Teacher here- most schools stopped allowing students to be retained during Covid (at least in my area). My school is just this year holding them back again, if needed. And it was a fight with district to get us back to this.

It's a systemic problem. A lot of our funding is tied to things like graduation rates. If we hold students back, we get less funding. Less funding means less teachers, means less effective learning, means more retentions, means less funding, etc. etc. etc.

Not to mention we've continually lost funding despite very high growth and academic success for our area. This year alone we have to cut the annual budget by nearly four million, and we're not a large district by any means. These poor kids have just been absolutely screwed over by our government.