The effects of state policies, individual characteristics, family characteristics, and neighbourhood characteristics on grade repetition in the United States

Abstract

The study uses a multivariate approach to investigate the effects of state education policies on grade repetition. The policies are: Head Start expenditures, provision of public pre-school handicapped programs, current school expenditures per pupil, provision of special education services, and grade school entrance dates. The effects of these policies are contrasted with the magnitude and significance of individual, family, and neighborhood characteristics. After holding constant state fixed effects, the state-to-state variations in overall school expenditures, special education enrollments of 6–15 year olds, handicapped preschool enrollments, and Head Start allocations are not found to have a significant impact on whether a child repeats a grade. School entrance month has a very large and significant impact on individual students’ probability of having repeated a grade. This impact is due, almost entirely, to the relative age of the student. Thus, overall, variations in state policies are not found to have an impact on rates of school failure. In contrast, individual, family and neighborhood characteristics are all found to have large and significant effects on the probability that a child will repeat a grade.