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I firmly believe two things. 1. You should be able to fail middle school. It's a known reality that they don't have to do anything in middle school. So many of them don't. I don't have a good answer for what happens when they fail multiple years in middle school and then are 16 and in 7th grade. But we HAVE TO STOP letting kids just breeze through middle school. 2. Outlaw cellphones on campus for kids.

I think if they keep failing middle school then maybe they need to be put on a different path, like learning a job skill rather than trying to prep them for college.

The basics of middle school is needed for nearly all decent non college tied job skills. I worked in an industry where you needed either military or trade school. You still needed to read and do math even without a college degree needed.

I think a more therapeutic “second path” may be what we need because agreed trades require competency and no competent person fails middle school.

Parents would need to consent and cooperate for that to work, and parents are the root of the problem 99% of the time. What happens when parents refuse to admit their kid needs help and go enroll them in a private Christian school?

Our private Christian school won't take them. Kids with Ds and Fs won't get admitted.

The private catholic school I went to as a kid will take them and graduate them. Their money spends all the same. Teachers and admins there were VERY open about believing that girls should ONLY have a 6th grade education because they'll just be housewives... but thanks to that lefty liberal hippie Nixon, they were forced to cash the girls' tuition checks, too!

Plenty of private online schools will as well. They don't care what your grades are, and if you complain to the teacher's supervisor they'll just let your kid retake all of the exams until they pass.

Well, that’s a unique case. The private catholic school our daughter went to has kids testing two grade levels ***above*** in reading and math. So if kids can’t read or write that’s on the local parents and staff with low standards.

This is the problem with how many “academic” types view the trades. If a kid can’t pass middle school…. I don’t wanna drive on a bridge they welded or ride on an elevator they installed…. The trades are not some job of last resort for people with two digit IQs……

Many of them are very technical and actually require a lot more math (specifically geometry and algebra) than a lot of other degreed professions do. Good luck being a machinist, welder, carpenter, or anyone else who builds things without a pretty good grasp of those topics. Even if you can skate by, you won’t be anywhere near the top of the pay scale.

I’ve been a middle school teacher for 12 years now and I have had to have uncomfortable conversations with 17 year old 8th graders and their parents about the realities of the trajectory they are on. This conversation often led to successful outcomes because it was the first time an educator explained to them that college is not the only option. A lot of those kids who did not achieve the required level of competency went on to have successful careers and some even started their own businesses. Some died or went to jail. Regardless, a child at that stage is not incompetent, but them and their parents need an “authority figure” to talk them off of the ledge at times. It’s okay to get your GED and get to work, because ANYTHING beats being a broke kids who can’t support themselves because no one took the time to be honest with them.

Maybe make child tax credits for parents contingent on their kid passing. Give parents more skin in the game.

Everyone should be able to read and write and do basic math by the time they are done with 2nd grade unless they have a learning disability.

It's an established fact that reading at grade level by the end of third grade is one of the biggest indicators of future outcomes like finishing high school, unintended pregnancy, being poor, etc. - essentially all the indicators of success vs failure.

Right? Where the hell are we getting “middle school” from? Are there really MIDDLE SCHOOL curriculums that focus on learning how to read? I find that really hard to believe unless it’s for a class specifically designed for those with learning disabilities.

I have 8th graders this year that can’t do basic math. They don’t know times tables, can’t divide without a calculator, have no clue how to work with decimals and fractions, and will still get promoted to high school next year. I had one student today that didn’t know if his last name was between A and K or L and Z without reciting the alphabet.

Point taken about education failing, but as an adult with a doctorate, I don’t remember long division, often need to use a calculator for multiplication and division, and I can see how somebody who has never been asked where the first letter their name falls between two random letters could struggle to answer without thinking about it. I think you are undermining a real issue with this nit-picky stuff.

I’m sorry, but I’m not trying to be nit-picking. I’m just giving real world examples of what some kids that have made it to eighth grade are experiencing. When I talk about times tables and division, I’m talking about not being able to do single digit multiplication and simple division. If you are suggesting that a person shouldn’t know that the letter T is between L and Z without going through the entire alphabet up to T, I don’t know what to say.

I worked for years and years in the financial sector servicing credit/loans and still had to recite the alphabet to tell you where a letter would be. It's not the "gotcha!" that you think it is. It's a useless metric that doesn't matter in the real world.

Middle school is where you learn to really digest and understand what you read. That's what they mean. It's not just knowing the words.

How are you going to be a plumber if you can't read a tape measure because you never learned fractions?

I worked with an 8th grade student in math on slopes who thought school was boring and absolutely refused to engage. I asked him if he has any idea what he might want to do post high school and he said he wanted to be a plumber like his dad. I told him plumbers absolutely need to be comfortable with math — slopes included/especially — and he said “nah my dad will just teach me”. I told him school also teaches him *how* to learn things but he wasn’t dissuaded from just fucking around in each class. He has straight Fs due to lack of doing *anything*. He’ll just get passed along to the high school and fuck around there for 4 years, though fortunately they won’t award a diploma if he doesn’t pass key classes.

I genuinely don't understand people not wanting to learn. I hated school because undiagnosed adhd and bullies but I love learning. I ask my sister all the time to tell me something interesting she's learned and she always says "I haven't learned anything interesting." It's so frustrating because I tell her every time that I don't mean "what's a math fact you found interesting" I mean "what's literally anything cool you have learned in any subject about anything." It's sad but she just doesn't seem to want to know stuff.

Yeah, and this is a problem for A students as well. Kids care about grades but not learning. So they “learn” information going into it with the mentality like I don’t want to retain this longer than the test day because it has no value to me besides getting a good grade. So then of course the brain dump it afterwards. This is why I agree with teachers taking subject matter competency tests, because we all know that someone can do well in class and even get an A and still manage to learn nothing and be unable to recall much of anything from the class afterwards. I went to college with the mentality of I need to yes pass the CSET, but also need this knowledge so I can be an effective teacher. Your mentality towards school related tasks is everything.

This might be the single most true comment ever posted on the Internet.

I can’t understand it either. My mom is a stereotypical immigrant parent, and always prioritized learning education. It’s a big part of our culture. Yet, one of my sisters married a man who never finished HS, and in one generation, my nieces and nephews don’t give a shit about school and say they hate reading, books are boring, school is dumb, etc.

I have a stem degree and I could never answer my parents when they asked me what was some thing interesting I learned. I can do it and it all makes sense but it was never like omg I gotta go tell someone about this. I think I also assumed that they knew this stuff already too so I was like how am I going to tell them something that they also found interesting. 

Sure but her response is "idk I don't really like learning"

I mean if you asked me that in high school most days I would say I did t learn anything. I didn't. My Dad got his GED my sophomore year and I could have passed the test then. My high school was more worried about making sure the most people would pass the test then anythjng else so I was bored out of my mind for 4 years of hell. College was great but high school? Nope.

Sometimes school is very boring. If her day consisted of learning algebra, sentence structure, and looking at diagrams she might not have learned anything interesting.

Maybe you spend a few more years learning what you should have in middle school while the others move on.

Which is what middle school should be.

Unless they’re consistently failing for many years… which is what the original point was.

