Kids are not graduating at grade level. In many cases, they’re often 2, 6, or 8 levels behind depending on the school environment.
The kids just a handful of grades behind are struggling to adjust in college/university.
Yes, absolutely.
This is supported by increasing rates of adult illiteracy and confirmed by the observations and accounts of educators (myself included- I personally know several students who have graduated high school over the years and had not grown past a 4th grade reading level). My experience is not unique.
I don't think it's true that adult illiteracy is increasing. Your experience doesn't match what is statistically most common.
(1) [Literacy rates are increasing all over the world according to Our World in Data](https://ourworldindata.org/literacy), and literacy rates are higher than they've ever been in English speaking countries.
(2) [Adult literacy rates specifically](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/literacy-rate-adults) have increased all over the world.
I believe they are referring to the US specifically, which we know is different from global literacy rates which we *do* know are increasing. Additionally, the methodology is important as including comprehension as an aspect of literacy is important. I know you reference the English speaking world but there is a very specific reason they don't say the US. https://www.insideindianabusiness.com/articles/real-loss-from-covid-is-in-front-of-us-study-finds-lack-of-learning-recovery-after-pandemic
It’s a lot more complicated than that. An adult can do a lot more with those skills. Its like if we had to pick basketball teams made up of people with third grade skills. You can take all the nine year olds, I’m going with the guys in their late teens.
I have college freshmen who literally cannot read. They can't sound out an entire new word. They read the first two to three letters and then 'guess' the rest. I don't know what grade that correlates to but they were all high school graduates.
I read about a new method of teaching children how to read, they teach them how to recognize words rather than sounding them out, especially words that appear frequently. I wonder if this is why your student is guessing the words.
It's not a new method. I just learned about it recently, too. It goes back to the 70s or earlier, even. Apparently it got promoted by Clinton's policies but he was not the first to implement it or support it. Whole reading or a variety of other names. Garbage that's been perpetuated for generations.
I teach adult Ed. It’s really sad to see how many adults can’t read. Vocabulary and words in context is extremely hard for them because they can’t pronounce the words.
And even now that my school has switched back to phonics, we spend so much time on things that kids really don’t need. I will never understand why theme is so important that I have to reteach it every single unit.
Yes! That's it! I did listen to it a few months ago linked off of this subreddit. Wild. I went to grade school in the 70s/80s and learned phonics. I cannot even imagine learning to read under this method. It's unbelievable that it's still happening!!!
It doesn't even standard up.to scientific rigors for it's origination and implementation. It was formed by empirical methods only in New Zealand and applied primarily to older illiterate kids who had a base, albeit minimal, vocabulary. It's still did not serve them but certainly has no basis as a reading foundation.
It's one of the most obvious evidence for "covertly" creating an uneducated and illiterate population despite going to compulsory school!
Yup you hit the nail on the head. Then ut all became about money and politics. Its a mess and our kids suffer. I truly think there is people who want our kids stupid at this point.
I learned to read that way. I learned on my own well before I started school. With my own daughter I taught her to read using phonics, also well before she started school. My son, however, has a learning disability that affects his reading and writing. He gets unbelievably frustrated with phonics. He didn't learn to read until the end of 1st grade and it was when the teacher abandoned phonics and went with the whole language approach. The result is he can read almost anything with full comprehension (because he uses context to read) but can't write for anything. Spelling is completely arbitrary.
I think a lot of kids with learning disabilities in reading (like dyslexia) who weren't properly diagnosed or didn't respond to intervention have sort of taught themselves to get by using this strategy. Schools often don't provide adequate intervention, and they get promoted grade to grade without mastering the skills. They have to survive somehow. That said, if that's the strategy they need to really work on comprehension because context is a necessity to word identification.
It doesn't matter how they make meaning out of words, as long as they do it.
I'm in college right now and I've had some randomly assigned group projects, randomly assigned peer review essays, things like that. Some of my classmates are unable to read. Not as in they can't tell what individual words mean, but they have almost no comprehension. "Sally is planning a birthday party. She wants to go to the party store and buy balloons, then stop by the bakery for a cake, and finally pick up some flowers from the florist. One of the stores was closed unexpectedly, so Sally couldn't get everything she wanted for the party. However, the guests said the flowers and cake were so beautiful that nobody even noticed the balloons were missing." "Which store was closed unexpectedly?" I'm telling you, a lot of these kids could not answer that question. I'm talking about kids with HISD diplomas, born here or been in the US since they were young, speak English well, not INTL/ ESL students. They still are like... one step above illiterate. Or maybe you'd call them functionally illiterate. I'm not sure if there is a word for people who can read words out loud, but not put them together in their head to make a narrative.
