The Big Lie of grade retention in the US is that it is often hidden within larger reading legislation and policy, notably since the 2010s:

Westall and Cummings, in fact, have recently found:

• Third grade retention (required by 22 states) significantly contributes to increases in early grade high-stakes assessment scores as part of comprehensive early literacy policy.
• Retention does not appear to drive similar increases in low-stakes assessments.
• No direct causal claim is made about the impact of retention since other policy and practices linked to retention may drive the increases.

However, their analysis concludes about grade retention as reading reform :

Similar to the results for states with comprehensive early literacy policies, states whose policies mandate third-grade retention see significant and persistent increases in high-stakes reading scores in all cohorts. The magnitude of these estimates is similar to that of the “any early literacy policy” estimates described in Section 4.1.1 above, suggesting that states with retention components essentially explain all the average effects of early literacy policies on high-stakes reading scores. By contrast, there is no consistent evidence that high-stakes reading scores increase in states without a retention component.

Therefore, one Big Lie about grade retention is that it allows misinformation and false advocacy for the recent “science of reading” reform across most states in the US.

To be blunt, grade retention is punitive, impacts disproportionately minoritized and marginalized students, and simply is not “reading” reform [1]:

Since grade retention in the early grades removes the lowest scoring students from populations being tested and reintroduces them biologically older when tested, the increased scores may likely be from these population manipulations and not from more effective instruction or increased student learning.

Evidence from the UK, for example, suggests that skills-based reading testing (phonics checks) that count as “reading” assessment strongly correlate with biological age (again suggesting that test scores may be about age and not instruction or learning):

Another Big Lie about grade retention is that reading reform advocates fail to acknowledge decades of evidence that grade retention mostly drives students dropping out of school and numerous negative emotional consequences for those students retained.

Consequently, NCTE has a resolution rejecting test-based grade retention:

Resolved, that the National Council of Teachers of English strongly oppose legislation mandating that children, in any grade level, who do not meet criteria in reading be retained.

And be it further resolved that NCTE strongly oppose the use of high-stakes test performance in reading as the criterion for student retention.

Grade retention, then, is an effective Big Lie of Education because it allows misinformation based in test-score increases to promote policy and practices that fail to increase test scores in sustained ways (see the dramatic drop in “success” for “high-flying” states such as Mississippi and Florida, both of which taut strong grade 4 reading scores, inflated by grade retention, but do not sustain those mirage gains by grade 8).

Grade retention is a Big Lie of education reform that punishes minoritized and marginalized students, inflates test scores, and fuels politicized education reform.

In short, don’t buy it.

Recommended

• The Effects of Early Literacy Policies on Student Achievement, John Westall and Amy Cummings
• The Politics of Reading Crisis: From the FL Model to the MS “Miracle” and the TN Disaster
• Disaster Reform and Shadow Reading Legislation: The Politics of Reading Crisis pt. 2 [UPDATED]
• Mississippi Miracle, Mirage, or Political Lie?: 2019 NAEP Reading Scores Prompt Questions, Not Answers [Update 4 July 2023]
• Test-Based Achievement Mirages: Florida Edition
• A Critical Examination of Grade Retention as Reading Policy (OEA)
• Grade Retention Advocacy Fails by Omission
• SOR Movement Maintains Conservative Assault on Teachers and Public Schools [Updated]

Note

[1] Consider that states retaining thousands of students each year, such as Mississippi, have not seen those retention numbers drop, suggesting that the “science of reading” reforms are simply not working but the retention continues to inflate scores.

The following data from Mississippi on reading proficiency and grade retention exposes that these claims are misleading or possibly false:

2014-2015 – 3064 (grade 3) – 12,224 K-3 retained/ 32.2% proficiency

2015-2016 – 2307 (grade 3) – 11,310 K-3 retained/ 32.3% proficiency

2016-2017 – 1505 (grade 3) – 9834 K-3 retained / 36.1 % proficiency

2017-2018 – 1285 (grade 3) – 8902 K-3 retained / 44.7% proficiency

2018-2019 – 3379 (grade 3) – 11,034 K-3 retained / 48.3% proficiency

2021-2022 – 2958 (grade 3) – 10,388 K-3 retained / 46.4% proficiency

2022-2023 – 2287 (grade 3) – 9,525 K-3 retained/ 51.6% proficiency

2023-2024 – 2033 (grade 3) – 9,121 K-3 retained/ 57.7% proficiency