The Retained in Grade report shows the counts and percentages of students who did not move with their class to the next grade level. This is a fall-to-fall snapshot, and does not reflect changes to grade placement after the fall collection period of the second school year.
Differences in student retention between grade levels, schools, districts and student groups can help identify where to focus efforts to improve student achievement.
Many factors can lead to a student repeating a grade. For example, when a student changes schools, the new school may have a different curriculum. The student may need more time to gain proficiency, like in Kindergarten Planned Retention. Or the student may have been in a rigorous Early/Middle College program that required an extra year.
The report is updated in late spring/early summer. See the Recently Posted Reports page for when the report was last updated.
Historical Changes
- Percentage values were added to this report beginning with SY 2013-14. “N/A” appears in the percentage columns prior to this year.
- Additionally, beginning with SY 2013-14, 0 values will appear for districts that reported 0 retained students for the year. Prior to that school year, Report Categories with 0 values do not appear in the data tables at all.
- Beginning with SY 2013-14, special populations counts are determined using the designation entered by the district in the year chosen in the report settings. Prior to this, the counts were determined if the designation was entered by the district in both the years being compared.
- For school years 2013-14 through 2019-20, Early/Middle College students are included as retained at any point they are reported in a 9-12 grade more than once.
- For school year 2020-21 and forward, Early/Middle College students are included as retained only when they are reported in the same 9-11 grade more than once, or in grade 12 more than twice to align with the MDE reporting policy.
Use the Location and Report Settings to select a location, school year and grade. Data can also be filtered by categories such as race/ethnicity, gender, economically disadvantaged, English learners, migrant, and students with disabilities.
Data view options include:
- Snapshot (a graph and table of the selected data)
- Trend (a graph and table showing changes over time)
See the MI School Data Quick Start Guide for the basics of navigating the site and customizing a report.
Location Options
Locations Setting options: Statewide, ISD, District and School
Logged-in Users
Users with secure access who are logged in can see unsuppressed numbers for the entities for which they have been specifically authorized.
CEPI collected the data used to compile this report using the Michigan Student Data System. For more information on the MSDS application and reporting rules, please see the MSDS Collection Details Manual on the CEPI website.
- Students appear in the data tables and charts for the district(s) that reported them in the MSDS. If a student is reported by two or more districts, they are counted once in each district. In other words, the report has not been deduplicated, and students can be counted more than once in the statewide, ISD or district totals.
- Students who were retained but were enrolled from outside of Michigan, from nonpublic school, or from home school in the previous school year are not included in the counts.
- The report only includes students who were identified as continuing (actively enrolled at the time of collection and expected to continue at the district) during the fall collection of the second school year
- Students retained in kindergarten are broken into Planned and Unplanned groups. The Unplanned group are students who repeated kindergarten. The Planned group are students who completed one year of Kindergarten through a Developmental Kindergarten program (also called Young 5s or Begindergarten), and who are now in their second year of that planned retention program.
- Students in Early/Middle College are participating in a five-year high school program designed to allow a pupil to earn a high school diploma and substantial college credit through an additional year of study. Most of the time, Early/Middle College Students are submitted into MSDS Grade 12 two years in a row in order to lengthen the expected graduation date to five years; however, any adjustment to any high school grade level is permissible while the student is participating in the program.
- For school years 2013-14 through 2019-20, Early/Middle College students are included as retained at any point they are reported in a 9-12 grade more than once.
- For school year 2020-21 and forward, Early/Middle College students are included as retained only when they are reported in the same 9-11 grade more than once, or in grade 12 more than twice to align with the MDE reporting policy.
If you have questions not addressed here or in the linked resources, please contact CEPI customer support at cepi@michigan.gov.
Disclosure Avoidance
To protect the privacy of individual students, CEPI applies data suppression rules to sensitive data when report settings would yield fewer than 10 students in a given group. Complementary groups may also be suppressed. In some cases, values less than 10 may be shown when there is no risk of identifying individual students. Secure users can log in to view unsuppressed data for their authorized location. Please see How CEPI Protects Education Data for more information.
Report Labels
See the glossary for additional terms and acronyms used on MI School Data.
