Study Finds Kindergarten Retention Harmful

Despite policymakers’ continuing pledges to end “social promotion,” a new national study suggests that, when it comes to kindergartners, schools do more harm than good by making struggling pupils repeat a grade.

“This confirms what we’ve known for some time from smaller-scale studies: that, by and large, retention is not a particularly helpful policy for kids,” said Robert C. Pianta, an expert on early-childhood education at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, who was not part of the study.

Published in the fall issue of the journal Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis , the report is based on extensive data collected on a nationally representative...