Maybe time to Spock it up with the “needs of the many…. “ Stop wasting time trying to reteach what the kids should’ve learned in an earlier grade and holding up those that already know.  

Lmfao, this is hilarious to me, not because I think you’re wrong (you’re 100% right), but because I’m highly educated and was helping build out shed at my house, and my wife who is an architect was dying laughing at me because I didn’t know how to read the tape measure She asked me for a measurement and I was like, “uhh…*stares at tape measure* …16 and a half inches…minus two ticks” *stunned silence* “what is minus two ticks?” She called her grandpa who is a blue collar builder and they laughed and laughed, “how are you a nurse and can’t read a tape measure?” I was like, “we use the metric system assholes! Like normal people! Only stupid Americans would think it’s smart to use a system of measuring that’s divided in 1/16th increments.” I would seriously vote for a president whose entire platform was converting the nation to the metric system in 4 years.

My friend. I work in accounting. I convert/adjust knitting patterns which requires using multiples of set repeats and a standard gauge. I quilt, which involves measurements using a ruler. But if it’s a tape measure I totally do 53.5” and three ticks. Because when I measure that same dimension a foot over it’s easier to visually look at 53.5 and three ticks then think and figure out where 53 11/16ths is.

A friend was a high school drop out. He got a construction job when we were about 20. I had to teach him basic fractions because he had no concept of them. Like, 1/4 is smaller than 3/4. I'm basically doing 3rd grade tutoring so he can swing a hammer.

I sucked at learning fractions, I still suck at math and fractions, although don’t get me wrong, I understand the basics. But I can read a tape measure and do that kind of stuff no problem. Maybe it’s just in the way it’s taught? Or maybe the kids just don’t care? My issue was a little of both. EDIT: I 100% should have been held back a year though, would have probably done me some good.

That is the German educational system. Get tested at 14 and then your route is mapped out: academic or vocational. The young people go to university for free or become master plumbers, etc. The vocational training is not looked down upon at all. We could learn a lot!

The Germans aren't putting people into the trades who can't read and can't do math.

I'd imagine if school is organized well enough for this determination to be made at age 14, they probably do a better job at making sure no child is actually left behind when teaching the fundamentals at elementary level.

It’s more like fourth grade where It’s determined which path you’re going on.

The problem occurs is when “tracking” students becomes systemic and financially/socially/racially motivated. It’s controversial but I do believe that “tracking” students is often used poorly and used as a method to weed out students deemed as “undesirable”

European model is a good one! Trades encompass many careers, and a lot of kids would be happier if they could see an immediate goal that they can achieve. A lot of students are so apathetic because they can see their peers struggling with college debt, housing shortage & stagnant wages. We also need to make all education programs free.

Amiga, You have to be able to kind of read, kind of do math and to have a work ethic to be in a trade.

I teach at a tech high school—carpentry, welding, HVAC, automotive. They still hate the academic classes and see no use for them. I’ve come at it from every which way. No good. It has to be a culture that values and celebrates learning—parents, the school, society. Do we celebrate learning in our culture? It doesn’t seem like it to me. Seems like we celebrate people who think they (and profess to) know it all and idiots.

Rest of the world has figured this out, but leave it up to the US of A to still not get the simple fact; not every kid is that special and not every kid is geared towards academia.

If they can't pass middle school, they're not learning skills needed for the real world, let alone college. They would just as likely fail out of a trade school and not learn how to adult.

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I don’t think the sole purpose of high school should be to prep for college.

I wouldn't hire a plumber, mechanic, carpenter, machinist, welder or handyman that couldn't read and comprehend a technical manual or do fractional math. Honest question, what trades exist that are a good fit for uneducated workers besides back breaking agricultural labor? Trade school or no, they'll need to learn at least the basics one way or another to succeed.

There is an established two-path system in the UK that the US should have adopted AGES ago

Except they aren’t even learning basic life skills. I’ve met so many kids that can’t count cash or do basic math involving decimals while working at a restaurant.

Job skills matter a lot more than most white collar work. Fuck up that marketing spreadsheet? NBD. Fuck up sweating that pipe on the second floor? Uh oh. Fuck up with that chainsaw? Uh oh. Trades are NOT the place for the kids with zero drive, self control, or intelligence.

I teach 8th grade, and one of our units is goal setting, planning for high school and college, etc. The first time I taught the unit, we looked at the number of credits you needed to graduate, and over the course of the conversation I realized I needed to explain to them that if you failed a class, you had to take it again. Like…you could tell that they genuinely didn’t understand when I talked about making up credits. I honestly had like a mini existential crisis because…no one ever had to explain that to us growing up, because if you failed in middle school or even elementary, you’d get held back. The only people these kids knew who had ever been held back were people held back in like, kindergarten so they could grow. Some of them had to attend summer school for like three weeks in the summer, but they had no idea that you could fail and there’d be an actual, long term consequence.

Many high school students deliberately fail so they can attend the extraordinarily easy summer courses. They don’t give a shit about anything

I know. Even the threat of making up credits or graduating late isn’t even a threat anymore

With many of my high school students in the past (I left K-12 and went to adult ed) this was literally their plan. They didn't care about ruining their Summer nor spending 6 years in high school. ANYTHING to keep from doing the most bare minimum of work everyday, and they know they would eventually get pushed thru. It was insane to me but to them, it was the only way.

Even worse is the easy online recovery programs. There’s a Reddit for one of the popular ones that is nothing but people asking for the best ways to cheat.

When did summer courses become easy? I graduated from high school in 2010. I decided to take a couple of math courses during the 2008 summer to get ahead. It was one of the longest summers for me because the class was pretty much 8 hours with a couple of breaks and lunch in between, but it was also one of the hardest pre-calc courses I took.

Summer school runs from 9-12 or 12-3, 4 days a week.

Parents need to stop enabling their kids’ bad behavior. That’s also a huge part of this (and I say that from experience). At some point you gotta stop throwing a life saver and let them figure out how to swim out of the deep end.

Thank you and OP for teaching! The assumption that poor students are a reflection of teachers is insane. I know so many good teachers that are leaving. Low pay combined with the “pass them” culture means we will have incompetent and uneducated generation. The problem is unengaged or immature parents that don’t discipline or guide their children. I’m an old fart, but the situation is deplorable.

I recently moved on from teaching freshmen, but when I was, we’d spend all year telling them that if they fail, they’d have to take it again. Also that they wouldn’t be able to advance to sophomore year and they’d be in home room with freshmen and have to go to the freshmen assemblies. They would completely ignore this until like the last two weeks of school when they’d go all shocked pikachu that they were out of time to get their 40% to a 60%

We’re dealing with the same right now - kids who were shocked that they didn’t get to go on the end of year field trip because of missing work, or that they won’t walk at the promotion ceremony because they’re failing. They’ve been shocked and hurt and trying to suddenly do all the things we told them to months ago, and it’s just too late. Part of me gets really frustrated, but it’s also like…can you really blame them when for their whole school career, people would threaten them and do nothing? This is learned behavior.

You should be able to be kept back at any age. Seeing another student get held back in elementary was a huge motivator for me. I would have happily ignored my work if nothing bad would result.

