This volume began by asking whether retention helps children, as intended, or harms them, as critics of the practice believe. In hindsight, the question seems too simplistic, as is the expectation that there will be a simple answer to it.

For measures of school performance and attitudes, retention for many BSS children has mainly positive consequences. Positive effects are clearest for one-time repeaters and children held back after first grade. The children not helped, multiple repeaters and first grade repeaters, have severe problems that predate their retention, and so the implications of less favorable results for them are clouded. First grade repeaters in particular are caught in a web of low-level track placements over their entire school career: most are assigned to special education, most are in low first grade reading groups, and their reading level is low all along the way. Further, when they get to middle school it is “more of the same” — they are assigned to low-level academic courses. These children's academic and adjustment difficulties predate their retention, overlap the time of their retention, and continue after their retention, as do their low-level track placements. Repeating a grade has not helped these children (at least over the long term) — that much seems clear — but can it really be said that retention is the source of their problems? Any such conclusion takes us out of the realm of evidence and into the realm of opinion, preconception, or worldview.