Does Grade Retention Affect Achievement? Some Evidence from PISA

Document de Treball No. XREAP2011-19

50 Pages Posted: 20 Nov 2011

See all articles by J. Ignacio Garacia-Perez

J. Ignacio Garacia-Perez

Universidad Pablo de Olavide - Department of Economics

Maria Luisa Hidalgo-Hidalgo

Universidad de Alicante

Jose Antonio Robles

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Date Written: November 9, 2011

Abstract

Grade retention practices are at the forefront of the educational debate. In this paper, we use PISA 2009 data for Spain to measure the effect of grade retention on students' achievement. One important problem when analyzing this question is that school outcomes and the propensity to repeat a grade are likely to be determined simultaneously. We address this problem by estimating a Switching Regression Model. We …find that grade retention has a negative impact on educational outcomes, but we confi…rm the importance of endogenous selection, which makes observed differences between repeaters and non-repeaters appear 14.6% lower than they actually are. The effect on PISA scores of repeating is much smaller (-10% of non-repeaters' average) than the counterfactual reduction that non-repeaters would suffer had they been retained as repeaters (-24% of their average). Furthermore, those who repeated a grade during primary education suffered more than those who repeated a grade of secondary school, although the effect of repeating at both times is, as expected, much larger.

Keywords: Grade retention, educational scores, PISA

JEL Classification: D63, I28, J24

Suggested Citation

Garcia-Perez, J. Ignacio and Hidalgo-Hidalgo, Maria Luisa and Robles, Jose Antonio, Does Grade Retention Affect Achievement? Some Evidence from PISA (November 9, 2011). Document de Treball No. XREAP2011-19, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1962106 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1962106

J. Ignacio Garcia-Perez

Universidad Pablo de Olavide - Department of Economics ( email )

Ctra. Utrera, Km.1
Sevilla, Seville 41010
Spain

HOME PAGE: http://www.upo.es/econ/garcia/

Maria Luisa Hidalgo-Hidalgo (Contact Author)

Universidad de Alicante ( email )

Campus de San Vicente
Carretera San Vicente del Raspeig
San Vicente del Raspeig, Alicante 03690
Spain

Jose Antonio Robles

affiliation not provided to SSRN ( email )

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