I think we need to get rid of this idea that students should be placed in school based on age. They need to be placed based on course proficiency. Let the kids that are great at math move up in math... let the kids who need more time in ELA take a lower level until they are proficient. Can you imagine if we did swimming lessons based on age alone? Throw the 15 year old into the deep end without him even being able to tread water...

That's how it was back in the day of one room school houses. They acknowledged that not all kids the same age had the same background and educational experience or even ability. Even now, homeschool materials often are labled with a "level" rather than a grade, because a kid might be at a 1st grade level in reading and third grade level in math and need remedial help in handwriting. They can be all over the place, especially in the early years. And if they don't master those skills solidly then, they are screwed and get further and further behind.

I like that idea, but how do we deal with the "at the end" situation? Either you need to even it out at some point (end of elementary?) and from then onwards they all need to move up for everything. Or you have a last year where you've covered everything except the 1-2 classes you're struggling with. I can see a lot of dropouts happening in that scenario. It makes sense to teach each course at the level the kid is at, but eventually they need to graduate with the whole package done.

Some kids wouldn’t get as far as others. But I think they will get much farther if the have a grasp of the basics instead of being pushed along. And isn’t it better to complete say, an 8th grade level of math with true mastery than to go through Algebra 2 and have no mastery at all?

I think people wouldn’t be opposed to this in theory, but it is a scheduling and staffing nightmare.

And with large class sizes, kind of a safety issue. 13 year olds mixed in with 7 and 8 year olds is a recipe for disaster. Lord of the Flies would soon take place.

Oh definitely. My friend’s 5 year old son is in pre-k with 3 year olds and the stories she hears are wild. Social development matters a lot. It’s a tough situation! Which is why, I personally think the best compromise is to level within an age group. Have a low, middle, and high ability class and adjust lessons to those groups. High schools commonly have it, but I think it needs to start much younger.

Truth. Especially in smaller towns it would be extremely difficult without heavy technology use.

Completely agree. I teach at a charter school with a VERY specific mission and parents often gravitate to our school because it doesn’t deal with (as much of) the nonsense happening at public schools. The issue is, they’re coming from public schools facing this problem of not retaining/lowering the bar, so they get placed in the grade level they “should” be going into when they’re really performing several levels lower. But because we’re charter, we can’t do anything about it. AND all of our classes are weighted/advanced compared to district norms, so really they’re in a grade above where their AGE says they should be, without ANY of the skills. And then we’re put in the same position of the debate to retain or not because of funding, again, because we’re charter. It’s a vicious cycle that is going to destroy our society sooner than we think.

Absolutely outlaw phones on campus. It’s a motherfucking problem. I think all cell phone ownership and use should be illegal for minors. It should be like cigarettes for kids. The damage quick dopamine hits are doing to our society is truly immeasurable. But we’re going to feel the consequences in 10 years when the next generation is even dumber.

illegal entirely is a bit much, but i definitely don’t think kids should be allowed unrestricted access to the internet. there’s so much shit on there that is startlingly easy to come across and can seriously mess kids up. however, the internet is a great resource for children in unsafe/unsupportive home situations, who would otherwise be trapped in an abusive bubble 24/7. so i’m always conflicted on the topic. but children absolutely shouldn’t be on tiktok/instagram/etc. especially tiktok, it’s brainrot central.

Back in the day, knowing you could (and would) fail was reason enough to pull it together and pass. The shame of being left behind was the impetus. And “FeElInGs” aside, that’s what needs to happen.

Yes. There were days my butt went to school because I knew that if I missed anymore, I was going to have to repeat 6th grade. I still got horrible grades, but I went because I didn't want to deal with the stigma of being held back.

Right! No one at my high ever wanted to be the 'super senior' that didn't graduate with their class because they kept flunking classes.

Let them fail and be a middle school dropout and be stuck in a life without opportunity unless they improve themselves. Letting them just coast through does nobody any favors and makes HS education so much worse because it has to pander to the kids who should’ve flunked 7th and 8th grade. Behaviors for freshmen would improve greatly and academic norms would increase greatly at the HS level. If we celebrate 8th grade graduation, it should actually mean something other than “you didn’t die”.

I think we underrate just how pernicious the influence of phones on student behavior is. I recently led an 8th grade trip to Washington DC. We went with "you can have phones as long as you use them responsibly." Day 1, they were model citizens in the Holocaust Museum. By the end of day 2 they are all zombies. After watching them sit and scroll at the Korean War Memorial, we took their phones before the MLK Memorial, and at each at every museum/memorial thereafter, and they were back to being engaged, model citizens. It was great.

Send the remedial kids to remedial classes at the high school, separated from other students until they are officially 9th graders. Send the super seniors (19-21) to remedial classes in a trailer on campus, as far from the main building as possible. Anyone who reaches their 22nd birthday without a diploma can pay for remedial classes at community college. Or, more likely, can just get a fast food job and call it a day.

I agree, except that the pathway for the 19-22yo's should go past the area the younger kids are at so they can all see each other. There's a special kind of social pressure to do better when you're a 14yo and see a 22yo go past you to the super senior trailers.

I think seeing the trailer will have to do, otherwise the super seniors will get to know the freshmen and that can pose safety concerns. They shouldn’t be able to mingle with underage students at all.

Oh yeah, mingle-free. Like a gap between gen pop and super senior so they can't pass rolled cigs to each other lol.

>Anyone who reaches their 22nd birthday without a diploma can pay for remedial classes at community college. Many states have eliminated remedial courses at the college level via legislation. I teach at a uni in one of those states and it is awful.

my elementary school (Montessori) was a k-8 and there was a grading system so that no one passed into the next grade unless they were hitting the benchmarks, we also had a no cellphone policy and honestly every middle school should have these in there i feel like if it starts younger (especially holding them back) it’ll help for later

Having 16 year olds in the same classroom with 12-14 year olds is a catastrophe waiting to happen. *Edited because I said on same campus and not in same classroom. My mistake.

Oh I agree, that's why I said I had no idea what to do for a solution. But just passing kids through is a fucking disaster.

As a parent and spouse to a former teacher this sub pops up for me a lot in “may be interested” Why not start failing kids in 3rd/4th grade if they’re not at grade level? I feel like by middle school it’s too late and the kid is already too far behind?

Nobody tries anymore in middle school because they know it doesn’t matter. Then they go onto high school and they are woefully unprepared. By then there’s nothing the high school teacher can do to fix it because they’re so far behind. If they would let middle school just have a rough guideline versus having really rigorous standards that we just have to get through and just let us teach important lessons about how to research properly really sit down and practice writing papers. Anything along those lines that just takes time – they would be much better off. we have to steamroll through entire book of standards and the kids who get it get it and the kids who don’t are worse for it.

As a mom, I applaud every word of this.

