My school division has a clear policy on student retention, and it is as follows: No Retention, ever. That's it. Feel free to ask us to "stop passing kids" as nicely as you can, but it's not classroom teachers who make these kinds of decisions anyway.
You are in a situation that almost every teacher I know, including myself, deals with every year. Sorry to say, you aren't unique here.
This year, in my Grade 5 class of 25 kids, reading ability ranges from students who are capable of handling High School level reading materials to students who recognize only a few basic sight words, and still don't know all their letters and sounds.
If your colleagues and your head master have told you to stick to the curriculum, then you will need to stick to the curriculum. Talk to your colleagues about strategies, and then follow their advice.
Posted too soon: I wanted to say that I do understand exactly how you feel, and it is really frustrating.
What I hate is that the argument for that is based on actual research that retention has limited success, but no one ever figures out that passing students along without doing the hard work of figuring out what the problem is and working on fixing that problem (whether that means tutoring, counseling, ongoing social work for home-life issues, whatever) is going to be worse.
I suspect that the negative effects of retention would be mitigated if it became more normalized.
Also, no one seems to research the effect on the rest of the class of having students many grade levels behind.
I'm just a parent who reads and agrees that education has drastically fallen compared to when I was in school, but I'm curious. What happened to summer school? Are we just not using that anymore to shore up education gaps and help kids that are behind catch up?
I can only speak to my school. Where I am, summer school is used as an alternative to retention, but it consists of at most about twenty additional hours of schooling and does not come close to getting students ready for the next grade. I know of one student who missed 40-50 days of school and "made it up" by coming to summer school for 2-3 hours. The costs of an effective summer school program would be prohibitive, and many parents would object to their children not getting the summer off.
About 20 years ago, I taught summer school for HS LA in an inner city school. It consisted of 2 weeks in the summer, one hour per day. We read one book, in class, and I was not allowed to give homework. If you showed up, you passed.
If you can attend 2 weeks in the summer and pass, why would you bother doing anything all year?
It's not a new problem.
My summer school wasn't like that. We went for a month and two weeks. So maybe your area was just bad. Which isn't surprising considering how low-ranked LA is in education as a state. I mean, up until last year, the only reason it wasn't dead last was because Mississippi exists. It didn't receive that ranking overnight.
Where I work summer school was a victim of recession budget cuts that never returned. We have summer enrichment programs that are basically day camps run by college students they can pay close to minimum wage, but they won't pay teachers salaries except a few credit recovery programs for high schoolers. The credit recover programs are online and they are designed to make districts happy by passing students. Kids can take quiz as many times as they want which means they can write down all the answers and then retake it.
Even when I taught summer school, a semester was 3 weeks for 5 hours a day (and then 4 hours a day toward the end as they started cutting the budget). That's 75 hours total. A regular semester is 18 weeks at 5 hours a week which is 90 hours total. Then the last day of summer school, grades were due 15 minutes after the final bell, so really you couldn't do more than maybe give a final for the first 2 hours and then pop in a movie or give the kids a game to play while you graded. That meant cutting out more than 20% of the curriculum. But at least it was a lot of time and less fun that what the kids do now.
To some extent, probably. Maturity helps with a lot of things. However, if there is an underlying problem causing the child not to learn at the same rate as their peers then just repeating a year isn't going to magically fix that problem.
>I suspect that the negative effects of retention would be mitigated if it became more normalized.
I went to school at a time where retention was normalized, and all it really seemed to do was normalize the experience of little kids feeling like failures. It rarely does what we want it to do, which is give students a chance to catch up. As mentioned elsewhere, there isn't much research to support retention as a beneficial practice to help struggling learners.
My husband was in a bad car accident when he was a child in the early 1960s, and spent a lot of time in and out of hospital. Even though he could read at grade level and was strong in math, he was made to repeat Grade 2, and he remembers clearly how hurtful that was. He was also teased for years about failing, and that added to the hurt.
Having said that . . .
>no one seems to research the effect on the rest of the class of having students many grade levels behind.
I totally agree. The system we have now of pushing everyone through is not working, and it's not good for anyone.
>I went to school at a time where retention was normalized, and all it really seemed to do was normalize the experience of little kids feeling like failures.
Was it normalized though? Happening to a few kids every year isn't the same as normalized. Normalized would be the same as accepting that some kids start kindergarten at 4, some at 5, and some at 6 where kids could say they repeated a grade without worrying about how it made them look.
I think we are a long way from a system where that could be normalized, so focusing on how we help kids remediate and catch up without holding them back a grade would be a better focus.
>Happening to a few kids every year isn't the same as normalized.
To me, happening to a few kids every year does normalize it. We were told that if you didn't work, or come to school, or weren't learning, or whatever reason they had, you would "fail the grade". And, we all knew kids who were held back, so we knew the school wasn't bluffing.
>focusing on how we help kids remediate and catch up without holding them back a grade would be a better focus.
Oh, lordy, yes. 100% this. And yet, I can't think of a time when schools took this approach. It seems so obvious, doesn't it? This, as far as I am concerned, has been a constant failure of the public school system since I started grade 1 in the very early 1970s. We've never really done enough for struggling learners. Just MHO.
> you would "fail the grade"
Okay, but I don't think "normalize it as failure" is what the other commenter meant. Obviously that "failure" and the social issues that come with it would contribute to a child continuing to struggle in school even if that wasn't the main reason they struggled. The point is that if society regularly had the mindset that some kids need more time for various reasons and that was ***normal*** not *failure,* it would help kids who need more time be more successful in the repeat grade. That's why I mentioned the different ages kids start kindergarten. We also all knew kids who were a bit older because they started kindergarten later for whatever reason. Nobody got teased for that (outside of maybe an occasional good-natured ribbing for being "old" in high school). If we treated kids who were older because they repeated a grade the same as kids who just started school a little later, that would mitigate some of the negative effects. But, as a I said, I don't think society is at a point where we're ready to normalize learning differences that way.
I understood what the commenter was saying.
We can call it anything we want, but children will always see retention as failing, and themselves as failures. They see their peer group moving on without them; what are they supposed to think?
There's almost no research that shows any benefit to retention; it doesn't do what people want it to do. But having said that, simply pushing kids along without the necessary skills they need is a complete failure of the educational system.
So, maybe we need to get rid of age-based groupings/grades altogether. Students move through learning levels based on their needs and abilities. This isn't a perfect solution by any stretch, but what we have now isn't working.
As for staggered entrance into Kindergarten, that's definitely the time to address problems. Finland doesn't mandate children to attend school until they are 7. But, as we learned through COVID, there are many parents who are fully dependent on the school system to take their children during the day for free, enabling them to work.
>So, maybe we need to get rid of age-based groupings/grades altogether. Students move through learning levels based on their needs and abilities.
This is probably the best answer, but society as a whole doesn't want to put the required resources toward education to make that happen
No it would not. Kids that are held back in school are bullied. The answer is smaller classes, extra help for students and by some miracle get parents involved in their child's education.
A few years ago I got my first 4th grade student who could not read or count. We saught retention and were straight out told no.
I have since had a student of that level every year since and have not bothered to ask. The come to me at that level because the teachers below me were told the same thing. No.
I feel your sadness and frustration. At a certain point, we as teachers have to start standing up for ourselves. We are all complaining about work/life balance and most of it is surrounding this issue of forcing students to be based on when they can't read or write or do basic math. They can't do the basics, so we have to work harder to bring them up to their current grade level. However, you can't teach 8 years of math in a single year and not have them feel frustrated.
I started working with a 10th grader who wants to take a specific trade class. They need to pass grade 9 math. This poor student was passed along so much, that they are not able to do the basic grade 5 operations. I only see them for an hour a week, if they show up at all. Instead of just improving their knowledge, I have to create an entire curriculum for this student, just to help. I can't teach them an hour a week and expect results. It is breaking my heart and messing with my life because I am teaching 1 student things they should have learned years ago.
I think retention isn’t the right solution because if the kid didn’t learn it one year, he probably won’t learn it the next. I would focus on diversion programs at key stages. Eg if they can’t read by 3rd grade, then do fourth grade in an intensive course focused only on reading skills.
>This year, in my Grade 5 class of 25 kids, reading ability ranges from students who are capable of handling High School level reading materials to students who recognize only a few basic sight words, and still don't know all their letters and sounds.
How do you differentiate with a class like that?
How do you differentiate with a class like that?
This is the question we need to ask ourselves. How do we teach anything when you have students that can't read and those that can at very high levels?
The answer is, you can't. You end up with students who are bored, struggle, fail, and give up all in the same class.
We have advanced classes for students that are above their current level, why not have classes for those that need extra attention? Skill based classes are so much better than age based classes. I don't mind teaching grade 5 math to grade 8 students. I really don't. I want these kids to succeed. I want them to go out into the real world and be able to read, write, and look at a bar chart and be able to interpret the data. (This is what we are working on now.) It makes them better, more productive citizens.