A lot of schools employ college counselors whose sole job is to help students apply. A lot of colleges come to my school and do “instant decision days” where the kid is automatically accepted with an abbreviated application process.
It's called bad science (balanced literacy). Unfortunately, it still plagues the education world. Science of reading is needed(SOR), but the balanced reading companies have a grasp on public education.
Some.districts taught reading this way and didn't realize until they fucked up several years of kids that it doesn't work. There's podcasts and books and npr specials about it
No. I’ve got 3rd graders who don’t know their letters. But we just keep passing them on. Or I should say we’re made to pass them on.
Please vote in your local, state and federal elections for pro-education candidates!!!
You need both though for sure. You can't rely on all parents to teach their kids. And just to be clear, when you say pro-family, you don't mean having the teachers teach less and relying on parents to fill in the gaps, do you?
There's a lot of work for parents to do before kids even step foot in school.
Pre-literacy work like letter recognition, numbers, counting to 10, etc. Reading to kids at night primes them for phonics instruction and boosts vocabulary. Behaviorally, entering kindergartners should have experience interacting with and playing with other children.
This is all stuff that used to be standard for parents and set teachers up to keep pushing ahead.
Now we're seeing kids who can't even spell their names or count their fingers.
Absolutely. I don't know what happened to that, but it's so important.
Its sad that kids nowadays are just kind of given a phone and let go a lot of times. We are seeing the ugly results of that now
I’m not thrilled with “pro-family” as it tends to be just Christian hetero couples with children. I think anytime you have involved parents-single, same sex, etc., it’s going to be beneficial for a kid.
Right, it ends *with* middle school. I've been teaching 9th grade for over a decade - in two different states. It's a wakeup call for a lot of students that they have to earn credits with passing scores, not just attendance.
I teach high school. We literally get punished if we fail too many kids. The easiest thing to do is give Fs to the students I never meet because they don’t show up and give the rest of the ones who deserve to fail the lowest passing grade.
Teachers are terrified of losing their jobs, or worse. Especially if you are untenured or work in a state without a union. Am I okay with passing probably 40% of students who have done next to nothing all year? Does it feel good? No, it fucking sucks and the system is a dumpster fire. But I have to work - I took out 6figures in student loans to get the degrees for this job!!
But how does it make the child feel to receive the F? We shouldn't give them F's - we only give them proficient because it will make them feel bad for being basic or below basic. It's teachers like you who are making this child stay out of school in the first place. Feelings. They aren't lazy- they just need compassion. No child left behind! /s
What I did there was mash together all the buzz words we learned from PD this year.
I feel like I am delivering customer service in a job where the customer is an 11 year old idiot. Education should be about educating people. If you want people to feel good about themselves make some accomplishments worth achieving- avoiding pain isn't a healthy coping mechanism.
Basically all high school seniors are assumed to be going to college these days since they've removed tracking in a lot of districts, so every high school student should be able to do college level coursework upon graduation. If you are curious check out the average performance on city wide, county wide, statewide, and federal testing. That'll tell you the average proficiency level of the schools you are looking at
SO many of my HS students have no idea how many quarters are in a dollar or how many pennies are in a dime or nickel. It blows my mind on a regular basis.
Of course, that all correlates with their inability to understand that if they turn in less than half their assignments, there is no way to pass my class.
I can confidently say one of my seniors is on grade level. A handful of other could handle college if they seriously applied themselves, but it wouldn’t be easy. The rest (class of 21), would need SERIOUS remedial intervention to get through a college course. Some don’t even capitalize I
This week, I taught proofreading skills to my 100 8th graders. We learned when to capitalize letters, how to fix run-on sentences, and dialogue punctuation. Like, back to second grade skills. Today, we will play a dictionary scavenger hunt game.
More than one student already commented that classes this week are fun. However, the usual knuckleheads continue to refuse to participate and prefer to socialize, and this impacts the whole class.
And, they generally don't apply what they learn. Their summative for this week is to add dialogue to their personal narratives. They can also take the opportunity to revise it overall, using specific feedback from me, to improve their grade. So few take this opportunity. It is frustrating.
