For my younger siblings in elementary school back home, it’s that time of the year again – PSSA testing week. For those people who did not attend grade school in Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) is a statewide, standardized test. Given the modern emphasis on standardized testing in primary education, it seems that policy makers hold the high expectation that all students should meet these standards. The debate whether struggling students benefit more from repeating a grade or from moving ahead with their same-age peers, is one that has resurfaced in recent years in response to increasing pressures to improve school performance. At the elementary level, “young-for-grade” kindergarteners have been shown to experience a disproportionate risk of retention compared to their “old-for-grade” classmates.
Retention refers to the practice of requiring a student who has been in a given grade level for a full school year, to remain at that level for a subsequent school year. In the United States, approximately 10% of students from kindergarten to the eighth grade have been retained at least once. Also, the largest proportion of grade repeaters, making up 34.1% of the total population, was held back in either kindergarten or the first grade.
In the study, “Further Understanding Factors Associated With Grade Retention: Birthday Effects and Socio-Emotional Skills,” researchers sought to investigate factors associated with kindergarten retention. They also examined if socio-emotional skills, such as attentiveness, mediated the association of age on kindergarten retention. Investigators utilized multilevel logistic regression models to test whether certain positive and negative socio-emotional skills were related to the likelihood of grade repetition.
The study sample only included schools that had indicated their designated cutoff date by which students must turn five. Moreover, the study sample was composed only of first-time kindergarteners and excluded children who entered kindergarten at a young age or were held back. These strategies served to reduce the issue of selection bias.
Ultimately, researchers analyzed 7711 first-time kindergarteners that were enrolled on time in public schools that did not specifically prohibit students from being retained in kindergarten. By examining this specific subpopulation, researchers were still able to study a large majority of kindergarteners, while also ensuring less biased comparisons.
The independent variable that researchers examined was the relative age of the child at the time of kindergarten entry. This was computed using the schools designated cutoff date in comparison to the child’s birthdate. Also at the onset of the study, teachers and parents each rated students individually on a Social Rating Scale, which measured the frequency of occurrence of different types of behaviors using a scale of 1 (never), 2 (sometimes), 3 (often), and 4 (very often). They reported behavior including the following:
- Approaches to learning
- Self-control
- Interpersonal skills
- Externalizing problem behaviors
- Internalizing problem behaviors
Because this survey method was used, some response bias is inevitable. However, investigators attempted to control for this by excluding participants whose parent’s and teacher’s surveys expressed very dissimilar results.
Another confounding variable that potentially affected the results of the study is the nature of why children were retained. The information of whether teachers or parents initiated the retention process and their motivations for doing so were unknown. According to the study, “Teachers (and parents) may view retention in the early grades as helpful rather than punitive.” Their concern about their child repeating a later grade might cause them to choose to have it done with early on.
Lastly, despite the fact that a large, nationally representative sample dataset was used, the study is still observational in nature. Thus, it is not fully possible to draw clear causal inferences regarding socio-emotional skills, relative age, and retention from the results of this study. Nonetheless, the study yields the important conclusion that a disproportionate number of young-for-grade students were retained in kindergarten, compared to their relatively older peers.
Ultimately, the findings exemplify the potential need for a renewed emphasis on grade retention as an educational remedy for underachieving children. In order to help students reach their full academic potential, it is vital that educators address the academic, behavioral and mental health needs of children when not only recommending grade retention, but also when teaching in general. Perhaps further research on the success and failure rates of students in the years after their retention may provide a lens into the effectiveness of this practice.
Sources:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0193397313001081
http://www.nasponline.org/communications/spawareness/Grade%20Retention.pdf
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009081.pdf