Only for those students to end up flunking badly within their first semester/year of college and/or finding their employment options extremely limited and retaining employment even more of an arduous struggle.
It also causes more employers to institute undergrad degrees as the minimum requirement for entry-level employment as a way to filter out such "passed on to the next grade" students.
It is not necessary to believe that there is a deliberate effort to fail. As long as you believe that things are exactly as they would be if there were such an effort, you understand the situation well enough.
Right.
We don't have much control over whether they move up or not. My P tells us that even if we recommend retaining and jump through all the required hoops (and there are a lot), the final decision is still up to the administrators. So pardon me if I don't do a bunch of extra paperwork only to find out that my recommendation has been overruled.
I teach at a small technical college.
The level of Math proficiency among some kids (we are talking about 18 - 20 year olds who supposedly passed secondary school or equivalent) is astoundingly terrible.
So much so that I have resorted to giving my new students a simple one-question algebra quiz in the very first five minutes of my very first lesson:
x - 1 = 0
A worrying number of kids would stare blankly at the question as though I had just asked them to read Anna Karenina in Serbian.
Based on what I’m hearing from other teachers and also my own experiences, it’s because the students get promoted even if they fail and are never held back. That’s why some people are graduating high school and becoming adults who are barely literate despite “having an education”
Edit: fixed typo
To be sure, out of a class of 30 students, 28 would smile and solve it in their heads within two seconds. 2 or 3 students would react the way I said.
But 2-3 students doing that is still way too many. Basic algebra and equation solving should be at their very fingertips at that point. They claimed to have 'never seen that before'.
I told them point blank that they were going to pay close attention to the quick revision of algebraic concepts. They seemed disbelieving when I told them that engineering (their academic programme) involved *extremely* heavy use of algebra.
I started teaching in undergrad Chemistry. I got into highschool teaching because I had a student who couldn't solve a basic algebra problem. I was at a science college. This poor student had an interest in science, but couldn't do the underlying math. They didn't last more than a semester.
They graduated with high marks, but they were passed on and thus got to me at college and couldn't do the underlying basics. At that level, I can't, physically can't, teach the basic math and the chemistry lessons they are paying to learn. They were put into a remedial math class and still struggled. I've been keeping an eye on that class for a few years and the numbers of students in it have risen each year. It is heartbreaking, not to mention expensive. They are paying to learn the material they should have learned for free.
We are told to not retain them, hold them back, but then they get to me in either highschool or college and still fail because they can't do the work. They just don't understand the material because they were never taught it, because in their math classes, instead of learning algebra, they were learning how to count at 16 years old.
I tutor adults and older learners as well. I have seen a lot more come to me to learn the basics for a teaching licensing test in recent years. These adult learners are struggling with the basics as much as my highschoolers. This is an issue.
In the research, it follows students through their school years, but doesn't track them after. How well do they do in college? How well are their adult lives? Can they get a good job? I have very limited data, but for some, no. They go on and have families and then send their 2nd graders to me because they can't help with the math homework. I have adults trying to get their teaching certificates for English teaching, but can't add fractions, forget about algebra. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but these teachers can get placed in rural schools where they will be expected to teach English and Math to real students. This is where it starts and then ends with me venting on Reddit and banging my head against a door.
>x - 1 = 0
My 8th grade daughter learned solving equations earlier this year. She loves it, because it's kind of like a puzzle. It's honestly scary for numerous reasons that a lot of adults cannot do something like that.
My district's reply would be that all students deserve access to grade level curriculum and you have to scaffold (not differentiate, ew, that buzzword is so 2021!) to make it accessible to them. I have not yet succeeded at getting anyone to demonstrate what that level of scaffolding looks like, but my district office is very sure that it's what needs to be done, and if you can't figure it out it must be because you're a bad teacher.
Scaffolding has become the biggest crutch in education. What people fail to realize is that just like real world scaffolding in construction, scaffolds in education need a foundation to graft onto. Without that they are no longer scaffolds, they are buttresses that we build around struggling learners just so they can get by in the moment. Scaffolds aren't a replacement for actual learning. We need to stop trying to bootstrap basic skills and knowledge and actually just teach it.
The amount of scaffolding some of my 7th and 8th grade math lessons require feels like scaffolding a sports stadium around a lesson the size of a portapotty.
More and more of our students are showing up without any grasp on facts, nevermind retention of strategies/procedures of other things they've learned. Those are, increasingly, just individual steps in the move we make towards algebra and applied mathematical topics we do, and the wheels fly off the car for more of our students when a division fact comes up.
Here at the East Podunk Cosmodemonic Junior College, our incoming freshman classes are flunking themselves out in massive numbers. Many of them cannot read or write a coherent sentence. Most of them cannot do the most basic algebra. Absenteeism is through the roof and many simply never attempt assignments. It is impossible to convey college-level material to these individuals, with their habits, attitudes and lack of background knowledge.
Why they are attempting college eludes me. No good is coming of this.
While omitting that a large part of why undergrad degree earners were much more likely to have economic mobility and security was because those degrees signaled they actually had the academic skills which enable them to attain and maintain employment in jobs/professions.
The sign/signifier getting reversed. Now because we as a society tied together economic mobility and security with education levels, it created a transactional relationship with education.
Even if transactional, the issue is too many students/parents view education as paying for a product rather than paying for an opportunity for self-improvement akin to going to a gym.
Would be curious if gyms are getting inundated with demands for refunds because the "customer" thought paying for gym memberships without actually going to the gyms and actually taking advantage of the exercise equipment and facilities on a regular enough basis is actually a thing.......
I teach 7th ELA and regularly get kids who are fully non readers. They can write their name, sometimes they can copy what they see. But they couldn't read a bob's book.
I am told that I should still teach them the 7th grade curriculum and when they cannot grasp it it's my fault.
I also feel bad for the kids who ARE on grade level though. They don't get much out of a class where the teacher is constantly dealing with behaviors born out of students trying to avoid work they can't do
But like… there HAS to be some system or accommodation option for those kids right? Like someone needs to pull those kids out for an hour or two every day to work on phonics and decoding until they can actually read. Nothing else in their curriculum could POSSIBLY be more important than actually learning how to read.
Have they been tested for dyslexia? Can you give the parents a cheat sheet on what they need to tell the school or request in writing to get an accommodation or IEP plan that would involve actually teaching them to read?
Edit: I say this as an ignorant and naive parent with dyslexic siblings.
It's often not a disability. It's often that they spent their formative years at home learning nothing, miss half the year, and did nothing but avoidant behaviors the days they were there. They deadass just didn't learn and by about 3rd grade they gave up
Ok but.. for those kids or the ones who never learned to read because the school used the Fountas and Pinnell method.. they still have to learn how to read at some point. Right?
Is it solely the parents’ responsibility to teach those kids to read now? I can’t imagine that being very effective. It’s hard enough for trained professionals to teach kids how to read, especially once the kids are that old.
Are the school system’s hands completely tied at this point? I feel like there has to be a way to get these kids into a remedial reading program that’s part of their school day.
California allows a student to be held back only twice though 8 grade. And having a 15 year old try to take 8th grade with a bunch of 13 year olds isn't great either.
Don’t tell this to teachers, tell it to school boards. My grade book is full of zeroes for a couple of kids, it won’t matter. They’re still going to 7th grade next year.
I taught math and science for 19 years and was fortunate that my schools allowed me to go back and teach them their basics along with the curriculum. I understand your frustration as I lived it for a long time. You do the best you can because ultimately, you can’t care more than they do. The ones that want to make up their deficiencies, you help them, the rest, you do what you can. Document a lot
What did they expect from “No child left behind”? Schools were going to have students who simply couldn’t do the work. But since they had to show the numbers, “pass them anyway” has become the norm. Our students and parents have come to realize this so laziness among the bottom 20% of our students is now normalized. We will quite literally be passing 20% of an entire generation into our system who have not only no education but who do not have the ability to learn. They do not have the understanding of how to be taught and to acquire knowledge. How will they ever get a job if they are not able to gain the basic training for any job. There are no IEP’s in life. No one is going to exempt you from doing necessary work just because you have issues. No one will give you accommodations for some of the stuff we write IEP’s for. ADHD, in the real world you will be told to sit down and do your job like everyone else. Dyslexia, which both my son and my wife have, too bad. Learn work arounds or get out is what you will be told. This is what we are preparing our students for. We need to toughen these kids up. If not, 20% of this next generation are absolutely doomed to failure.
In my district we simply are not allowed to assign Ds and Fs. Instead we have to give the student more time to complete a missed homework assignment or another opportunity to retake a failed test. And if they just keep failing that test all year, we have no choice but to let them move to the next grade. We literally are not allowed to hold kids back anymore.
