Following Florida’s lead, about twenty states, including Ohio, have enacted laws that require schools to retain third graders who are struggling to read and provide intensive interventions that help them catch up. The basic idea is this: Students with serious reading deficiencies need more time and support to develop the literacy skills required for middle and high school–level work. But without a statewide requirement, there is no guarantee that schools will step in at this critical juncture and offer extra help. Instead, they’ll likely default to “social promotion,” a practice that passes students along even though they are poor readers.
Despite the commonsense nature of this approach, third grade retention policies have been hotly debated in Ohio. Critics often claim that retention harms students who have to repeat third grade. But the evidence to support this claim is thin—and growing flimsier by the day. In fact, we now have four rigorous analyses of states’ retention provisions that say exactly the opposite: Struggling students benefit when schools are required to retain and provide them with more support before promotion to fourth grade.
Let’s first recap the studies from three other states with third grade retention policies similar to Ohio. All of these analyses rely on a rigorous empirical method that allows for apples-to-apples comparisons of retained versus extremely similar non-retained pupils who just narrowly pass the promotional bar. This method provides strong causal evidence on the effect of retention (as opposed to social promotion).
- In Florida, retained students make significant achievement gains on state exams through middle school. In high school, they post higher GPAs and are less likely to need remedial coursework.
- In Indiana, retained students make significant achievement gains on state exams scores through seventh grade. No effect was found on attendance or discipline, perhaps alleviating concerns about behavioral impacts.
- In Mississippi, retained students make remarkable gains on state exams through sixth grade that are equivalent to approximately 40 percentile points above their non-retained peers.
What about Ohio? A new study, commissioned by Ohio Excels and conducted by professors at the Ohio Education Research Center at Ohio State, finds strikingly similar results. Starting in 2013–14, about 3 to 4 percent of Ohio third graders have been retained under the Third Grade Reading Guarantee.[1] Following the same methodology as the studies above, the Ohio analysis focuses on the first two cohorts of third graders who were subject to the guarantee policy and tracks their state exam results through seventh grade.
The positive effects of retention are substantial for students who repeated third grade. In fourth and fifth grade, retained students outperform their closely matched peers by approximately twenty to forty scaled-score points—equivalent to roughly one achievement level—on state math and reading exams. The academic gains for retained students persist and remain significant into sixth and seventh grade, though the size of the impact moderates to a ten- to twenty-point advantage. Much as good elementary schools are needed to fully capitalize on preschool, this suggests that some extra support remains important as retained pupils progress through higher grades. Overall, these results show that retention provides a big lift for thousands of Ohio’s struggling readers and helps put them on surer pathways in middle and high school.
Because literacy is so essential to lifelong success, elementary schools have no greater responsibility than ensuring that children can read fluently. Fortunately, state leaders have understood this. Former Governor Kasich recognized the importance of reading by grade three when he signed the Guarantee, saying, “Kids who make their way through social promotion beyond the third grade, when they get up to the eighth, ninth, tenth grade...they get lapped, the material becomes too difficult.” Last week, former U.S. congressman and president of the Ohio Business Roundtable Pat Tiberi said, “There's no more significant benchmark in education than ensuring that students are proficient readers before they leave elementary school.” Earlier this year, Governor Mike DeWine called fully educating students a “moral imperative” and noted that “the earlier a child is reading on grade level, the better that child will do in later grades—and in life.”
Ensuring children can read is indeed a moral imperative. There’s wisdom in giving struggling readers more time and support to strengthen their literacy skills, and research confirms it. It would be reckless for lawmakers to backtrack on retention, as some have proposed, especially as Ohio seeks to get even more serious about early literacy through its praiseworthy science of reading initiatives. Instead, they should stay the course on retention and make certain—truly “guarantee”—that all children read well before they enter fourth grade.
[1] The retention policy was suspended in 2019–20, 2020–21, and 2021–22. It is in effect this school year (2022–23).