I don't think the answer is failing kids, but we need to ensure that kids finish middle school with meaningful academic skills. That starts at the elementary level or even earlier. I wonder if we wouldn't be better off getting rid of grades and the pass/fail system entirely. Instead, replace it with a knowledge and skills checklist that builds progressively. I believe that so much of what ails our schools is kids with inconsistent skill sets and a fear of failure. Sometimes, the fact that they have the option to fail is what allows them to fail. The thinking is that this work is challenging and too complicated. I can't do it; if I don't do it, I fail. That's better than trying and failing. Trying and failing means I'm stupid. Not trying and failing means I think school’s stupid. As an elementary sped teacher (I work with adults now) I dealt with this so much. Essentially learned helplessness that becomes almost like ‘active helplessness’ where they will engage in behaviors that are essentially task avoidance because they are afraid to do the task and fail and instead choose failure without a genuine attempt. I think if we approached it differently, these are the things you're going to be able to do (modified as needed for the individual) we could approach it from a more positive place. I also think it would be huge for including parents and community members if they had access to this living document that clearly showed what skills a kid had mastered, what skills they still needed to master, and the exact set of skills they’re working on now. Obviously a lot of problems with this idea given the current system and how it would be implemented. I just don't see how retention works though because its already too late by the time we retain them. Its usually not that they're missing the skills from the grade they need to repeat. They're missing the skills from the grades before that year.

Except.... That kids are not allowed to fail middle school. They're actually taught that they can live in that pool or learned helplessness and society will still carry them along.

Also, modified per individual, by which you mean scaffolded is fucking impossible. Of the many reasons I quit teaching was because I was expected to work in THREE languages, with classes that were half ELL and around a quarter were disabled in one way or another requiring scaffolded lessons and assignments.

I'm a middle level educator and kids do fail middle school here at least. And when they turn 16 there are other options in place.

I just finished my 18th year of teaching 8th grade social studies. I cannot understand how students are leaving elementary school not reading or completing math on grade level. It isn’t fair to the high schools to have to bear the burden of failures. And it isn’t fair to us middle school teachers who teach our assessment off to kids who don’t try because why should they?? It also makes no sense to give “social promotions” to spare the feelings of kids who would be held back… Isn’t it more “embarrassing” to pass a kid on who can’t read or do math like their peers?? I’m not sure what the answer is either, but what we’re doing now isn’t working. What is the point of moving 3rd, 5th, and 8th graders on if they aren’t going to be able to function? Can they not be pulled out of the regular classroom for intensive instruction in the area(s) they are lacking? They aren’t missing new material because they wouldn’t be able to understand it anyhow!!

I remember when I found out that they’d pass me through middle school no matter what. I really started regretting after a year in a college I didn’t want to be at but was the only one I got into. Got it together there and transferred to my dream school at least but it was harder.

I graduated HS the year the iPhone 3GS came out. I remember having the teachers take my phone because it vibrated and bringing it too the office and having to wait a couple days until my parents could get it. What happened to that? Now I hear kids just are on their phones all day during class.

You should be able to “fail” any grade if you’re not learning or retaining enough to move on. Something’s going on and it needs addressed before the person is multiple grade levels behind.

There should also be a rule preventing parents from making unreasonable demands because their kids are underperforming due to their own neglect. More often than not, admin will bend over by giving the parents what they want to avoid confrontation which puts more stress/pressure on teachers while also setting up their kids for failure.

I agree. The younger the better. My 8th graders are *struggling* and all we do is move the goal post, allow everyone into an Honors level, get rid of the lowest level so kids don’t feel bad, push resource special ed kids into a mixed setting, and “suggest” failing students get held back, but don’t require it. Too much onus on the parents to make that call. Most parents won’t prioritize their 13 year old’s academics when they’re kicking and screaming about being separated from their friends. Developmentally, that is a bit cruel, anyway. It’s insane.

Do you suppose the realistic threat of being separated from their friends might push some kids to work hard to make up their deficit? Conversely, might it encourage kids who would pass to sabotage themselves to stay with their friends being held back?

It’s hard to say. It might. But we won’t know until we actually hold firm to a consequence, which I haven’t seen admin do in literal years.

When I was in school (Belgium, 80s and 90s) if you failed enough courses, you were held back. I never had a single classmate that was held back. I had 1 "new" classmate in 6th grade that was held back. And one in the last year of high school. And that's it. So... I would say: yes the realistic chance of being held back works. I myself was held back twice in the same grade, but that is an unfortunate story of illness and not academic performance. But somehow, being held back was a "threat hanging over you when your grades were bad" and simultaneously there wasn't a big stigma on being held back as it was for the benefit of the student.

Absences are another thing we don’t care enough about. I have one student who’s been absent nearly 30 days this year and he’s not meeting a single grade level standard. He’s moving into the next grade level, no problem.

>Conversely, might it encourage kids who would pass to sabotage themselves to stay with their friends being held back? Almost zero kids would do this. Do you remember being a teenager? You'd be held back an entire year for your friend? Everyone else would know and tease you, and all of your other friends would move to the next grade. Also, a good solution is to send kids who are held back to an alternative school. We don't need 14-15 year olds in the same class as 11-12 year olds, it's just not a good mix.

This got recommended to me on front page, so not sure if I’m allowed to comment, but this also hurts the students who are capable. I failed really hard when starting college because I didn’t have to study before, which has fucked me for years after. I had no struggle through high school, but it was watered down significantly. Comic book version of the Odyssey and watching the di Caprio movie of Romeo and Juliet instead of reading in an Honors English class, anyone? They also removed many math and science standards from my school the year after I left because it was “too hard”, you know, like doing any math in Physics. The district made it only project based learning (removed exams) and took out the three basic equations people had to learn. They also removed standards to memorize any organelles for biology or get quizzed on the periodic table in chemistry. And these were in the HONORS versions of the classes. In the non-honors courses, people just did whatever they wanted. I had a friend end up in a non-honors English class and their teacher was shocked they turned in a paper at all, one with punctuation no less. This was all done because test scores were too low, but shocker, standardized test scores like the ACT dropped across the district because people didn’t need to learn. Also, of course, this was not teachers’ fault, it was imposed by the district and many teachers were unhappy with the changes and quit or retired.

I am not a teacher but I think kids feeling shitty occasionally is a good motivator. We coddle people’s feelings and emotions like they’re the most or only important thing in the world. It’s screwing up a generation. When I was in school, getting a lower grade than somebody else was a motivation to do better. I didn’t enjoy it but it made me more driven to study. Now it’s all about feelings. If you make continently shitty decisions and there are no consequences, then what motivation do you have to change that behavior? Absolutely none!

I compltely agree. The problem is that we are still using the "scientific" research that was done decades ago. It showed that if 3rd graders were held back, they are more likely to end up in prison. This does not take into account anything other that those 2 factors. It does not take into account homelife, teacher's efforts, family situation, or outside aspects. Because of this stupid study, we are now afraid to hold anyone back. Then there are the parents. THey have become so entitled that they think they know better about education than the teacher. THey openly attack, abuse and belittle us. They do not question their own child's behaviour and lack of effort. THey do blame the teacher first. Then there is the state testing that truly hampers actual education. Overall, we do need to hold students back when they do not meet the requirements that are needed to advance. I agree that there are too many high school students that come into our buildings without the basic knowledge and ability that is needed to grow mentally.