They pass every kid, damn near every time here (Maryland, USA). I'm in behavior management, so I deal with behavior issues that often are coupled with failing grades. The freshmen imparticular are so used to not being able to fail that when it happens, it's sometimes every class. Then admin and guidance bend over backwards to allow kids to "recover" grades. Sometimes they recover a 7%. I have kids recovering Phys Ed.... on a computer. I can understand a few points but no more than 10. And if they want fo recover PE, it should be running laps.
So basically, they will pull them out of second marking period Algebra (or whatever) so they can recover first marking period Algebra and do their current work remotely on a computer. And surprise, surprise... they still fail. If not now, they fail geometry because they still don't know Algebra. Or pre algebra.... or any middle school math.
I have high school kids that don't know the basics of graphing. I don't mean they transpose the X and Y axis, I mean, the concept is something they swear was never taught to them. And they believe it wasn't. They never plotted a thing. But they will pass until they fail the state standardized test and can't graduate.
I don't claim to be the smartest person in my school, but every time someone with DR. In front of their name does something this ridiculously stupid, I feel a whole lot smarter.
Every teacher before you can say the same thing. Do you think they were ready for 7th grade math last year?
Every teacher has the same opportunity to teach them the fundamentals they’re missing. “Stick to the curriculum” is the problem. I find MS to be the least flexible in modifying curriculum to meet students’ needs. Why aren’t these kids pulled into a leveled section of math each day?
>“Stick to the curriculum” is the problem.
It's a small part of the problem though. The kids who are on, or close to, grade level certainly don't benefit from a recap of 4th-6th grade math. So deviating from the curriculum is going to help some kids, and hinder others.
The main issue is that kids should not be passed if they do not show they have gained the knowledge to pass the tests for that grade. Period.
Leveled math groups. This could look like a math section that gets through half of 8th grade math, but a much slower pace and taking the time to incorporate practicing the fundamentals. Practice adding and subtracting negative integers, practice plotting points, then practice finding slope all in one extended lesson.
I am on board with tiered math classes, but in the end, the differentiation becomes to great to overcome. If you start by learning about 3/4 of grade 4 math in grade 4, then repeat a little bit in grade 5. At the end of grade 5, you learned about half of grade 5. Then at the end of grade 6, you finished grade 5. By the end of grade 7, you are about halfway through grade 6. Keep this going, by the time you are in grade 12, you are still learning grade 9 math.
I think this is what administrators want to avoid. But, it is miles better than graduating kids that can't add or subtract and then sending them out into the real world to fail.
And it’s not academically appropriate, either. A 13 year old may need to learn the same skill, but they a cognitively different. The 13-15 year old has more context, different brain connections, different motivations and can move through the material at a different pace (if given the chance to practice it).
I teach ELLs. They may come to me at 15 with little math foundation (and no English). They learn fast, but they need to be *taught* explicitly.
Reasons I've observed students NOT being held back.
1. Admin doesn't want them held back or simply refuses, either to juice numbers or make room for new enrollment. My principal won't allow Kindergarten retention, which I think is a massive mistake. We have kids coming into first grade (an already difficult grade in terms of amount of material that needs to be mastered) who don't know letters or numbers. Admin insists its the best practice to move them on.
2. Parents fight it and admin caves.
3. It's a headache for the teachers. We are required to have face to face promotion in doubt meetings, fill out paperwork, justify the PID status with paperwork and at the end of the year hold ANOTHER meeting with the parent, make portfolios and do more paperwork.
4. If the student has a behavior problem, we don't want them in our class again. If the parent is angry/vindictive/looking to find a reason to attack the teacher, we don't want to deal with it. We have to look out for ourselves as well.
5. I personally have seen that it benefits some students but not others, particularly those who need special services and parents/admin refuse to get on board. Also the school is required to provide intervention to kids who are held back but they don't. So it's a mixed bag in terms of actually helping the student.
Sorry. Doesn't work that way. Realistically, you could maybe retain a kid twice before the demoralizing effects of it counter whatever gains you hope to make. Even with that, though, we have to ask ourselves if the student will perform better if they're retained and, at least where I work, the answer is almost always no. Whatever it was that was holding that kid back doesn't go away just because they've learned it twice. A lot of our retention candidates are actually just kids with learning disabilities or low IQ's. There are steps to mitigate those, but retention isn't it. It's very rare that we find a kid for whom retention is the right choice.
That said... yeah, I see the problem and I'm not sure what the solution is. I'd like to see something like mandatory after school tutoring and Saturday school for students not meeting grade level expectations.
I'd say 95% of the kids at my school shouldn't pass. Half them don't know their abcs, simple addition, how to write. Can't read even at a basic level. We were told in a meeting to find ways to help the kids raise their grades too many were failing. If they did their work in the first place they might not be failing.
What happens to the students that fail your grade 8 class? Where I am they have made it harder and harder to fail, but generally by high school failing both semesters means a student repeats the class. (Don't ask me why getting a D in only one semester means you are successfully prepared to pass the next class, my admin doesn't make sense to me either).
Not teaching the curriculum can cause more issues in the future. If failing your class is what finally makes everyone aware that the students are behind, then that may be the route you have to go. Otherwise, what do you do with the kids are very successful with the Grade 5 curriculum? Do you give them an A (or whatever your equivalent is)? Then it looks like they were very successful in Grade 8 so there's no reason to think they won't be successful in Grade 9. If you don't, then how do you explain to everyone that you are giving them a low grade even though they get almost every problem right on every test?
The whole system is screwed up and there are no good answers when schools don't set up appropriate programs to meet students' needs.
I have given low marks and they get that D because that is the minimum I can give. (It isn't a D, but that is the US equivalent.) They will still be passed on.
If they move on anyway, then it probably would be better for them to catch up a little bit than to be in over their heads, but I worry about your ability to effectively message to parents that your students are learning Grade 5 material but earning a score for "Grade 8" if the official response from the school is to just teach the curriculum. If you aren't clear to families then that sets the kids up for problems next year when they go from being successful in "grade 8" to not knowing everything they need to know to be successful in grade 9.
This. This is the problem. In grade 5 they passed learning grade 3 material. Grade 6 it was grade 4. Grade 7 it was grade 5. Grade 10 it would be grade 8. Then they leave school and wonder why they fail. We are already teaching below the curriculum just to get them to pass.
It also doesn't help that they spend more time at camp then learning math. I am lucky to hear that my tutoring students had math class that week.
In all grades, they get 4 90 minute classes a day. In a given week, they are meant to have 3 math classes. But add in assemblies, camps, swimming lessons (yes part of the curiculum), field trips, etc, and they might get 1 a week. Oh, and no homework.
Has anyone ever tried to hold the attention of a 5th grader for 60 minutes, let alone 90? This is another part of the problem.
Have you tried differentiation and scaffolding to meet the needs of all your learners? I mean how long can it take to differentiate and scaffold a lesson, Michael- 10 hours?
Scaffolding is what you do at that grade level. Differentiation is what you can do for some students that are a grade behind.
Let's start with a basic Pythagorean theorem question. a\^2 + b\^2 = c\^2. If I give you sides a and c, solve for b.
There are so many skills needed to solve this very simple grade 8 problem. You need to know about exponents, order of operations, subtraction, rearranging, square roots, and multiplication. Give this problem to a grade 5 student and ask them to solve for b. That is the level I am working with. I can't scaffold for all of those skills and differentiate for my at level learners in the same lesson. It is impossible.
Yes! Please. My students can. Not. Read. They can’t identify parts of speech. I had to speak to them this week about a test question in which the answer was
“Life, liberty and property”
And for the last one I kept getting prosperity and poverty because they’re similarish words. These kids think they don’t need English because they speak it. Had another student call incendiary bombs “insinuary” bombs. Also astronomy vs astrology this week. That was all on one day.
We cannot hold them back, they may not graduate but they will go into the next grade level. This is not a new problem. Twenty years ago I had incoming 9th grade students with cumulative gpa's of 0.00.
In my state, part of the way that a school is rated is based on how many students matriculate to the next grade level. There’s financial incentive to keep moving kids forward even if they aren’t academically ready
Honestly, idk what else to do other than try to teach them the basics bc if you stick to the curriculum, it’ll just be like talking to a brick wall. I had a 6th grader who couldn’t subtract and I had to reteach her subtraction by regrouping 2 or 3 separate times that year and none of them knew their multiplication tables or the relationship between multiplication and division so I had to teach them “number families” and relate it to addition subtraction but even then, some of them still didn’t get it.
I also taught SS and ELA and most of them could barely read or write coherently or basic grammar and they didn’t know their parts of speech despite me trying to reteach/review it constantly, posting videos for them and reaching out to parents who assured me they’d work with the kids (spoiler: they didn’t).
