The purpose of this book is to address some of the questions about retention raised in the first two chapters, using information from the Beginning School Study (BSS) for guidance. The BSS commenced in fall 1982, when members of the study group were just beginning first grade. Evaluating the consequences of retention is the book's primary objective, but along the way we also provide a risk factor profile of repeaters in the BSS, sketch the complex retention patterns that have framed the group's experience over the elementary and middle school years, and describe how retention intersects other aspects of “administrative sorting” during this time, including assignment to special education classes, ability group placements for instruction in reading, and curricular placements in middle school. The broader system of educational tracking within which retention is embedded typically is neglected in research on retention. This oversight is serious because retention is more often than not linked to these various placements and interventions in children's experience. If retention causes children to be placed in low reading groups and that placement is ignored, any effects of retention could just as well be effects of low group placement.

The BSS, which is ongoing still, was not designed specifically to study retention. Rather, as a long-term study of young children's academic and socioemotional development, it was undertaken to see what helps or hinders typical urban youth as they go through school.