O impacto da repetência na proficiência escolar: uma análise longitudinal do desempenho de repetentes em 2002-2003

Abstract

The main purpose of the present work is to investigate the impact of grade retention over the students achievement. It discusses how efficient grade retention is to recover a low achievement student and how the relationship between proficiency and school flow works. After an analysis of the macro dynamics between approval and achievement based on the data provided by the IDEB 2005, we compare the scores of the students retained in their grade and the promoted ones. In order to do so, we use data from the research entitled Factors Associated to the Schooling Achievement (INEP/MEC) for the 7th and 8th grade in 2002 and 2003, respectively. We attempted a matching of the students based on the propensity score matching methodology, considering the causality inference issue in this kind of analysis. The results suggest a heterogeneous relationship between achievement and flow according to the school classification in the IDEB. The trade off between grade retention and flow is relatively weak among the most deficient schools. In those, it is possible to increase the approval rate without negative impacts over the students score. Regarding the effect of grade retention over the achievement of the retained, we show that the achievement gain of the retained is smaller in comparison with the promoted students achievement increase. After the repeated year, the achievement of the retained students is alike to the one of their new classmates and much smaller than the achievement of their old classmates that have been promoted.