This paper investigates the issue of social promotion and grade repetition. The first section of the literature review examines research from the past 30 to 40 years which looks at the negative and positive effects of grade repetition. Next, recent studies are examined from the late twentieth and the twenty-first century which questions the methodology used in the past investigations and the results which their reports show. When recent studies are compared to past studies, researchers discover contradictory findings in the effects that grade repetition has on students when they are retained. In the next section, the author discusses how retention isn't for all struggling students and suggests a method that may benefit the few students that should be retained in order to achieve academic success. A bibliography is included.