An Investigation of the Relationship Between Retention in First Grade and Performance on High Stakes Tests in Third Grade

The association between grade retention in first grade and passing the third grade state accountability tests, the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) reading and math, was investigated in a sample of 769 students who were recruited into the study when they were in first grade. Of these 769 students, 165 were retained in first grade and 604 were promoted. Using propensity matching, we created five imputed datasets (average N = 321) in which promoted and retained students were matched on 67 comprehensive covariates. Using GEE models, we obtained the association between retention and passing the third grade TAKS reading and math tests. The positive association between retention and math scores was significant, whereas the association was marginally significant for reading scores.