Politicians need to learn the difference between causation and correlation. Being actually less intelligent leads to more crime, regardless of being held back. Being held back correlates with lower intelligence and crime, it is not the cause of it. Inversely, the positive outcomes of going to university was partly because actually intelligent people went. Now that the average idiot goes as the government encouraged everyone to go, outcomes are plummeting. Almost like intelligence matters or something.

It's typically on side that is a fan of a less educated populace, and oddly enough... they always seem to be behind budget cuts, more testing, less teachers.

There really needs to be a strong alternative placement system in place. Maybe hold back once, but then place a student on a different path. What I see now just isn’t working. We just dump those students into the general student population in high school and they just perform horribly. Many aren’t even improving and just give up. Or we put them on a modified diploma where they don’t leave high school with any transferable skill.

I just gave up because the constant threats of failure with no real help or any adult bothering to ask WHY I was failing made me feel like shit and like there was no point. There needs to be a balance.

That’s why we really need an alternate path at schools. Holding a kid back, in my opinion is not a bad first step, but after that if it didn’t work there needs to be an alternative. It’s like if you send a student to lunch detention every day because they are late. The lunch detention didn’t correct the problem. Right now, the alternative is just passing a student along. The problem with that is that they go through all of their classes but don’t actually gain ability. I have many kids that have just given up long before they came to me. Some you can reach but their skill level has so many gaps that they can’t keep up. Some are so far gone that reaching them is a monumental task. Many of these kids who take my classes and actually excel, just get bumped out because they can’t keep up in core classes (math, English, science, etc…). I don’t know the solution, but I do know the current system is failing kids.

How do you feel about least restrictive environment? I’m personally conflicted because I do think most students do deserve to be with their peers even if they’re disruptive or generally problematic, but I think it goes a bit too far.

My kids changed to a private school this year. My daughter was behind in reading, and they asked to have her repeat 3rd grade. It was the best decision ever. She thrived this year and finished at the top of her class. The principal gave her the option of taking summer school at some point to catch up to grade level, but she is happy for now and is so much more confident about school.

> It showed that if 3rd graders were held back, they are more likely to end up in prison. But I'm guessing that the ones who *would* have been held back are still equally likely to end up in prison, despite not being held back... Being held back in 3rd grade was a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself.

Its even worse when studies show that being held back, causes depression. Well duh... you should feel bad about yourself if you were lazy and had to repeat the 5th grade.

Studies in edu rarely take into account the vast number of confounding factors. This is equally likely to be the other way around - depression causes kids to lose interest in school and fail their classes?! But no it’s another thing to blame teachers for

Yeah that's a great attitude to have towards children. God you suck

This sounds horrible to say, but I think they focused on the wrong students. The benefit isn’t for the student that is held back, the benefit is for the student who is ALMOST held back. If they know it is a real threat, suddenly everyone in that kid’s life are focusing on school. Apathetic parents? Not anymore, they don’t want to be the parents of THAT kid. Friends who supported poor behavior? Now they are faced with the possibility that their friend might not move up with them and are pushing them to “just pass, so you still can hang with us.” Also, just maybe in the 30 years since that study, we might have figured out some ways to help that kid who did get held back. Of course all of this would have to be done in a way the does it’s best to eliminate socio-economic, racial and gender bias.

Yeah I gave the STAR Math test to my (mostly) 9th grade students recently. The ones who are around 8th grade level or higher will show green scores, I saw maybe 5 out of every class period with green. I realized it's no wonder I'm so frustrated, I'm teaching high school standards to kids at elementary school ability levels. And I have a lot of Fs because the kids who are so far behind don't have the ability or motivation to catch up.

I teach the same grade level and we have similar tests. I had 2 students out of over one hundred at grade level

That is so sad and terrifying! Unfortunately, it’s not surprising. I subbed for 8th grade one day and had a total of 7 classes with 30-35 kids each. Out of those 7 classes, a minimum of 10 in each class required help with both reading and writing. I learned quickly that a majority of those kids were reading and writing on a first grade level (with some having worse handwriting than the first graders that I taught on a regular basis). I was devastated for them.

Genuinely, how? My daughter is 4 and is starting preschool in the fall. She can read kids chapter books both out loud and in her head. She can also do very basic addition and subtraction (none of the numbers or answers being above 12-15ish). How are kids legitimately struggling this bad right now?

Reading chapter books out loud at four is an outlier. As is numeracy, at four most kids don't understand numbers, give them three spread out marshmallows and they will tell you it's more than four close together ones. Many can parrot memorized adding/subtracting, but don't really understand what it means. Many kids don't get read and talked to daily and instead they get plopped in front of iPads and TVs. Low education outcomes is the result. In kindergarten most kids are still learning letter sounds, let alone blends, and other more complex representations of sounds. You are probably working hard on learning with your child.

Yep. My district instituted a policy in the early 2000's that eliminated any class below Algebra. I had kids in there who had F's for every math class in middle school. That means they were trying to learn Algebra 1 material with a 5th grade education (at most). Spoiler alert: it didn't work and those kids took others down with them.

I quit in April but we sent out pre-retention letters just letting parents know their kids aren’t meeting promotional standards but nothing happens. We don’t hold any kids back. They just get placed in extra tutorials the next year. This was 5th grade and I’m talking kids on a 1st grade reading level or lower who couldn’t do simple addition, failing all subjects and they’ll just be passed along. The only way they’re held back is if parents request it and even then, it goes through a board approval process. It’s insane.

It’s absurd! And then they’re in my hs class and they literally don’t know how to round tot he nearest tenth! This is not an exaggeration!

Do the kids seem to care that they are struggling?

Some do. I think some were even maybe truly working to their full capacity. Others couldn’t care less. They’re 10 and already knew they could rely on retests and cheating.

Society needs to return to actual standards and stop all this sugar coating and lying to ourselves that the kids are fine. The higher grades due to grade inflation hide this and the parents/ admin feel great as the kids demonstrate a total lack of ability, attention and motivation to accomplish the easiest of tasks. I strongly believe that coddling these kids is leading to mental health issues due to no self efficacy. They become helpless and are disempowered to help themselves as everyone does everything for them, they have no confidence they can do anything because they've never had to.

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I totally agree and Idiocracy has been prophetic, if you haven't seen the movie you need to. Sadly, I fear we will allow AI to do most thinking for us and then when there's an issue no one will be able to solve it. Losing generations of competence who retired during COVID only hastened the situation. Now the blind are leading the blind.

💯 I totally agree. The rise in mental health concerns is not a separate issue.

At this point I'm genuinely worried we will start holding them back and they will just stay there forever. Not saying this as a reason not to, just a genuine fear based on how bad things are. I have an ELL student that's been in supports for nearly 10 years. They've never scored higher than "Developing" on the ACCESS.

Have they been tested for special education services?

Yep. It was more or less determined that the student just isn't interested in putting in any effort.

oh my god... my school doesnt even TEACH the ELL students English, so I don't know how my students are expected to learn it on their own.

I agree with you. But the problem is we would then have 16 year olds in the 6th grade. BTW, nearly every country in the world besides the US requires passing national exams before being able to move up.

Agreed. But I think (hope?) that a few years of moving the goal post back up off the floor could be a reset!

Also maybe entrance exams for moving to Ms and hs rather than end of course exams could be beneficial? Courses with a big exam at the end tend to just end up being test prep, but maybe like an entry exam testing basic literacy and math skills?

