Having a Second Chance: The Consequences of Remedial Exams

Abstract

Despite the wide popularity of schooling remediation policies --including grade retention and summer schools-- there is still limited evidence on policies outside the US. In Brazil, by law, schools must give under-performing students the opportunity of a remedial exam, which aims to increase students' course grades to a level above promotional thresholds. Using data from schools in Rio de Janeiro, this paper assesses the effects of remediation placement on the subsequent academic development of promoted students. We exploit the course grade cutoff determining promotion or remediation in a fuzzy regression discontinuity design. We find that assigning low achievers to a remedial exam increases the subsequent performance among those promoted to the next grade. They attain higher marks on cognitive and noncognitive assessments measured in the year after remediation. Female students drive these findings. Heterogeneous results indicate that the effects from sitting for a remedial exam are driven by a wake-up call to increase effort, rather than from acquisition of new skills for the remedial exam.