Does Encouraging Social Promotion Affect Educational Outcomes?

Contrary to the use of grade repetition to remediate unsatisfactory performance, some education systems instead adopt social promotion: the advancing of poor performing students to the next grade. What are the consequences of... [ view full abstract ]

Contrary to the use of grade repetition to remediate unsatisfactory performance, some education systems instead adopt social promotion: the advancing of poor performing students to the next grade. What are the consequences of this practice in terms of student academic achievement? In this paper, I explore this question in the context of a policy change in Colombia that limited the share of students that could fail a grade. In particular, this reform introduced a failure rate cap in which the number of failed students each year could not exceed 5% of the total school enrollment. After 8 years, the failure rate cap was removed and schools no longer had constraints on how many students they could fail. I exploit variation in the years of exposure across cohorts and the extent to which the cap was binding across schools to estimate the effect of this policy on student achievement in the exit exam at the end of high school. I find evidence of reductions in test scores for students that were younger when the reform was implemented.