10.17889/E110709V1
Jacob, Brian A.
Lefgren, Lars
Replication data for: The Effect of Grade Retention on High School Completion
ICPSR Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
2008
10.1257/app.1.3.33
10.1257/app.1.3.33
1
Low-achieving students in many school districts are retained in a
grade to allow them to gain the academic or social skills that teachers
believe are necessary to succeed academically. In this paper,
we use plausibly exogenous variation in retention generated by a
test-based promotion policy to assess the causal impact of grade
retention on high school completion. We find that retention among
younger students does not affect the likelihood of high school completion,
but that retaining low-achieving eighth grade students in
elementary school substantially increases the probability that these
students will drop out of high school. (JEL I21, J13)