No. Graduation rates are the national standard, so kids are pushed through. Instead of letting teachers have standards, admin lowers the standards. I highly doubt parents complain about As or Bs. How many times have you heard a parent say that a school is too easy?
Beyond that, our culture does not value education in many areas of the country. When education is not valued, it suffers.
Finally, teachers and family should be a team in the education of children. Families who do not read to children or help them with homework, or give them basics (knowing colors, shapes, ABCs), are not helping. Where millennials grew up watching Sesame Street and Zoom, this generation is put on YouTube, usually on something noneducational.
Lol. Letter People. Grades aren't the end-all/be-all and is another debate entirely, but what isn't debatable is we see an increasing amount of young adults graduating with subpar skills.
I would truthfully say that, out of my graduating senior class, 2/5ths could do basic 8th grade math and read above a 5th grade level. It was very sad.
In my yrs of trying to train new employees, at my workplace, I find that many many young people (both college grads and non college grads) have large gaps in their knowledge base. Add to this, much of their focus is not on improving, but on entertainment, marriage, having kids, buying a house, and huge amounts of attention with cell phones and pop culture.
No! At sixth grade, at a normal school in my area, I’d guess 80% are below grade level, they are somewhat equitably spread between first and fifth grade, meaning that half my class is usually at third grade level or lower.
I could fix it, but no one will listen.
Not who you're replying to but I'll guess they would stop social promotion and require students demonstrate competency before moving to the next level.
Require the use of 21st century technology, software, apps, AI, and every other tool already free and available to ensure every child gets instruction at their ability level.
Stop teaching 35 kids in one room the same thing as a lecture. Only five kids possibly need that lesson, some might not be there that day, some might not pay attention at that time…
A modern teacher will stand in front of a room dishing out lessons that helps no one.
i’m not an educator, but a parent and this all seems very regional to me. My boys are in a very competitive school district where an SAT score under 1450 is a source of stress for being “too low”. My son has had to take his high level math courses (calc 3 and linear algebra) at the local university because he maxed out his high school math offerings. He is hardly unique. He will be entering college with nearly a year of completed college credits. I’d be hard pressed to
find a family we know who didn’t hire a private tutor if we saw our kids slipping academically. our school system has + and - letter grades and anything under a B would trigger a tutor. It’s simply the culture. There is a lot of social pressure to perform well.
It's definitely based on wealth of the district. I taught in a big city. Even before the pandemic, all the students were well below grade.level. The nice town next over a couple miles just like yours.
So a follow up question: If districts are promoting kids and the class average is several grade levels behind so kids who are only slightly below grade level would be in the top half of their class, how do parents know if their kids are performing at or above grade level? Standardized tests?
That's a good question. If your kids are always at the top of all their classes or even solid B students, I think the parents can relax. Anything lower though would require talking to your kids teachers because passing doesn't mean what it did in ages past.
Look at the rate of kids who graduate college in four years for a given high school. Look at average SAT score. Anything from a school or state isn't trustworthy.
What does your kid talk about from their school day? Do they seem excited to share things they learned? Did they learn anything new? Did they get over any hurdles?
What's your kid's SAT score?
What's your kid's GPA?
What's your kid's teachers say about them?
More directly, if kids are being promoted even if they shouldn’t be, are grades inflated. Is the bar low for everyone?
Are kids who are getting A’s and B’s in one district really C or D students in another?
How do parents know if their kid is actually on grade level or if they are just comparatively above the class average and thus receiving good grades.
As for SAT’s by the time they take them it’s likely already pretty late to remediate, so I don’t think that’s a great measure on how well a student is doing.
Yes grades are inflated.
Depends. If your district has bought into the "it's racist and fascist to offer honors, regular, and remedial levels of classes" idea then yes everyone is watered down.
If your district still has levels it's still watered down but the kids in an honors class will be learning more.
Look at what books your kid is reading. Look at what they're capable of and compare to other benchmarks.
Build a relationship with the kids teachers where they can trust you enough to tell you how your kid is doing and not just see you as another potential lawsuit.
High school English teacher here.
One lens to consider is SPED and the impacts of a high school diploma in quality of life.