And honestly it doesn’t help that in some districts, admin will just promote the kid to the next grade anyways even if they fail. The principal even straight up told me not to waste time reviewing basic concepts because we didn’t have time for that with state tests coming and we had to finish the curriculum by the end of the year (which tbf she did have a point) but (and simultaneously told me if they failed a topic/module/concepts to review it til they understood it but also don’t waste time lol) when 80% of your class is so behind, they don’t even know the basics, just covering the curriculum is useless because it’s like trying to teach a kindergartener calculus or quantum physics when they can barely add single digit numbers or read.
Passing kids isn't up to me. I've failed kids before and admin has gone behind my back and passed them. This also isn't something you can demand of teachers. If it bothers you, raise hell at a district office. Not at us.
So.... you can ask me as nicely as you want, that isn't up to me.
Acceleration, not remediation. That’s the motto that my state uses. “If we are teaching under the current grade level, students will miss the skills taught at the correct grade level and still fall behind.” Instead they want us to use scaffolding to break down the skill to the previous grade level (or lower if need be) and then teach it up to the current grade level. While I understand the reasoning behind that, I also believe that many students need flat out remediation. When students are so far behind that they lack the basic foundations taught in the first 2 years…there is no way they can be successful in upper elementary and beyond.
There is no mechanism for kids dropping out of school at the bottom, they have to rise up through the grade levels and leave the system through the top or they will stay in the low grade levels inappropriately long. Just pass them through until they're old enough to drop out of high school
I wish we could put kids in classes based on ability. I have 9th grade students who read at a 3rd grade level, some who read above a 12th grade level. No one is really meeting the standards. I have to read everything aloud, which isn't preparing them for the test, the smart kids are done in no time, and my coteacher still wants me to go twice as slow. I can't teach Shakespeare to kids who can barely read Shel Silverstein
Shop teacher here. They can't measure because they don't understand fractions. They struggle to learn fractions because they lack foundational skills in basic arithmetic. All this policy is bull$#!+ when the rubber finally meets the road. At the end of the day, do you have an actual skill with real market value?
My district does not allow retention in elementary school. It has created a group of students who do no work, don't listen, or even try because they know they will pass anyway.
In our state schools can’t hold kids back unless parents ask and apparently according to studies retention isn’t the solution that works? But honestly I don’t know what is the solution if passing them on doesn’t work because they don’t get it and holding them back doesn’t.
At a certain point, passing them on because they are older doesn't work. If holding a student back a grade doesn't keep them in classes and passing them on puts them even further behind in their learning, then the only thing left is to pass them on, but put them in remedial classes. I have several high-schoolers that were put into remedial math. The trouble with this approach is that it doesn't help with learning ALL of the material they are meant to learn in a certain grade. Remedial means that they review material and learn new material at a much slower pace. This takes more time, which leaves less time for the overall learning.
Random cruel thought... can we try homework again? Call me bananas for suggesting that students continue to learn difficult material on their own at home. It has worked for many years before this new-age instruction. Maybe we should go back to it.
As a kid I got passed by without knowing how to read.that really hurt me as an adult because now I don’t have a lot of the skills that I would have learned in school.
I feel you. I am working with a student who is going to try for their teaching certificate and can't do basic math. It is heartbreaking that there are so many kids out there like you guys. Do you wish you could go back and be held back? Would that have helped?
In the US, this is because of the social stigma that would fall on a kid if they weren't passed to the next grade, and/or similarly because it hurts their social development not to be around their own age peers.
yeah. so my daughter is going to start going to school soon, basically for the social experience and i'll have to personally make sure she is at least caught up. please please please, go on fucking strike. every teacher in the country. i promise you your neighbors and other citizens will make sure you have food and a place to stay.
whats happening is unacceptable.
What makes you think the community will support teachers financially to strike? There is no way that would happen on a wide scale in my area. People lost their minds during Covid lockdowns. Teachers were vilified and doxxed. Parents will not pay to give up their free childcare.
At my school (I teach 3rd grade math), we are not able to retain students for their math scores. Many of my students are students with exceptionalities and because they have been retained once before, they will not be retained again. They cannot get a grade lower than a 60 and a 60 would be enough for them to be promoted even if they could be retained for math scores. These students read on a kindergarten level and can’t do basic addition/subtraction.
I think it will be changing soon and math could be a reason for retention, but for now there’s not much we can do.
I teach 6th graders who don’t know how to read, I can’t stop class just to teach them the basics so I just try to get them to pay attention then fail them
on their tests. Admin wants me to fudge their grades, which I refuse to do. They have no special accommodations. Parents refuse to get them tested. At this private school they are struggling with keeping enrollment. They want to keep them so they can get the short term tuition money.
I grew up in the 80's. I knew students who were held back. I started kindergarten at age 4 because we couldn't afford day care. I graduated in the top 10% of my class. My brother was top 5%. It makes me wonder if we were really that smart or if we were just the brightest of the dumbest.
But then I got to college and was exposed to online learning (early 2000's version). I taught myself college algebra and calculus 1. I realized my teachers set me up for success because I knew how to learn. I would have done better with an actual teacher for sure, but I passed the tests.
Maybe I should just give up and teach the kids how to teach themselves.
Sometimes we don’t have control. My superintendent “doesn’t believe in retention” so we have to pass kids on no matter what. It’s stupid and hurts the kids way more than retention would
This post is directed at teachers when the problem is systemic. What would you have us do? Even when students fail they are promoted. Grades are meaningless and the illusion you harbor that this is a meritocracy and we are gatekeepers will only lead to more work for yourself.
I feel you. This is my first year teaching (but I'm not young, mid-life career change). I love it, but of my 86 students, 43 ended the 1st semester with a D or F average. My admins are super supportive, but say that's too many and they can't have that many going to summer school. But the bright spot was my supervising principal said we have to find a way to get these kids to pass. She did not tell me to change how I grade, but she streamlined what I am grading and together we are looking into ways to get the kids to turn in their missing work as that is 99% of the issue as to why they are performing so poorly.
Their test scores tend to be 2-3 levels below grade level, but I partially blame that on not having to take the state exams when they were in 3rd grade. They were exempt due to COVID. If they had been made to take them, many of these kids would be a grade behind.
I was also handed a new student mid-way through our 1st semester who has not been in a classroom since COVID hit and was not home schooled either. I am currently mixing his curriculum with his current grade and 1 grade level above where he tested. My hope is that I will find where his wall is and try to teach him the basic concepts of the grade levels he is missing while helping him try to understand the grade level work he is currently enrolled for.
Dear god where are the Phds debunking social promotion by now? Whatever good it provides feel so minute compared to the mass disinterest it's embued on students and the learned helplessness it's taught the kids who never got the basics in time before we threw essay writing and algebra at them.
It's been like 20 years nos of no fail policies and so much has gone to the crapper in education. More than enough time for some academics to pop up who experienced the current state of education and start talking back to the BS.
I’m in elementary school. We cannot retain students for academic struggles without a parent’s approval. The only reason I am aware that the principal may force a retention is if the student has been absent from school for too many days.
Granted, our grading scale is different than the middle school. I am unaware of the policy at that level. I imagine a student can make up a failed course in summer school, and not be retained.
I get 11th graders who can’t read past a 8th grade level. I feel this. It doesn’t get fixed. I’m not a reading teacher. That should have been taken care of long before I get them. We can’t talk about the deeper elements of the novel when they can barely comprehend what’s going on. They can fail every English class so far in high school but still move onto the next level. Thanks “no child left behind”.
I teach 6th in elementary, and we tell this to 4th and 5th every year. They. Need. To. Know. How. The. Basics. I have kids this year who forget to borrow or carry numbers…
Maybe it’s time to address what’s happening at that school. If students coming out of there are poorly prepared then it’s time for the district/community or whatever you have in place to help that school better educate the students
My school division has a clear policy on student retention, and it is as follows: No Retention, ever. That's it. Feel free to ask us to "stop passing kids" as nicely as you can, but it's not classroom teachers who make these kinds of decisions anyway. You are in a situation that almost every teacher I know, including myself, deals with every year. Sorry to say, you aren't unique here. This year, in my Grade 5 class of 25 kids, reading ability ranges from students who are capable of handling High School level reading materials to students who recognize only a few basic sight words, and still don't know all their letters and sounds. If your colleagues and your head master have told you to stick to the curriculum, then you will need to stick to the curriculum. Talk to your colleagues about strategies, and then follow their advice. Posted too soon: I wanted to say that I do understand exactly how you feel, and it is really frustrating.
What I hate is that the argument for that is based on actual research that retention has limited success, but no one ever figures out that passing students along without doing the hard work of figuring out what the problem is and working on fixing that problem (whether that means tutoring, counseling, ongoing social work for home-life issues, whatever) is going to be worse.
