the short-term, as well as in the long-term. In the short-term (i.e. the year of retention), it seems that grade retention had no negative effect on language achievement in the short-term, and even a positive effect on academic self-concept in the year of retention. The effects became more negative when we considered effects in the long-term. Especially for language achievement, we found a strong decline in the achievement of grade retainees. We found no negative effect of grade retention on academic self-concept. We can conclude that grade retention has a negative effect on the achievement of retained students in the long run, but has no negative effect on academic self-concept. When we take into account the certificate they received, it seems that following the teacher’s advice to change track is a better decision than repeating the grade in the same track.

Keywords:

• grade retention
• propensity score matching
• growth curve analysis

Notes

1. For a full overview of the educational system in Flanders, we refer to 391–392 of Van Damme et al. (2002).

2. For reasons of clarity, we did not include all variables used in the PS. This would result in a very large table. These data is available from the first author, upon request.

3. Ideally, we would include a mathematics score as another indicator of achievement. In the LOSO study, mathematics was, comparable to the language achievement tests, tested several times in different grades. However, the IRT-analyses yielded no satisfactory result, and a scale suitable for longitudinal research could not be constructed. Therefore, we decided not to implement the mathematics scale (see also De Fraine 2003).