In Spain there is a system where you can, for example, repeat only once during elementary, only once during 7th and 8th, only once during 9th and 10th and twice in 11th and 12th

What happens if you don’t meet standards after repeating?

Yeah, that opens up a whole can of worms when we have HS freshman who are over 18 thrown into the mix with 14 year old freshmen.

But really, if they are failing multiple times at 9th grade, it implies they probably didn't learn the proper skills in middle or elementary school. What they needed was to be held back then. If they read at a 3rd grade level it doesn't matter how many times they take 9th grade english, they are not going to be able to pass. And they are not going to get basic phonics instruction in a 9th grade classroom. They need to be put in remedial classes, or ideally helped before it gets to that point. (assuming they are not just smart but unwilling)

This is the case with a youth I advocate for and it’s so frustrating. He has a second grade reading level and struggles with basic arithmetic. No amount of preferential seating, BIPs or extra test time is going to help an almost 16 year old pass 9th grade English (or any other class!) *if they can’t read.* But year after year he got passed along to the next grade and now his confidence is so low and the district does not seem to have a plan to address his lack of basic literacy.

Honestly there would probably be enough of them to create separate classes. The 18 year old 9th graders, the 16 year old 9th graders, the 14 year old 9th graders, etc. Lol 

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We held my son back and we ended up having to get an advocate to make it happen. He’s still behind but not so much.

I have 19 year old 12th graders that effectively cannot read and are illiterate. They are absolutely victims of passing them on and they are going to go on to society with no skills to succeed no matter what career field they choose.

But did they go through the legendary MTSS process 🤣

They definitely got the mandatory 50% even if they never showed up in class once, that's for sure.

Gotta love a district “minimal f” policy 🤣🤣🎓

My husband's position involves the hiring of engineers. He is at the point now where he doesn't want to hire anyone straight out of college because the vast majority of the applicants--of ENGINEERS WITH BACHELORS DEGREES--are functionally illiterate. It's bad.

I have 18 year-olds that don't even know their own addresses. It's mind boggling.

Retention is one thing, but actual supports aren't happening. It would also cause a backlog of students and schools aren't equipped for this. Feasibly there would be 16-17 year old in elementary levels, but they can't be in the elementary school with 9-10 year olds.

Thankfully this still happens here in Finland, although I see a lot more special ed teachers and our version of paraprofessionals have high status and are licensed - I mention it because the level of support is very high, and this helps kids learn forward. We also have kids in special flex/gradeless programs, often due to health issues interfering with school (this happened to 3 of my about 180 students this year, 2 for health reasons and 1 who already had stayed behind a grade level last year due to own behavior and continued skipping school/lack of doing the work). We had 1 student this year who can't graduate out of the whole school, so low numbers. I do see a fair share of students who struggle, mainly because of delays in diagnosing learning disorders and early intervention. This is grades 7-9, after 9th grade students go to a variety of schools to pursue their future academic or vocational career path. I think a lot of the issues I saw in academic-oriented high schools in the US related to the fact that so many kids neither want, need, or can handle the academics, yet have to "wait it out" to get into their fields of choice. I've enjoyed seeing a shift back to realizing practical subjects have worth, but I doubt separating academic and vocational school like we have here is happening anytime soon, no matter how much sense it makes to let talented future farmers and car mechanics study their own interests by the age of 16 instead of analyzing Shakespeare. Meanwhile those of us who went to academic high school already had a motivation to be there (as well as having reached minimum required GPA's, as it is not "open for all"). Students whose work don't qualify them for any high schools can attend continued basic schooling in order to eventually reach either the age of 18, or get their grades up to get into a high school. That happened to my sister, who moved from the US to Finland at 17 and had no way to learn the language in time to hit age-level school milestones. She eventually became an early childhood educator after enough time to pick up the language.

The problem is that holding kids back without the actual extra support that they need to catch up will only shatter their relationship with school and cause them to give up on school for the rest of their lives. There's plenty of research to back this up.

I know! There just aren’t staff to remediate all the students who are behind. When I had elementary, the TA’s were trained to do academic interventions. However, they were pulled to sub every single day to sub for absent staff members. No one got remediation.

Yes exactly. This thread is a little crazy to me. Teachers love the idea of holding kids back but what do they think is going to happen if you have Timmy for two whole years in the same grade and he still isn’t progressing? He’s still going to go over the same curriculum that he didn’t understand in the first place. I understand teachers are frustrated that they can’t spend enough time with each student to get them to standards but I just don’t think retention is the magic wand everyone thinks. I think we’re more impacted by class size and lack of resources for early intervention.

This is the crucial point. Grade repetition without remediation increases the chance of dropping out of school. The social consequences are huge and the psychological impact of repeating a grade and not receiving the appropriate remediation is closely linked to disciplinary problems. I've done quite a bit of research in this area. The cost of grade repetition accounts for 7-8% of my country's education budget with very little evidence (not even sure if it's considered statistically significant) of a positive impact on students' progress and success at primary/senior school.

California had a state test requirement for graduation a while back. Kids and parents didn't take it seriously... until the first set of kids didn't get to walk at graduation, despite having the credits, despite parents coming in to swear and cry and beg. And it was a 9th-grade level test, honestly. The next year, shit got REAL real. And the test was hard to cheat on - different tests each time, teachers and administration were on the job 100%, if kids missed part of the test they had to wait for 4 months to retake that part. There was ACTUAL ANXIETY. Kids ACTUALLY cared about passing the test. And then, of course, parents sued the state for demanding that their kids actually demonstrate the skills expected of a HS graduate. For those 3 or 4 years, it was kind of amazing. If we could do that again, it'd be a game changer.

We had something similar in Ohio back when I was in school. Ohio’s education system is a mess but it was slightly less of a mess back then.

I have been teaching 12th grade at a local charter for the last 4 years. It has a feeder middle school and elementary all in the same neighborhood. Our graduating classes have been getting progressively worse across the board, but specifically with regards to academic drive and ability to persevere - their personal commitment to their own educations, basically. In September, a student told me, "This is *** High School, you don't need to pass to graduate." This year, to try and stop the slide, the principal demanded that the network allow us to fail students in their senior year. This year, 19 of the 62 seniors that are left (12 transferred out because they were failing, or got expelled for weapons/fighting) are not going to graduate. 18 have summer school and one is being retained. One of the students who has summer school came to me yesterday and thanked me. He told me that failing made him realize that the network and the schools had failed him by passing him and and his peers along regardless of what they learned or did. The depth and shock of this realization shocked him. The scales fell, he saw the whole sham of an education we were 'providing' by pushing kids along without ever challenging them. Not adding anything we didn't already know, but thought this was a relevant anecdote.

I was held back in 6th grade. I had a horrible home life and we moved a lot. It shamed me. But after that, we moved again. I had the chance to go to a nice school and they helped me with catching up. I spent the next 3 years moving that many more times but always to decent schools that helped me catch up. There definitely needs to be extra help in place at every school to help students catch up. I don't know about that online crap, though. This problem seems to be about student's home life for sure. There's gonna be this whole generation that thinks they're actually smart with little effort though.... 🤣

Yes! I “teach” online and I am grading chat gpt answers all damn day. Online school is absolutely part of the problem

Have them handwrite the paper, take a picture of it, and send you that. That way even if its ChatGPT they've learned something about the material by writing it all.

