On the Success of Failure : A Reassessment of the Effects of Retention in the Primary School Grades

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Summary: On the Success of Failure Synopsis
Review: This book is about the practice of grade retention in elementary school, a particularly vexing problem in urban school systems, where more than half of the students may repeat a grade. On the Success of Failure addresses the question of whether repeating a grade is helpful or harmful when children are not keeping up. It describes the school context of retention and evaluates its consequences by tracking the experiences of a large, representative sample of Baltimore school children from first grade through middle school. In addition to evaluating retention's consequences, the book describes the peers' dispersion along many different educational pathways over this eight year period, retention's relation to other forms of educational tracking (such as reading group placements in the early primary grades and course level assignments in middle school), and repeaters' academic and school adjustment problems before they were held back. Focusing on the experience of first, second and third grade repeaters, the volume finds largely positive effects for retention.