#893: When to hold kids back, with Umut Özek and Louis Mariano

Umut Özek Louis T. Mariano Michael J. Petrilli Amber M. Northern, Ph.D. David Griffith

10.25.2023

On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Umut Özek and Louis Mariano, researchers at the Rand Corporation, join Mike to discuss whether grade retention helps or harms students. Then, on the Research Minute, Amber reports on a new study that examines if cash payouts can improve student attendance.

Recommended content:

“Think Again: Is grade retention bad for Kids?” —Umut Özek and Louis Mariano, The Thomas B. Fordham Institute
“Retaining struggling readers in third grade sounds good–but it’s too little, too late, too often” —Kalman R. Hettleman, The Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Damien de Walque and Christine Valente, “Incentivizing school attendance in the presence of parent-child information frictions,” American Economic Journal (August 2023).

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Policy Priority:

Standards & Accountability

Topics:

Umut Özek, Ph.D., is a senior economist at the RAND Corporation who focuses on education. His recent research interests include immigrant students and English learners, implementation and consequences of educational accountability, K–12 remediation policies and their effects, and the design and effects of school-choice programs.

Louis T. Mariano, Ph.D., is a senior statistician at RAND whose education research has focused on evaluation of the efficacy of education programs, policies, and reforms, experimental and quasiexperimental design methodology, and statistical applications to mental measurement, including student assessment.

President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Michael J. Petrilli is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, executive editor of Education Next, editor in chief of the…

Amber Northern is senior vice president for research at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, where she supervises the Institute’s robust research portfolio and…

David Griffith is Associate Director of Research at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, where he manages or authors reports on various subjects including charter schools, …