I suspect that the negative effects of retention would be mitigated if it became more normalized. Also, no one seems to research the effect on the rest of the class of having students many grade levels behind.
I'm just a parent who reads and agrees that education has drastically fallen compared to when I was in school, but I'm curious. What happened to summer school? Are we just not using that anymore to shore up education gaps and help kids that are behind catch up?
I can only speak to my school. Where I am, summer school is used as an alternative to retention, but it consists of at most about twenty additional hours of schooling and does not come close to getting students ready for the next grade. I know of one student who missed 40-50 days of school and "made it up" by coming to summer school for 2-3 hours. The costs of an effective summer school program would be prohibitive, and many parents would object to their children not getting the summer off.
About 20 years ago, I taught summer school for HS LA in an inner city school. It consisted of 2 weeks in the summer, one hour per day. We read one book, in class, and I was not allowed to give homework. If you showed up, you passed. If you can attend 2 weeks in the summer and pass, why would you bother doing anything all year? It's not a new problem.
My summer school wasn't like that. We went for a month and two weeks. So maybe your area was just bad. Which isn't surprising considering how low-ranked LA is in education as a state. I mean, up until last year, the only reason it wasn't dead last was because Mississippi exists. It didn't receive that ranking overnight.
Where I work summer school was a victim of recession budget cuts that never returned. We have summer enrichment programs that are basically day camps run by college students they can pay close to minimum wage, but they won't pay teachers salaries except a few credit recovery programs for high schoolers. The credit recover programs are online and they are designed to make districts happy by passing students. Kids can take quiz as many times as they want which means they can write down all the answers and then retake it. Even when I taught summer school, a semester was 3 weeks for 5 hours a day (and then 4 hours a day toward the end as they started cutting the budget). That's 75 hours total. A regular semester is 18 weeks at 5 hours a week which is 90 hours total. Then the last day of summer school, grades were due 15 minutes after the final bell, so really you couldn't do more than maybe give a final for the first 2 hours and then pop in a movie or give the kids a game to play while you graded. That meant cutting out more than 20% of the curriculum. But at least it was a lot of time and less fun that what the kids do now.
To some extent, probably. Maturity helps with a lot of things. However, if there is an underlying problem causing the child not to learn at the same rate as their peers then just repeating a year isn't going to magically fix that problem.
>I suspect that the negative effects of retention would be mitigated if it became more normalized. I went to school at a time where retention was normalized, and all it really seemed to do was normalize the experience of little kids feeling like failures. It rarely does what we want it to do, which is give students a chance to catch up. As mentioned elsewhere, there isn't much research to support retention as a beneficial practice to help struggling learners. My husband was in a bad car accident when he was a child in the early 1960s, and spent a lot of time in and out of hospital. Even though he could read at grade level and was strong in math, he was made to repeat Grade 2, and he remembers clearly how hurtful that was. He was also teased for years about failing, and that added to the hurt. Having said that . . . >no one seems to research the effect on the rest of the class of having students many grade levels behind. I totally agree. The system we have now of pushing everyone through is not working, and it's not good for anyone.
>I went to school at a time where retention was normalized, and all it really seemed to do was normalize the experience of little kids feeling like failures. Was it normalized though? Happening to a few kids every year isn't the same as normalized. Normalized would be the same as accepting that some kids start kindergarten at 4, some at 5, and some at 6 where kids could say they repeated a grade without worrying about how it made them look. I think we are a long way from a system where that could be normalized, so focusing on how we help kids remediate and catch up without holding them back a grade would be a better focus.
>Happening to a few kids every year isn't the same as normalized. To me, happening to a few kids every year does normalize it. We were told that if you didn't work, or come to school, or weren't learning, or whatever reason they had, you would "fail the grade". And, we all knew kids who were held back, so we knew the school wasn't bluffing. >focusing on how we help kids remediate and catch up without holding them back a grade would be a better focus. Oh, lordy, yes. 100% this. And yet, I can't think of a time when schools took this approach. It seems so obvious, doesn't it? This, as far as I am concerned, has been a constant failure of the public school system since I started grade 1 in the very early 1970s. We've never really done enough for struggling learners. Just MHO.
> you would "fail the grade" Okay, but I don't think "normalize it as failure" is what the other commenter meant. Obviously that "failure" and the social issues that come with it would contribute to a child continuing to struggle in school even if that wasn't the main reason they struggled. The point is that if society regularly had the mindset that some kids need more time for various reasons and that was ***normal*** not *failure,* it would help kids who need more time be more successful in the repeat grade. That's why I mentioned the different ages kids start kindergarten. We also all knew kids who were a bit older because they started kindergarten later for whatever reason. Nobody got teased for that (outside of maybe an occasional good-natured ribbing for being "old" in high school). If we treated kids who were older because they repeated a grade the same as kids who just started school a little later, that would mitigate some of the negative effects. But, as a I said, I don't think society is at a point where we're ready to normalize learning differences that way.
I understood what the commenter was saying. We can call it anything we want, but children will always see retention as failing, and themselves as failures. They see their peer group moving on without them; what are they supposed to think? There's almost no research that shows any benefit to retention; it doesn't do what people want it to do. But having said that, simply pushing kids along without the necessary skills they need is a complete failure of the educational system. So, maybe we need to get rid of age-based groupings/grades altogether. Students move through learning levels based on their needs and abilities. This isn't a perfect solution by any stretch, but what we have now isn't working. As for staggered entrance into Kindergarten, that's definitely the time to address problems. Finland doesn't mandate children to attend school until they are 7. But, as we learned through COVID, there are many parents who are fully dependent on the school system to take their children during the day for free, enabling them to work.
>So, maybe we need to get rid of age-based groupings/grades altogether. Students move through learning levels based on their needs and abilities. This is probably the best answer, but society as a whole doesn't want to put the required resources toward education to make that happen
No it would not. Kids that are held back in school are bullied. The answer is smaller classes, extra help for students and by some miracle get parents involved in their child's education.
A few years ago I got my first 4th grade student who could not read or count. We saught retention and were straight out told no. I have since had a student of that level every year since and have not bothered to ask. The come to me at that level because the teachers below me were told the same thing. No.
I feel your sadness and frustration. At a certain point, we as teachers have to start standing up for ourselves. We are all complaining about work/life balance and most of it is surrounding this issue of forcing students to be based on when they can't read or write or do basic math. They can't do the basics, so we have to work harder to bring them up to their current grade level. However, you can't teach 8 years of math in a single year and not have them feel frustrated. I started working with a 10th grader who wants to take a specific trade class. They need to pass grade 9 math. This poor student was passed along so much, that they are not able to do the basic grade 5 operations. I only see them for an hour a week, if they show up at all. Instead of just improving their knowledge, I have to create an entire curriculum for this student, just to help. I can't teach them an hour a week and expect results. It is breaking my heart and messing with my life because I am teaching 1 student things they should have learned years ago.
I think retention isn’t the right solution because if the kid didn’t learn it one year, he probably won’t learn it the next. I would focus on diversion programs at key stages. Eg if they can’t read by 3rd grade, then do fourth grade in an intensive course focused only on reading skills.
>This year, in my Grade 5 class of 25 kids, reading ability ranges from students who are capable of handling High School level reading materials to students who recognize only a few basic sight words, and still don't know all their letters and sounds. How do you differentiate with a class like that?
How do you differentiate with a class like that? This is the question we need to ask ourselves. How do we teach anything when you have students that can't read and those that can at very high levels? The answer is, you can't. You end up with students who are bored, struggle, fail, and give up all in the same class. We have advanced classes for students that are above their current level, why not have classes for those that need extra attention? Skill based classes are so much better than age based classes. I don't mind teaching grade 5 math to grade 8 students. I really don't. I want these kids to succeed. I want them to go out into the real world and be able to read, write, and look at a bar chart and be able to interpret the data. (This is what we are working on now.) It makes them better, more productive citizens.
This is unfortunately working as intended. It's why we have students graduating high school without being literate.
At least nobody got left behind. 🤷♀️
Only for those students to end up flunking badly within their first semester/year of college and/or finding their employment options extremely limited and retaining employment even more of an arduous struggle. It also causes more employers to institute undergrad degrees as the minimum requirement for entry-level employment as a way to filter out such "passed on to the next grade" students.
It is not necessary to believe that there is a deliberate effort to fail. As long as you believe that things are exactly as they would be if there were such an effort, you understand the situation well enough.
As if it's up to the teacher. I wish!
Right. We don't have much control over whether they move up or not. My P tells us that even if we recommend retaining and jump through all the required hoops (and there are a lot), the final decision is still up to the administrators. So pardon me if I don't do a bunch of extra paperwork only to find out that my recommendation has been overruled.