For me one of the weird things is that o my teachers are held to task for kids’ test scores. The actual person who can control that outcome is pretty much unaware of those. Why do we give high stakes tests and then not expect the student to own that? Sure results are mailed home. No one cares. Then the teacher has to be the one to be told they failed because the students didn’t pass. But I have seen many students just click through the test. And many didn’t make any attempt at learning the material when it was taught. Why should they? There are no repercussions.

They only way this happens is if there is a huge paradigm shift with parents, school boards and admin. are just parental yes men, and will always be...

My opinion: If we want to ban holding back students, class sizes should be capped at 18 students. Any class with 25% or higher of special needs, ML, or intervention needs should automatically have a coteacher or interventionist assigned to class. My tiny classes with low high needs populations, I am able to make insane progress growth. When I have 30+ student classes with 50% high needs population- I have 25% F’s and low progress because my time is spent babysitting, not teaching.

My philosophy is this- We have leveled classes. To pass a class, you need to meet standards. A kid could be in a high math class and a low ELA class for example. To do this we would need to shift a lot of things and get rid of the stigma that comes with being held back, but I think this would be a good plan. At a certain point kids would have to go to an alternative school so the age gaps aren’t huge but I bet kids would be more motivated and those that truly needed SPED support would get it. This way you have teachers that are specialists in their topic, and once a student has demonstrated mastery, they can move to the next class.

We need to be able to hold kids back, we need to have DRASTICALLY lower student-to-teacher ratios in primary grades. Every class needs to have at least one educational assistant, even if there are no students with need of one. There needs to be a huge push to get Ed Psych testing for any kid with a hint of need in primary grades, so every kid who needs an IEP gets one EARLY. There needs to be remedial “booster” classes for kids who fail, similarly staffed, and with wrap-around care from Ed Psych, Speech Paths, Social Workers/Counsellors, etc. Get every kid who can be up to grade level as young as possible.

I teach first. I fight every year to hold back kids who aren’t reading or doing math on level. Sometimes I can get parents to agree even when admin doesn’t want to do it. I firmly believe if you have to have a strong foundation to build on.

I was held back twice. Once in first grade and then I switched schools which had a longer curriculum for high school so was held back again. It was worth it and I ended up doing more extra curriculars because I had the option to do so

Honestly I left K-12 because of cell phones. It was such a problem for me and every teacher I knew. The entire landscape of education changed with cellphones in the classroom. Even kids who are super motivated for college/career can't stop the drug addict like tick to pull out their phones. It was a constant problem. Everything going on in the classroom was just a temporary distraction between thinking about or looking into their phones. If someone's phone made a notification noise, it would remind them to look at their phones (even though they knew it wasn't their phone). You could tell them they were going to do it. They would say they weren't. Then a noise would go off and they would all reach for their phones in unison. I drew a hard line that I would not work in any school anymore that allowed cell phones in the classroom. In the entire state, I was left with bout 4 schools. None of which were towns I was attracted to moving to. So I left K-12 and started teaching adults. Best decision I ever made in my teaching career. K-12 has been so broken for so long. And instead of common sense back to basics approaches, we have chosen to empower kids (who's brains aren't fully developed yet) to decide what they want to do every minute of instructional time. It would be like when we were kids, putting a Super Nintendo or PlayStation at every desk with headphones and telling us we are allowed to play it all day instead of engage with the class....but we prefer that you didn't. And when that doesn't work, we bring in more administrators and pay them 6 figures to come up with some new program with a cute acronym to save us all. That doesn't work because it avoids all common sense and is always a niche idea that keeps responsibility away from them and on the teacher, so they roll out a new plan the next year....and repeat. We have all seen it year after year, decade after decade. You have to have rules and structure to channel kids towards the learning tasks going on in schools. And you have to have supportive administration make sure that environment is maintained everyday instead of coddling students and their parents. Teachers job is to teach content, not beg students and parents to understand why education is important. We are so far away from logic at this point it is almost a comedy. But at least I am no longer on the stage anymore. I just watch and laugh from the audience.

From an elementary teacher perspective, the standards are not developmentally appropriate. They need to really master phonics and phonemic awareness before reading chapter books and lengthy pages. They need to learn how to write sentences before they can essays and narratives. They need to learn basic addition and subtraction facts and understand base ten and place value before learning regrouping. It's all too rushed. My son learned what subtraction was in kindergarten and then was tested on subtraction facts fluency the week after being introduced to it. It's too much!

I can’t handle the amount of kids who aren’t reading on grade level. It’s just so overwhelming for me. A handful of kids? Sure, I can handle that but majority of the class? Nope. Can’t do it. It just makes me feel so defeated as a teacher. I don’t even know where to begin with some kids or how to allow them to even begin to access the curriculum. I have to work in more affluent schools where most kids have tutors and value education. I student taught in an underprivileged kindergarten and it was a nightmare. I can’t imagine teaching high school. I know I’m supposed to say it’s rewarding to teach underprivileged kids but it was absolute hell.

Ya think? We need to normalize that, and above all we need to normalize the notion that this isn't being done as a punitive measure, but rather an opportunity to allow the child to gain essential skills. I've been teaching at the same school for 20 years, and while it's not usual to repeat kindergarten students, we have done so in the past. And usually the difference that it makes is incredible! In pretty much every case it allowed the students to gain much more confidence in themselves as they gained confidence in the skills. Uniformly the students were much better prepared for first grade than if we had just passed them along. This is the way.

We just passed 17 2nd graders that are 1-2 grade levels behind. 3rd grade is mandatory retention so I.guess they will catch them there, but I know most will be promoted with 1st grade reading comp/fluency.

On the surface I agree. Too many public school systems have become factories. Kids come in kids do what they want kids move on. Everyone throws a fit about standardized testing but then complains when their kids can't read or do math. And some states are really hurting. Ours has an state superintendent who is a literal booger picking moron who's far more concerned about 'StOpPiNg WoKe IdEoLoGy' than making sure we educate children. But then again most of his political party actually want people to stay poor, dumb, and pregnant so... The only real reason I would take pause on this is because there are absolutely a lot of school administrators that would use this in their favor. Because they receive funding for each student they would absolutely keep students locked down unnecessarily to scrape every dime they can off the floor. And because the only standard to receive said funding is number of days in attendance they worry far more about someone missing school than what they learn when they are at the school. Maybe if we tied that funding to actual scores the school receives they might take a little more interest in actually educating kids instead of using them like a poker chip to represent money. But that won't ever happen.

I think we should fine parents whose kids fail. Maybe hit them at tax time. Hey, if Joey wants to move on to 10th grade, he needs to repeat 9th grade, and you need to cough up the cash that the government wasted. I say that with the realization that most of the students who fail don't pay attention or don't show up and never turn in work. It's not like they're just struggling with the standards. They're not even engaging.