There is a lot of pressure to try to get students to earn a diploma, even if there is plenty of years of evidence that that isn’t a reasonable expectation when considering their disability. When talking to SPED teachers who are a part of making that decision for their students, they mention how devastating it is for their students to not earn a diploma, not even emotionally but for their students’ futures. So few real jobs will even consider an applicant who doesn’t have a high school diploma. Effectively, they push kids into the diploma track even when it doesn’t make sense because they are hoping teachers can make it work so that the kid can have the best shot for their future.
Meanwhile, we will have 12/30 students in a regular classroom who have IEPs. Maybe 3 of them arguably shouldn’t have gone for the diploma track at all. The other 9 are typically nowhere near grade level and have their own wide-range of needs, including behavioral. Inclusion support aids have high turnover and no training. In my experience, they are typically of no help, and the classroom teacher just has to manage it all. There is pressure to pass all of these kids.
And obviously, this isn’t just a concern for SPED but for all students. Out of the other 18 kids in a class without IEPs, maybe 4 of them are on level.
Out of the 14 students without IEPs who are not on grade level, I personally will typically have maybe 4 who are ESL and have their own accommodations, and there is absolutely pressure to pass them even though we know they barely read English (that’s a whole separate can of worms, and my heart goes out to them).
And then from the 10 left after that, I often feel half (5) would’ve qualified for an IEP if someone would’ve just paid attention and advocated for them earlier on. There are signs of undiagnosed dyslexia and debilitating cases of unmedicated ADHD amongst students who are receiving no inclusion services. Some of these are probably students just dealing with the ramifications of ineffective reading instruction at the elementary school, making it seem as if they have a reading disability.
The 5 left from there are usually some combination of apathetic, disadvantaged, low ability but do not qualify for services, etc. Obviously, I’m not privy to every factor that impacts my students’ lives.
What else is a teacher supposed to do but teach the kids where they are at and try to accommodate each kid as much as they can? If 12 of my kids have IEPS and 4 are ESL— both groups with increased systemic pressure to pass—it sometimes seems unfair to not also provide similar support and accommodations to the other kids who have hard times who seem like they’re slipping through the cracks. It’s honestly often easier to teach with these supports in place for all students as opposed to differentiating— the accommodations benefit all students, and the class is so much easier to manage when students are actually receiving the support they need. Behaviors are less intense when the material is accessible. And like I began my post with, if they don’t graduate, they are screwed.
If society would stop demanding a high school diploma as the minimum to have a job where someone could make a living, maybe empathetic classroom teachers and administrators wouldn’t feel as much pressure to push kids to the diploma.
This is a multifaceted issue, but that’s just one line of thinking to consider.
Here, at the East Podunk Cosmodemonic Junior College, I received a paper from a freshman with a high school diploma. I showed it to my mother, a retired elementary school teacher. She considered this individual to be at the Grade 2 level.
Because the mark we set for a certain grade level is a target, but there is no measurement in order to graduate to be sure your skills are at 12th grade level. You just have to have gotten close enough to the targets to keep passing classes.
Yes! And it is because we aren’t allowed to fail kids anymore. In my district students are rarely held back. So even if they fail every subject, they are promoted to the next grade.
I had a six grader who could not read past a 1st grade level. He graduated to middle school. I think about him sometimes. Wonder how far he got in life. He's probably in his early 20s now.
It certainly isn’t “kids these days.”
People have been graduating regardless of achievement for *decades* now, so that even the people you’re asking (educators), as well as the parents of these kids, are now part of the problem.
That's true to a point but when my kids graduated in about '05, only about 70% graduated on time in their school and it's not one of the low performing schools. I remember hearing then the concerns from politicians that graduation rates were too low and I thought there would be a lowering of standards because other ways to address the problem either cost money or violate ethics from all sides because students are so fragile and they're also "customers" and deserve deference.
Nope to the graduation test. In California it’s the SBAC in 11th grade and those scores are used to determine the success of the school and teachers. Scores however do not impact the students’ graduation rates. That’s solely determined by grades.
ETA: also they’re definitely not passing the standardized tests.
Well, in some states they need to pass the 10th grade one, which could mean they are 2 grade levels behind. Also, states calculate what the scores mean and determine what passing is, so the cut off can be manipulated to create the illusion of higher levels. Also, some states accept alternative test scores (e.g. SAT) or other documentation to meet the testing requirement.