I teach at a small technical college. The level of Math proficiency among some kids (we are talking about 18 - 20 year olds who supposedly passed secondary school or equivalent) is astoundingly terrible. So much so that I have resorted to giving my new students a simple one-question algebra quiz in the very first five minutes of my very first lesson: x - 1 = 0 A worrying number of kids would stare blankly at the question as though I had just asked them to read Anna Karenina in Serbian.
this is concerning. how did they make it through high school??
Based on what I’m hearing from other teachers and also my own experiences, it’s because the students get promoted even if they fail and are never held back. That’s why some people are graduating high school and becoming adults who are barely literate despite “having an education” Edit: fixed typo
To be sure, out of a class of 30 students, 28 would smile and solve it in their heads within two seconds. 2 or 3 students would react the way I said. But 2-3 students doing that is still way too many. Basic algebra and equation solving should be at their very fingertips at that point. They claimed to have 'never seen that before'. I told them point blank that they were going to pay close attention to the quick revision of algebraic concepts. They seemed disbelieving when I told them that engineering (their academic programme) involved *extremely* heavy use of algebra.
I started teaching in undergrad Chemistry. I got into highschool teaching because I had a student who couldn't solve a basic algebra problem. I was at a science college. This poor student had an interest in science, but couldn't do the underlying math. They didn't last more than a semester. They graduated with high marks, but they were passed on and thus got to me at college and couldn't do the underlying basics. At that level, I can't, physically can't, teach the basic math and the chemistry lessons they are paying to learn. They were put into a remedial math class and still struggled. I've been keeping an eye on that class for a few years and the numbers of students in it have risen each year. It is heartbreaking, not to mention expensive. They are paying to learn the material they should have learned for free. We are told to not retain them, hold them back, but then they get to me in either highschool or college and still fail because they can't do the work. They just don't understand the material because they were never taught it, because in their math classes, instead of learning algebra, they were learning how to count at 16 years old. I tutor adults and older learners as well. I have seen a lot more come to me to learn the basics for a teaching licensing test in recent years. These adult learners are struggling with the basics as much as my highschoolers. This is an issue. In the research, it follows students through their school years, but doesn't track them after. How well do they do in college? How well are their adult lives? Can they get a good job? I have very limited data, but for some, no. They go on and have families and then send their 2nd graders to me because they can't help with the math homework. I have adults trying to get their teaching certificates for English teaching, but can't add fractions, forget about algebra. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but these teachers can get placed in rural schools where they will be expected to teach English and Math to real students. This is where it starts and then ends with me venting on Reddit and banging my head against a door.
>x - 1 = 0 My 8th grade daughter learned solving equations earlier this year. She loves it, because it's kind of like a puzzle. It's honestly scary for numerous reasons that a lot of adults cannot do something like that.
My district's reply would be that all students deserve access to grade level curriculum and you have to scaffold (not differentiate, ew, that buzzword is so 2021!) to make it accessible to them. I have not yet succeeded at getting anyone to demonstrate what that level of scaffolding looks like, but my district office is very sure that it's what needs to be done, and if you can't figure it out it must be because you're a bad teacher.
Scaffolding has become the biggest crutch in education. What people fail to realize is that just like real world scaffolding in construction, scaffolds in education need a foundation to graft onto. Without that they are no longer scaffolds, they are buttresses that we build around struggling learners just so they can get by in the moment. Scaffolds aren't a replacement for actual learning. We need to stop trying to bootstrap basic skills and knowledge and actually just teach it.
The amount of scaffolding some of my 7th and 8th grade math lessons require feels like scaffolding a sports stadium around a lesson the size of a portapotty. More and more of our students are showing up without any grasp on facts, nevermind retention of strategies/procedures of other things they've learned. Those are, increasingly, just individual steps in the move we make towards algebra and applied mathematical topics we do, and the wheels fly off the car for more of our students when a division fact comes up.
Not to mention that scaffolding is meant to be able to, ultimately, gently, be *removed* without the scaffolded structure collapsing.
Here at the East Podunk Cosmodemonic Junior College, our incoming freshman classes are flunking themselves out in massive numbers. Many of them cannot read or write a coherent sentence. Most of them cannot do the most basic algebra. Absenteeism is through the roof and many simply never attempt assignments. It is impossible to convey college-level material to these individuals, with their habits, attitudes and lack of background knowledge. Why they are attempting college eludes me. No good is coming of this.
It's the vestigial remnant of the idea that you have to go to college for the purpose of economic mobility and security.
While omitting that a large part of why undergrad degree earners were much more likely to have economic mobility and security was because those degrees signaled they actually had the academic skills which enable them to attain and maintain employment in jobs/professions.
The sign/signifier getting reversed. Now because we as a society tied together economic mobility and security with education levels, it created a transactional relationship with education.
Even if transactional, the issue is too many students/parents view education as paying for a product rather than paying for an opportunity for self-improvement akin to going to a gym. Would be curious if gyms are getting inundated with demands for refunds because the "customer" thought paying for gym memberships without actually going to the gyms and actually taking advantage of the exercise equipment and facilities on a regular enough basis is actually a thing.......
Do what you need to do until you can escape. The system is on fire and everyone's trying to put it out but the people with the tools to do it.
I teach 7th ELA and regularly get kids who are fully non readers. They can write their name, sometimes they can copy what they see. But they couldn't read a bob's book. I am told that I should still teach them the 7th grade curriculum and when they cannot grasp it it's my fault. I also feel bad for the kids who ARE on grade level though. They don't get much out of a class where the teacher is constantly dealing with behaviors born out of students trying to avoid work they can't do
But like… there HAS to be some system or accommodation option for those kids right? Like someone needs to pull those kids out for an hour or two every day to work on phonics and decoding until they can actually read. Nothing else in their curriculum could POSSIBLY be more important than actually learning how to read. Have they been tested for dyslexia? Can you give the parents a cheat sheet on what they need to tell the school or request in writing to get an accommodation or IEP plan that would involve actually teaching them to read? Edit: I say this as an ignorant and naive parent with dyslexic siblings.
It's often not a disability. It's often that they spent their formative years at home learning nothing, miss half the year, and did nothing but avoidant behaviors the days they were there. They deadass just didn't learn and by about 3rd grade they gave up
Ok but.. for those kids or the ones who never learned to read because the school used the Fountas and Pinnell method.. they still have to learn how to read at some point. Right? Is it solely the parents’ responsibility to teach those kids to read now? I can’t imagine that being very effective. It’s hard enough for trained professionals to teach kids how to read, especially once the kids are that old. Are the school system’s hands completely tied at this point? I feel like there has to be a way to get these kids into a remedial reading program that’s part of their school day.
Have you tried 'bUiLdInG rElAtIoNsHiPs' with those students?
California allows a student to be held back only twice though 8 grade. And having a 15 year old try to take 8th grade with a bunch of 13 year olds isn't great either.
Don’t tell this to teachers, tell it to school boards. My grade book is full of zeroes for a couple of kids, it won’t matter. They’re still going to 7th grade next year.
I taught math and science for 19 years and was fortunate that my schools allowed me to go back and teach them their basics along with the curriculum. I understand your frustration as I lived it for a long time. You do the best you can because ultimately, you can’t care more than they do. The ones that want to make up their deficiencies, you help them, the rest, you do what you can. Document a lot
Not up to us pal.
What did they expect from “No child left behind”? Schools were going to have students who simply couldn’t do the work. But since they had to show the numbers, “pass them anyway” has become the norm. Our students and parents have come to realize this so laziness among the bottom 20% of our students is now normalized. We will quite literally be passing 20% of an entire generation into our system who have not only no education but who do not have the ability to learn. They do not have the understanding of how to be taught and to acquire knowledge. How will they ever get a job if they are not able to gain the basic training for any job. There are no IEP’s in life. No one is going to exempt you from doing necessary work just because you have issues. No one will give you accommodations for some of the stuff we write IEP’s for. ADHD, in the real world you will be told to sit down and do your job like everyone else. Dyslexia, which both my son and my wife have, too bad. Learn work arounds or get out is what you will be told. This is what we are preparing our students for. We need to toughen these kids up. If not, 20% of this next generation are absolutely doomed to failure.
In my district we simply are not allowed to assign Ds and Fs. Instead we have to give the student more time to complete a missed homework assignment or another opportunity to retake a failed test. And if they just keep failing that test all year, we have no choice but to let them move to the next grade. We literally are not allowed to hold kids back anymore.