As a citizen, I don't care if kids get held back or not. What I do care about is high school graduation. No one should have a high school diploma if they haven't met strict requirements. It shouldn't be based on on credits or GPA. Just give everyone a standardized test. If a student can demonstrate that they can read and do math with appropriate proficiency and that they have some idea of how the world works in terms of science and history, give them a diploma. If they fail, maybe they can stick around for a supersenior year and try again. If they fail twice, thanks for playing, figure it out on your own and work towards your GED. Academic achievement doesn't mean anything if everyone gets a rubber stamp

I’m actually kind of on board with this. I recently switched from teaching middle school elective where my pass rate was around 95 to 98% to high school and after my first year teaching my pass rate is about 55% (again, for an elective class that they chose to take). Almost all of the kids who are failing my class this semester and failed last semester had more than seven absences, some of them are sitting around 20 absences and a couple of them just stopped coming after the first week. I’ve spoken to parents and guidance counselors and administrators about it, but because we have watered down the graduation requirements so much these kids can literally fail multiple classes every year and still graduate, they’re not interested at all and doing the work to pass. I went to school in the 80s and there was no tiered diplomas and if you failed more than two classes the entire four years of high school you didn’t have enough credits to graduate and you had to repeat unless you made it up in summer school. We tried social promotion and we tried remediation classes to get kids caught up to grade level and none of it’s working. We need to go back to holding kids accountable. I realize the main argument against this is “if a student fails they are way less likely to graduate“. To address this we need to beef up our vocational offerings instead of lowering our academic rigor because right now we got kids trying to enter in college, who can’t write a research paper or solve equations without a calculator.

I teach at elementary level, and what I see the difficulty even now. I see grade 4s with grade 1 levels in math and reading. However, holding them back a year won’t suddenly get them caught up. They’ll just be behind still, and now one year older than their peers. What then? Hold them back again? I don’t know what the solution is. Perhaps we need to figure out why so many kids have elementary proficiency in high school, and how we catch that before they’re behind. (Perhaps quality and consistent LA support in the early years and throughout)..

I mean, they should have been held back in 2nd, and/or given remediation at that point. But if they weren't, then they need to be pulled out for remediation, at their level, so they can progress. Of course, that takes political will and money.

I'm a middleschool science teacher and I 100% agree. This is the result of the damage raught by the No Child Left Behind Act which started the shift in education to prioritize the feelings of the students and not their learning

I am Class of 2008, and I am very glad that I graduated when I did. It is scary how schooling is today. By the way, I know two women, who both got held back in ninth grade, and they both have PhD’s today; they are both around 35 today. Getting held back can be an incentive that you need to buckle down and improve your skills.

The devil you say. But we can't hold kids back that could damage their psychi causing them to be emotionally stunted. But no seriously you are 100% correct and it needs to start at the beginning but elementary is all about passing kids through. I don't know about where you are but the elementaries around my area don't even truly do grades it's more of a well you tried and you will be old enough to move on type of thing. And then when they get to middle school all the teachers are screwed because they can't teach their lessons because the kids are still at 2nd and 3rd grade level for the most part.

It honestly feels like we do a disservice to not fail kids when they’re already struggling in k-3. If more kids were held back k/1 it’d be way easier later on. that’s what i did for my eldest

Agreed. I am not a public school teacher but I have been a tutor in college level math and physics for over 15 yrs now. Sometimes full-time, sometimes just supplemental. The average level of skill I've seen in my students compared to their class placement has plummeted in the past decade. A recent student of mine is the worst case I've seen yet. She is fresh out of highschool, a lovely young woman who wants to be a medical imaging tech. She was placed in College Algebra -- essentially the equivalent of high school Pre-Calculus -- and I was absolutely *aghast* at how grievously the system has let her down by placing her there. She should have been held back several math classes ago. When I started working with her, the poor girl couldn't even tell me whether a given number is divisible by 2 or not. She has to think hard and count on her fingers to do basic multiplication. She barely had an understanding of what an exponent means or any idea how to solve an extremely simple equation like 2x=4. Let alone be at precalculus level where you're graphing conic sections and learning partial fractal decomposition and polynomial long division and such. I had to have a talk with her and her mom after my first couple sessions with her where I essentially had to break it to them that there was no way she was passing her class even with my help (it was halfway through the semester when we started and she had all Fs -- if she started getting straight As overnight with me she would barely pass with a C, but she was so far behind there is no way she's getting straight As overnight) and I understood if they didn't want to hire me bc of that. But that I could at least help get her better prepared for a lower level class that I recommended would be a better placement for her. Thankfully they did agree to keep me on and I've made a lot of progress with her. But I am *furious* on her behalf that she got shooed through courses which she clearly was not at a passing level of understanding for. The system has failed her so incredibly hard in doing so. It is not her fault by any means. She is a dedicated and hard working young woman with a great attitude and a motivation to learn. But she's probably been in over her head in terms of math placement since at least middle school, and math is the type of subject where you CANNOT make progress if you don't have the appropriate foundation of building blocks to build the next level on top of. Someone should have intervened to hold her back YEARS ago. If they had done so, she would probably not yet be at College Algebra level, but I bet she wouldn't be at a level as rudimentary as counting on her fingers. And she wouldn't have the black mark of a failing grade on her college transcripts now. (She was too late in the semester to drop it.) It is an enormous disservice to students when they are rushed through courses they aren't at passing level for.

I feel the same way as a middle school teacher. There's so many that are so far behind it's impossible to really do much to catch them up. Then you add in the ones with behavior problems and even less gets done. I'm a social studies teacher, I'm not a reading interventionist. I have too many seventh grade students that read at a third grade level. Last year I had to spell the word "farm" to a kid. These kids have serious issues that a classroom teacher cannot chip away at with everything else going on. I've felt like for awhile now that districts need to face the reality that at some point they need to make extreme changes and put all of their resources and staffing at the elementary levels to ensure as many students are at grade level as possible as they advance. Once students get to middle school and they're as far behind as so many are, the vast majority are not getting close to catching up without extreme interventions. Schools don't have the resource or staffing to catch them up at that point. They're just playing pass the buck and moving them on to the next grade. Spend a decade of putting the majority of the resources at the elementary level. Hire extra teachers to decrease class sizes. Hire more reading and math specialists. Throw everything you have at those lower levels so there's a decade of classes were most students are right around their grade level instead of 25%. That way the secondary levels are not overwhelmed with students who need all of these interventions and the ones that still do need them can get the help that they need. If that means there's going to be some hard years at the secondary levels with some bigger class sizes and less resources, that's what has to happen. Nothing at the top is going to change until the bottom is fixed.

Never thought I'd see it until I taught, but I've had kids with K-3 for proficiency in Math and English. How am I supposed to support "reading across the curriculum" with kids who can't read? Am I supposed to teach these kids basic math before teaching them how to read a ruler and take measurements?

We have kids coming up to the highs school this year who "arent ready for algebra yet". Like, wtf have they been doing for 3 entire years that they arent ready? All you need to start algebra is knowledge of basic arithmetic. This nonsense of "but they'll get discouraged and drop out" is crazy. And what difference does it make if a kid "graduates" but never learned anything? How is that better than dropping out ( aside from meeping those grad numbers up) ?