Leave them kids alone! The effects of abolishing grade repetition: evidence from a nationwide reform

Francisco Cabrera-Hernandez

Education Economics, 2022, vol. 30, issue 4, 339-355

Abstract: This paper evaluates the impact on dropout rates of a policy change in Mexico that eliminates grade retention for all first to third-grade students, causing a sharp reduction in repetition rates. I use a 12-year panel of schools to exploit such variation and estimate Difference-in-Difference models showing an average decrease in dropout rates of 30%. However, this effect is concentrated in wealthier schools, suggesting that social promotion alone is not enough to offset the influence of socioeconomic factors on school attainment. Further evidence shows that eliminating the 'threat' of grade repetition did not reduce average students' performance in standardized tests.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09645292.2021.1978938 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:edecon:v:30:y:2022:i:4:p:339-355

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CEDE20

DOI: 10.1080/09645292.2021.1978938

Access Statistics for this article

Education Economics is currently edited by Caren Wareing and Steve Bradley

More articles in Education Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().