Importantly, Mississippi paired promotion decisions — whether retention or exemption — with structured, mandatory resources. Even students promoted via exemptions were required to have individualized reading plans, summer literacy programs and ongoing intervention. Survey and administrative evidence suggest that these promoted-but-still-supported students made meaningful reading gains, underscoring that the policy’s effectiveness hinged on the intensity of services, not simply on whether students were retained.
Survey evidence suggests that literacy gains were driven in part by the supplemental assistance provided to low-achieving students who were promoted via exemptions. By contrast, evidence from Florida shows that retained students outperformed exempted students in reading two years later, indicating that exemptions were not consistently granted to those who would benefit most from promotion.