Does Fresno Unified hold underachieving students back a grade? What the data says
Last fall semester, Fresno Unified teacher Alejandra Garcia-Diaz grew concerned about a chronically absent student who fell far behind his classmates.
The first-grader at Jackson Elementary lacked stable housing and missed hours of instructional time each day because he took two buses to commute to the school, Garcia-Diaz said.
“Two or three months ago, I assessed him to see where he’s at, and from those two months to now, he has made very little progress. I can see his potential to move more,” she said.
However, Garcia-Diaz never considered the possibility of requesting that he repeat first grade. In fact, she seldom sees students get held back unless it’s requested by a parent or there’s a severe academic issue.
While Fresno Unified does allow students to repeat a grade, district data obtained by The Fresno Bee through the California Public Records Act shows it’s a rare occurrence.
Fresno Unified approved a total of 1,099 student retention requests between the 2017-18 and 2023-24 school years, according to the data. Most of the retention requests were made by parents. More than 90% of the demotions occurred in elementary grades or earlier, including in preschools and child development centers, a contracted childcare service the school district provides.
For years, the Fresno Unified School District has struggled with high student absences and low academic achievement. Last year, 31.4% of the district’s 70,000 students were deemed chronically absent, meaning they missed 10% or more school days. Only 35% of students met grade-level standards in English and 25% in math, according to state data.
Fresno Unified’s academic performance has led some to speculate whether the district’s tendencies to promote underachieving students — many of whom have struggled since the 2020 pandemic school year — to the next grade level harms or helps them.
The answer is complicated.
“We have several board policies that identify who should be retained or who is at risk of being retained,” said Marie Williams, instructional superintendent at Fresno Unified.
According to the board policies, teachers should identify students from first to eighth grades who are at risk of failing to meet the minimum levels of proficiency as early as possible in the school year and provide intervention, such as weekend classes, summer learning and supplemental instruction.
If the student fails to reach the minimum standards, the policies say a meeting should be held for teachers, parents and school administrators to discuss the students’ available options. According to the district’s policies, grade retention doesn’t apply to high schoolers because the negative consequences it causes, especially in the socio-emotional aspects, outweigh the benefits to the teenagers.
Teachers could recommend that a student should repeat the grade, under Fresno Unified’s policy, though the decision can’t be finalized until educators meet with parents. The district records show that parents were more proactive in requesting that their children be held back.
“Each student is unique, and each request will be individually reviewed,” Fresno Unified says on its website. “Research summarized by the California Department of Education indicates that retention does not produce higher achievement and is one of the most powerful predictors of high school dropout.”
NaYoung Hwang, assistant professor at the University of New Hampshire, said retention rates have been declining over the past two decades because the stigma of retention might bring negative impact for students in the long term, especially since students from underserved communities have less access to learning resources, which makes them more vulnerable to being demoted.
“It’s kind of an idealism that everybody should learn, everybody has the opportunity, and we don’t want students to feel discouraged or hurt. It makes sense in a way,” she said. “But another thing that we should be very careful about is whether they are learning in the right way. Are we measuring what they’re learning and what support they need to address the issue?”
Hwang’s analysis of retention data from Florida and Indiana, where state laws mandate retention for third graders who are not meeting the literacy standard, showed that retention had a positive impact on elementary students for at least three years of retention.
“For those students who are not able to learn how to read by the end of third grade, they’re going to suffer dramatically in grades 4, 5, 6, and all over. It relates to math and other subjects, the student is going to struggle a lot academically,” she said. “We should stop lying to students that you’re going to be fine. No, when you reach the end of the third grade and you don’t know how to read, you’re going to have a problem in the long term.”
Hwang acknowledged, nevertheless, the existing research has not examined the long-term effects of stigma on students, and it’s difficult to measure what happens during the repeated year of learning.
“Are they really doing exactly the same thing one more time? It might be very different from one school district to another,” she said.
It’s also irresponsible to simply tell a student to repeat a year because they don’t meet the requirement, Hwang said. Retention is not an outcome; the key is to provide planned, structured, intensive support.
Williams, Fresno Unifiied’s instructional superintendent, said the district does not usually recommend retention because some kids who appear to be struggling may just be acclimating to the school environment and learning to socialize with their classmates, not necessarily falling behind academically.
Kindergarten is not mandatory in California. Some kids attend school for the first time in first grade, Williams said, although Fresno Unified offers a wide range of programs in preschool and transitional kindergarten.
Some parents also choose to keep their children in district-contracted child development centers, even if they are old enough to attend transitional kindergarten or kindergarten, which also contributes to the district’s retention data, said Maria Ceballos Tapia, Fresno Unified’s executive officer for early learning.
For older students, such as middle or high school students, socialization is a theme in their lives, Williams said. The district considers both the benefit of acquiring academic skills and the potential negative effect on the social-emotional dimension.
“They’re in the throes of adolescence. For a lot of students, engagement with their peers, being accepted in a social circle, those things really matter,” Williams said. “‘I’m with my seventh grade peers one year, then the next year, all my peers go to eighth grade, but I’m still in the seventh grade,’ what would that experience be like?”
In fall 2021, when students returned to school from the pandemic, a state bill, Assembly Bill 104, allowed for the voluntary retention of students who had received a grade of D, F, or No Pass in at least half of their coursework during the previous school year. Williams said the district didn’t find a great number of families who took advantage of that opportunity. She said students were eager to get back with their classmates.
Retention is a last resort, Williams said. Even for students who miss an inordinate amount of instructional time, the district doesn’t view absenteeism, alone, as a sufficient reason for demotion. Instead, Fresno Unified provides students with after-school programs and other intervention or remediation resources to help them catch up.
“It does not mean to take retention off the table, we just believe that there are other available resources to support the student as they progress through the year,” she said.
This story was originally published June 23, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