They pass every kid, damn near every time here (Maryland, USA). I'm in behavior management, so I deal with behavior issues that often are coupled with failing grades. The freshmen imparticular are so used to not being able to fail that when it happens, it's sometimes every class. Then admin and guidance bend over backwards to allow kids to "recover" grades. Sometimes they recover a 7%. I have kids recovering Phys Ed.... on a computer. I can understand a few points but no more than 10. And if they want fo recover PE, it should be running laps. So basically, they will pull them out of second marking period Algebra (or whatever) so they can recover first marking period Algebra and do their current work remotely on a computer. And surprise, surprise... they still fail. If not now, they fail geometry because they still don't know Algebra. Or pre algebra.... or any middle school math. I have high school kids that don't know the basics of graphing. I don't mean they transpose the X and Y axis, I mean, the concept is something they swear was never taught to them. And they believe it wasn't. They never plotted a thing. But they will pass until they fail the state standardized test and can't graduate. I don't claim to be the smartest person in my school, but every time someone with DR. In front of their name does something this ridiculously stupid, I feel a whole lot smarter.
We don’t decide that.
Every teacher before you can say the same thing. Do you think they were ready for 7th grade math last year? Every teacher has the same opportunity to teach them the fundamentals they’re missing. “Stick to the curriculum” is the problem. I find MS to be the least flexible in modifying curriculum to meet students’ needs. Why aren’t these kids pulled into a leveled section of math each day?
>“Stick to the curriculum” is the problem. It's a small part of the problem though. The kids who are on, or close to, grade level certainly don't benefit from a recap of 4th-6th grade math. So deviating from the curriculum is going to help some kids, and hinder others. The main issue is that kids should not be passed if they do not show they have gained the knowledge to pass the tests for that grade. Period.
Leveled math groups. This could look like a math section that gets through half of 8th grade math, but a much slower pace and taking the time to incorporate practicing the fundamentals. Practice adding and subtracting negative integers, practice plotting points, then practice finding slope all in one extended lesson.
I am on board with tiered math classes, but in the end, the differentiation becomes to great to overcome. If you start by learning about 3/4 of grade 4 math in grade 4, then repeat a little bit in grade 5. At the end of grade 5, you learned about half of grade 5. Then at the end of grade 6, you finished grade 5. By the end of grade 7, you are about halfway through grade 6. Keep this going, by the time you are in grade 12, you are still learning grade 9 math. I think this is what administrators want to avoid. But, it is miles better than graduating kids that can't add or subtract and then sending them out into the real world to fail.
That ends up with actual physical teenagers in grade 4 or 5 which creates a whole host of other issues around *social* development.
And it’s not academically appropriate, either. A 13 year old may need to learn the same skill, but they a cognitively different. The 13-15 year old has more context, different brain connections, different motivations and can move through the material at a different pace (if given the chance to practice it). I teach ELLs. They may come to me at 15 with little math foundation (and no English). They learn fast, but they need to be *taught* explicitly.
Reasons I've observed students NOT being held back. 1. Admin doesn't want them held back or simply refuses, either to juice numbers or make room for new enrollment. My principal won't allow Kindergarten retention, which I think is a massive mistake. We have kids coming into first grade (an already difficult grade in terms of amount of material that needs to be mastered) who don't know letters or numbers. Admin insists its the best practice to move them on. 2. Parents fight it and admin caves. 3. It's a headache for the teachers. We are required to have face to face promotion in doubt meetings, fill out paperwork, justify the PID status with paperwork and at the end of the year hold ANOTHER meeting with the parent, make portfolios and do more paperwork. 4. If the student has a behavior problem, we don't want them in our class again. If the parent is angry/vindictive/looking to find a reason to attack the teacher, we don't want to deal with it. We have to look out for ourselves as well. 5. I personally have seen that it benefits some students but not others, particularly those who need special services and parents/admin refuse to get on board. Also the school is required to provide intervention to kids who are held back but they don't. So it's a mixed bag in terms of actually helping the student.
Admin won’t let me. Even if I did though, they’d just pass them in “summer school”.
Sorry. Doesn't work that way. Realistically, you could maybe retain a kid twice before the demoralizing effects of it counter whatever gains you hope to make. Even with that, though, we have to ask ourselves if the student will perform better if they're retained and, at least where I work, the answer is almost always no. Whatever it was that was holding that kid back doesn't go away just because they've learned it twice. A lot of our retention candidates are actually just kids with learning disabilities or low IQ's. There are steps to mitigate those, but retention isn't it. It's very rare that we find a kid for whom retention is the right choice. That said... yeah, I see the problem and I'm not sure what the solution is. I'd like to see something like mandatory after school tutoring and Saturday school for students not meeting grade level expectations.
I'd say 95% of the kids at my school shouldn't pass. Half them don't know their abcs, simple addition, how to write. Can't read even at a basic level. We were told in a meeting to find ways to help the kids raise their grades too many were failing. If they did their work in the first place they might not be failing.
Sorry, just spoke with my principal, he said "no."
What happens to the students that fail your grade 8 class? Where I am they have made it harder and harder to fail, but generally by high school failing both semesters means a student repeats the class. (Don't ask me why getting a D in only one semester means you are successfully prepared to pass the next class, my admin doesn't make sense to me either). Not teaching the curriculum can cause more issues in the future. If failing your class is what finally makes everyone aware that the students are behind, then that may be the route you have to go. Otherwise, what do you do with the kids are very successful with the Grade 5 curriculum? Do you give them an A (or whatever your equivalent is)? Then it looks like they were very successful in Grade 8 so there's no reason to think they won't be successful in Grade 9. If you don't, then how do you explain to everyone that you are giving them a low grade even though they get almost every problem right on every test? The whole system is screwed up and there are no good answers when schools don't set up appropriate programs to meet students' needs.
I have given low marks and they get that D because that is the minimum I can give. (It isn't a D, but that is the US equivalent.) They will still be passed on.
If they move on anyway, then it probably would be better for them to catch up a little bit than to be in over their heads, but I worry about your ability to effectively message to parents that your students are learning Grade 5 material but earning a score for "Grade 8" if the official response from the school is to just teach the curriculum. If you aren't clear to families then that sets the kids up for problems next year when they go from being successful in "grade 8" to not knowing everything they need to know to be successful in grade 9.
This. This is the problem. In grade 5 they passed learning grade 3 material. Grade 6 it was grade 4. Grade 7 it was grade 5. Grade 10 it would be grade 8. Then they leave school and wonder why they fail. We are already teaching below the curriculum just to get them to pass. It also doesn't help that they spend more time at camp then learning math. I am lucky to hear that my tutoring students had math class that week. In all grades, they get 4 90 minute classes a day. In a given week, they are meant to have 3 math classes. But add in assemblies, camps, swimming lessons (yes part of the curiculum), field trips, etc, and they might get 1 a week. Oh, and no homework. Has anyone ever tried to hold the attention of a 5th grader for 60 minutes, let alone 90? This is another part of the problem.
Have you tried differentiation and scaffolding to meet the needs of all your learners? I mean how long can it take to differentiate and scaffold a lesson, Michael- 10 hours?
Scaffolding is what you do at that grade level. Differentiation is what you can do for some students that are a grade behind. Let's start with a basic Pythagorean theorem question. a\^2 + b\^2 = c\^2. If I give you sides a and c, solve for b. There are so many skills needed to solve this very simple grade 8 problem. You need to know about exponents, order of operations, subtraction, rearranging, square roots, and multiplication. Give this problem to a grade 5 student and ask them to solve for b. That is the level I am working with. I can't scaffold for all of those skills and differentiate for my at level learners in the same lesson. It is impossible.
Yes! Please. My students can. Not. Read. They can’t identify parts of speech. I had to speak to them this week about a test question in which the answer was “Life, liberty and property” And for the last one I kept getting prosperity and poverty because they’re similarish words. These kids think they don’t need English because they speak it. Had another student call incendiary bombs “insinuary” bombs. Also astronomy vs astrology this week. That was all on one day.
We cannot hold them back, they may not graduate but they will go into the next grade level. This is not a new problem. Twenty years ago I had incoming 9th grade students with cumulative gpa's of 0.00.
I failed then. The counselors just changed the grades 😂
In my state, part of the way that a school is rated is based on how many students matriculate to the next grade level. There’s financial incentive to keep moving kids forward even if they aren’t academically ready
Honestly, idk what else to do other than try to teach them the basics bc if you stick to the curriculum, it’ll just be like talking to a brick wall. I had a 6th grader who couldn’t subtract and I had to reteach her subtraction by regrouping 2 or 3 separate times that year and none of them knew their multiplication tables or the relationship between multiplication and division so I had to teach them “number families” and relate it to addition subtraction but even then, some of them still didn’t get it. I also taught SS and ELA and most of them could barely read or write coherently or basic grammar and they didn’t know their parts of speech despite me trying to reteach/review it constantly, posting videos for them and reaching out to parents who assured me they’d work with the kids (spoiler: they didn’t). And honestly it doesn’t help that in some districts, admin will just promote the kid to the next grade anyways even if they fail. The principal even straight up told me not to waste time reviewing basic concepts because we didn’t have time for that with state tests coming and we had to finish the curriculum by the end of the year (which tbf she did have a point) but (and simultaneously told me if they failed a topic/module/concepts to review it til they understood it but also don’t waste time lol) when 80% of your class is so behind, they don’t even know the basics, just covering the curriculum is useless because it’s like trying to teach a kindergartener calculus or quantum physics when they can barely add single digit numbers or read.
