Repetition of retention practices: Does retention improve academic achievement?

In 1996, the Chicago Board of Education adopted a new promotion policy to address the issue of low academic achievement and to hold schools accountable for the progress of its students. This policy led to many students being retained in grade, some are retained multiple times. Retention was supposed to offer remediation and bring students up to grade level criteria. This has not happened. Thus, the major purpose of this study was to determine if retention had a statistically significant effect on the reading and mathematics achievement scores of third grade students as measured by the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Additionally, the study explored the effects of retention on gender and differences in achievement for reading and mathematics after each year of retention. The results of the ANOVA showed a statistically significant difference in the Iowa Test of Basic Skills scores for reading and mathematics after one- and two-years of retention. These differences were in direct contrast to the expected outcomes. The one-sample t-test compared the mean scores of students to the Iowa Test of Basic Skills grade level criteria of 3.8. The results showed a statistically significantly difference between the mean score of the students and the grade level criteria of 3.8. The calculation of achievement gains for each student indicated that the majority of this sample did not reach the grade level criteria of 3.8 as measured by the Iowa Test of Basic Skills