Few education interventions are more controversial than retention mandates, which require students to demonstrate minimal academic competence before moving on to the next grade. They are also some of the most well-studied, with a large body of research from a number of states—including Ohio—showing positive effects among students facing retention that persist for many years.

Now a new Ohio study led by American University professor (and former Fordham intern) Sarah Souders demonstrates that the benefits of retention requirements are even broader than previous research has suggested. It also points to an entirely different set of mechanisms through which these mandates boost student achievement, challenging narratives long embraced by both proponents and critics.

Ohio lawmakers dramatically watered down the state’s prior retention requirement in 2023. The evidence in the new study comes from the years just before this legislative change, and it starkly illustrates why weakening the retention mandate will have a significant negative impact on many more students than legislators may have anticipated at the time. The findings from the study provide compelling reasons to revisit that decision and illustrate how broader attacks on school accountability fundamentally misunderstand why high standards are necessary to ensure that all students can realize the full benefits of their academic potential.

Evidence from Ohio’s natural experiment

Until now, almost all of the research about grade retention has focused on the students most directly impacted by these requirements—those who were actually held back. These studies took advantage of discontinuities in test scores, comparing outcomes of students who barely scored high enough to avoid being retained to those of students who barely fell short of the promotion threshold.

Although this research pointed to positive effects, at least for short- and medium-term outcomes like test scores, one major limitation is that it could not tell us why retention mandates seemed to benefit students. Did spending an extra year relearning and strengthening core skills in lower elementary grades help weaker students perform better when they confronted more advanced material? Or did low scores on the tests used to make retention decisions unlock access to a variety of intensive support services and interventions available only to at-risk students—with these additional supports (rather than retention) producing improvements in subsequent achievement? Consistent with the second view, recent evidence from Michigan, which showed gains among students identified for retention but not ultimately retained, strongly suggested that the apparent benefits long attributed to students repeating a grade were actually not due to an extra year of instruction.

Repeating a grade and receiving additional interventions represent two possible mechanisms through which retention laws could boost student achievement. The new study points to yet a third possibility: The threat of retention is enough to produce significant gains. Since many more students face such a threat than ultimately end up getting retained, this means that many more students benefit from retention mandates than previously thought.

The main contribution of the new study is to convincingly separate the threat effect from the consequences of actual retention. It does so in an ingenious way, by taking advantage of a natural experiment built into Ohio’s standardized testing schedule.

Ohio students take the state English language arts assessment at least twice in third grade—in the fall and spring. Since a student’s highest score on these assessments was used to determine whether they were ultimately retained, researchers focused on students after the first round of tests in the fall. Specifically, they compared students who scored well enough to move on to fourth grade (regardless of how much they learned during the remainder of the school year) to students who had fallen just short of the promotion bar on their fall test and so continued to face the threat of retention.

Students facing the threat scored significantly better at the end of the year than those who performed just well enough in the fall to avoid the threat of retention—not only in language arts but also in math. And these positive effects, although fading modestly over time, remained significant through at least seventh grade.

Importantly, these benefits were not limited to the “bubble students” near the promotion threshold. The study showed gains in performance across the board after the adoption of the retention mandate.

Although the positive effects of facing a retention threat are smaller than found in prior studies focused on actual retention,[1] these estimates are almost certainly a lower bound of the full benefits created by accountability pressures. Under Ohio’s early literacy framework, students at risk of retention are identified starting in kindergarten, and school districts face a strong incentive to focus on improvement all through lower elementary grades. The new study captures only the additional threat that students face in third grade based on their performance on that year’s fall exam, not the cumulative benefits that begin in kindergarten.

Retention improves outcomes by changing adult behavior

Although much of the debate about retention laws has focused on impacts on students, the new evidence suggests that benefits come primarily from changing the behavior of two sets of adults—parents and educators.

Ohio’s original Third Grade Reading Guarantee required school districts to notify parents that their child faced the possibility of getting retained. These notifications almost certainly came as a shock to many parents. Recent surveys show that 90 percent of parents believe their children are performing at or above grade level, far higher than the proficiency rates recorded on state assessments. Learning that their child was struggling appears to have caused parents to increase their own effort, as demonstrated by improved school attendance levels in the new study. (Parents likely played a role in these improvements since third graders can’t drive themselves to school.)

The current, watered-down system still requires some parental notification, although it’s unclear whether information alone is sufficient to induce parental involvement without a credible retention threat.

Making parents take child’s academic struggles seriously has always been a struggle in public education. When districts proposed extending the school year to make up for time lost during pandemic-era school closures, many parents pushed back, upset about the possibility of having to reschedule long-planned vacations. Attendance at optional summer school and after-school tutoring is woeful, with students who most desperately need these interventions least likely to take advantage of them. When it comes to getting parents to take responsibility for their student’s learning, the real possibility that their child will be held back seems to accomplish what nagging, lecturing, and pleading cannot.

The evidence that the retention threat changes the behavior of teachers and schools is similarly indirect, but at least as powerful. First, the positive effects of the retention threat are largest for the subset of students whose performance most influences state report card ratings—those who were previously identified as not being on track to pass the third-grade reading test. Second, low performance on the fall state assessment causes schools to significantly increase the reading interventions they provide at the beginning of third grade to students at risk of retention. Such additional investments of time and effort not only improve reading but also appear to boost math scores. And third, the benefits of the retention threat are largest in schools with the most at-risk students, clearly showing that these schools are capable of improving performance through systemic changes without becoming overwhelmed.

The changes made to Ohio’s retention law several years ago dramatically weaken the incentives for both groups of adults. Parents must now choose to have their child retained—and schools hoping to avoid the hard work of helping these students can persuade parents that doing so is a terrible idea. The new system guts the threat effects, transforming the previous mandate with teeth into an opt-in program no different from the ones that have routinely failed to reach struggling students.

Rethinking accountability

Critics of retention laws have long complained that they disproportionately affect lower-income and minority students. The new research turns this argument on its head. Since few students are actually ever retained (even with a strict mandate), the law’s greatest impact is through the threat mechanism—which also disproportionately benefits the same disadvantaged student subgroups, including many who are successfully promoted by meeting state reading standards.

In the new study, for example, fewer than 2 percent of students whose fall third-grade score put them right above or below the promotion threshold were ultimately retained. But all of them faced the threat at some point, benefiting from the additional attention and investment from adults this set in motion.

This point is particularly important for contextualizing other recent research showing long-term negative impacts of retention on adult earnings and criminal justice involvement. Although these effects are potentially overstated—for technical statistical reasons—we should take even modest harms for retained students seriously. But we must also balance these harms with the positive effects generated by the retention threat that accrue to many more students.

Indeed, the findings from the Ohio study have a clear policy lesson: The ideal accountability system sets high standards and creates strong enough incentives for both students and adults to ensure that all students ultimately clear the bar, without having to suffer the consequences of retention.

Ohio’s original retention law wasn’t perfect, but it went a long way toward accomplishing these goals. It’s a shame lawmakers gutted it before the true evidence on the scale of its success became available.

Vladimir Kogan is a senior research fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a professor of political science at the Ohio State University. He is the author of the 2025 book No Adult Left Behind: How Politics Hijacks Education Policy and Hurts Kids (Cambridge University Press).