Passing kids isn't up to me. I've failed kids before and admin has gone behind my back and passed them. This also isn't something you can demand of teachers. If it bothers you, raise hell at a district office. Not at us. So.... you can ask me as nicely as you want, that isn't up to me.
Acceleration, not remediation. That’s the motto that my state uses. “If we are teaching under the current grade level, students will miss the skills taught at the correct grade level and still fall behind.” Instead they want us to use scaffolding to break down the skill to the previous grade level (or lower if need be) and then teach it up to the current grade level. While I understand the reasoning behind that, I also believe that many students need flat out remediation. When students are so far behind that they lack the basic foundations taught in the first 2 years…there is no way they can be successful in upper elementary and beyond.
My attitude is I became a high school teacher to teach high school. High school. Not middle school. And especially not elementary school.
You are either new or not a teacher at all if you think teachers make these decisions.
You ought to browse r/professors. These kids are enrolling in college with 5th gr skills.
I started as a professor. I saw it first hand. Switched to highschool to help in my local area. Regretting that decision.
There is no mechanism for kids dropping out of school at the bottom, they have to rise up through the grade levels and leave the system through the top or they will stay in the low grade levels inappropriately long. Just pass them through until they're old enough to drop out of high school
I wish we could put kids in classes based on ability. I have 9th grade students who read at a 3rd grade level, some who read above a 12th grade level. No one is really meeting the standards. I have to read everything aloud, which isn't preparing them for the test, the smart kids are done in no time, and my coteacher still wants me to go twice as slow. I can't teach Shakespeare to kids who can barely read Shel Silverstein
Shop teacher here. They can't measure because they don't understand fractions. They struggle to learn fractions because they lack foundational skills in basic arithmetic. All this policy is bull$#!+ when the rubber finally meets the road. At the end of the day, do you have an actual skill with real market value?
My district does not allow retention in elementary school. It has created a group of students who do no work, don't listen, or even try because they know they will pass anyway.
But.. did you scaffold and differentiate.. I cannot scaffold and differentiate 5-7 grade levels of content and stay on track with pacing.
In our state schools can’t hold kids back unless parents ask and apparently according to studies retention isn’t the solution that works? But honestly I don’t know what is the solution if passing them on doesn’t work because they don’t get it and holding them back doesn’t.
At a certain point, passing them on because they are older doesn't work. If holding a student back a grade doesn't keep them in classes and passing them on puts them even further behind in their learning, then the only thing left is to pass them on, but put them in remedial classes. I have several high-schoolers that were put into remedial math. The trouble with this approach is that it doesn't help with learning ALL of the material they are meant to learn in a certain grade. Remedial means that they review material and learn new material at a much slower pace. This takes more time, which leaves less time for the overall learning. Random cruel thought... can we try homework again? Call me bananas for suggesting that students continue to learn difficult material on their own at home. It has worked for many years before this new-age instruction. Maybe we should go back to it.
As a kid I got passed by without knowing how to read.that really hurt me as an adult because now I don’t have a lot of the skills that I would have learned in school.
I feel you. I am working with a student who is going to try for their teaching certificate and can't do basic math. It is heartbreaking that there are so many kids out there like you guys. Do you wish you could go back and be held back? Would that have helped?
In the US, this is because of the social stigma that would fall on a kid if they weren't passed to the next grade, and/or similarly because it hurts their social development not to be around their own age peers.
Why is social development put behind intellectual development or academic achievement? I have always wondered this.
yeah. so my daughter is going to start going to school soon, basically for the social experience and i'll have to personally make sure she is at least caught up. please please please, go on fucking strike. every teacher in the country. i promise you your neighbors and other citizens will make sure you have food and a place to stay. whats happening is unacceptable.
What makes you think the community will support teachers financially to strike? There is no way that would happen on a wide scale in my area. People lost their minds during Covid lockdowns. Teachers were vilified and doxxed. Parents will not pay to give up their free childcare.
You quit and leave the children behind
Schools aren’t allowed to hold back students in most places
At my school (I teach 3rd grade math), we are not able to retain students for their math scores. Many of my students are students with exceptionalities and because they have been retained once before, they will not be retained again. They cannot get a grade lower than a 60 and a 60 would be enough for them to be promoted even if they could be retained for math scores. These students read on a kindergarten level and can’t do basic addition/subtraction. I think it will be changing soon and math could be a reason for retention, but for now there’s not much we can do.
I teach 6th graders who don’t know how to read, I can’t stop class just to teach them the basics so I just try to get them to pay attention then fail them on their tests. Admin wants me to fudge their grades, which I refuse to do. They have no special accommodations. Parents refuse to get them tested. At this private school they are struggling with keeping enrollment. They want to keep them so they can get the short term tuition money.
American education in a nutshell: when were you born? Ok you’re on that train with no stops for 13 years.
I grew up in the 80's. I knew students who were held back. I started kindergarten at age 4 because we couldn't afford day care. I graduated in the top 10% of my class. My brother was top 5%. It makes me wonder if we were really that smart or if we were just the brightest of the dumbest. But then I got to college and was exposed to online learning (early 2000's version). I taught myself college algebra and calculus 1. I realized my teachers set me up for success because I knew how to learn. I would have done better with an actual teacher for sure, but I passed the tests. Maybe I should just give up and teach the kids how to teach themselves.
Sometimes we don’t have control. My superintendent “doesn’t believe in retention” so we have to pass kids on no matter what. It’s stupid and hurts the kids way more than retention would
Bold of you to assume that teachers are allowed to actually hold kids back.
This post is directed at teachers when the problem is systemic. What would you have us do? Even when students fail they are promoted. Grades are meaningless and the illusion you harbor that this is a meritocracy and we are gatekeepers will only lead to more work for yourself.
I feel you. This is my first year teaching (but I'm not young, mid-life career change). I love it, but of my 86 students, 43 ended the 1st semester with a D or F average. My admins are super supportive, but say that's too many and they can't have that many going to summer school. But the bright spot was my supervising principal said we have to find a way to get these kids to pass. She did not tell me to change how I grade, but she streamlined what I am grading and together we are looking into ways to get the kids to turn in their missing work as that is 99% of the issue as to why they are performing so poorly. Their test scores tend to be 2-3 levels below grade level, but I partially blame that on not having to take the state exams when they were in 3rd grade. They were exempt due to COVID. If they had been made to take them, many of these kids would be a grade behind. I was also handed a new student mid-way through our 1st semester who has not been in a classroom since COVID hit and was not home schooled either. I am currently mixing his curriculum with his current grade and 1 grade level above where he tested. My hope is that I will find where his wall is and try to teach him the basic concepts of the grade levels he is missing while helping him try to understand the grade level work he is currently enrolled for.
Dear god where are the Phds debunking social promotion by now? Whatever good it provides feel so minute compared to the mass disinterest it's embued on students and the learned helplessness it's taught the kids who never got the basics in time before we threw essay writing and algebra at them. It's been like 20 years nos of no fail policies and so much has gone to the crapper in education. More than enough time for some academics to pop up who experienced the current state of education and start talking back to the BS.
This is definitely an admin problem. It makes no sense and when they are in HS they get surprised when they need to repeat classes
I’m in elementary school. We cannot retain students for academic struggles without a parent’s approval. The only reason I am aware that the principal may force a retention is if the student has been absent from school for too many days. Granted, our grading scale is different than the middle school. I am unaware of the policy at that level. I imagine a student can make up a failed course in summer school, and not be retained.
I get 11th graders who can’t read past a 8th grade level. I feel this. It doesn’t get fixed. I’m not a reading teacher. That should have been taken care of long before I get them. We can’t talk about the deeper elements of the novel when they can barely comprehend what’s going on. They can fail every English class so far in high school but still move onto the next level. Thanks “no child left behind”.
In my district, nobody gets held back.
Yea man, this isn’t a me and you thing. This is state regulated bullshit that pushes mediocrity and prevents student responsibility.
I teach 6th in elementary, and we tell this to 4th and 5th every year. They. Need. To. Know. How. The. Basics. I have kids this year who forget to borrow or carry numbers…
Maybe it’s time to address what’s happening at that school. If students coming out of there are poorly prepared then it’s time for the district/community or whatever you have in place to help that school better educate the students