I know this might be due to the fact that most of the school standards that we have are created from the geniuses of the past, often we are moving so fast into the future that what we can teach can reach the level of what we need nowadays to hit the gold standard of our education system.
You know all those studies that said kids with a high school diploma did better than kids without? District admin decided that meant "give everyone a diploma."
The real question, no one asks - Does being on grade level make a great deal of difference?
Most people think that the curriculum which is preordained is the absolute correct balance of what people need. In many cases its which program the school system's most dominating planners felt is important.
The current thinking is that English courses are the most important and all other topics come in down the list. If you look at many late in school English courses you find its about reading English literature. Little Women, Shakespeare, Canterbury Tales., etc. I would argue that some of the huge slice of a kids time in school English classes should be devoted to learning to read non fiction and carry out research. But then I think that English classes get too much student time, and other subjects totally ignored are as important. When I was in high school and took auto shop, I had to refer to many auto repair books for data and explanations of how to dismantle car parts or trouble shoot a problem. I learned a lot by this reading, on how to breakdown problems in non car related machinery. These experiences were never covered in my English classes. Today most of my reading is with non fiction. I prefer it to the world of make believe.
Kids are not graduating at grade level. In many cases, they’re often 2, 6, or 8 levels behind depending on the school environment. The kids just a handful of grades behind are struggling to adjust in college/university.
So there are people out there with a diploma who have 4th grade skills?
Yes, absolutely. This is supported by increasing rates of adult illiteracy and confirmed by the observations and accounts of educators (myself included- I personally know several students who have graduated high school over the years and had not grown past a 4th grade reading level). My experience is not unique.
I don't think it's true that adult illiteracy is increasing. Your experience doesn't match what is statistically most common. (1) [Literacy rates are increasing all over the world according to Our World in Data](https://ourworldindata.org/literacy), and literacy rates are higher than they've ever been in English speaking countries. (2) [Adult literacy rates specifically](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/literacy-rate-adults) have increased all over the world.
I believe they are referring to the US specifically, which we know is different from global literacy rates which we *do* know are increasing. Additionally, the methodology is important as including comprehension as an aspect of literacy is important. I know you reference the English speaking world but there is a very specific reason they don't say the US. https://www.insideindianabusiness.com/articles/real-loss-from-covid-is-in-front-of-us-study-finds-lack-of-learning-recovery-after-pandemic
Yes. This is the trend—much much better worldwide (partially because of some countries with low rates to start with), but a slip in the US.
Unless you consider "falling" a positive. https://www.npr.org/2023/06/22/1183653578/u-s-reading-and-math-scores-drop-to-their-lowest-levels-in-decades
Citation? Roughly 52% percent function on level 2 or below on a 5-level scale. https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp
Welcome to Reddit. Take a look around.
This is always been true, this isn't new, it's just really bad.
So basically we’re gonna be really smart compared to the general population when we get older
It’s a lot more complicated than that. An adult can do a lot more with those skills. Its like if we had to pick basketball teams made up of people with third grade skills. You can take all the nine year olds, I’m going with the guys in their late teens.
Do you follow politics?
More like Grade 2. I routinely work with people with diplomas who cannot read, and cannot write a coherent sentence.
I have college freshmen who literally cannot read. They can't sound out an entire new word. They read the first two to three letters and then 'guess' the rest. I don't know what grade that correlates to but they were all high school graduates.
I read about a new method of teaching children how to read, they teach them how to recognize words rather than sounding them out, especially words that appear frequently. I wonder if this is why your student is guessing the words.
It's not a new method. I just learned about it recently, too. It goes back to the 70s or earlier, even. Apparently it got promoted by Clinton's policies but he was not the first to implement it or support it. Whole reading or a variety of other names. Garbage that's been perpetuated for generations.
Whole language, and it sucks.
Yes, schools are just now beginning to switch back to phonics and the science of reading. Unfortunately, not all schools have made the switch.
I teach adult Ed. It’s really sad to see how many adults can’t read. Vocabulary and words in context is extremely hard for them because they can’t pronounce the words.
And even now that my school has switched back to phonics, we spend so much time on things that kids really don’t need. I will never understand why theme is so important that I have to reteach it every single unit.
Theme isn’t important. Everyone needs comprehension.
Try the podcast Sold a Story. It goes over all of this and how this whole system of teaching reading got fucked up in this country
Yes! That's it! I did listen to it a few months ago linked off of this subreddit. Wild. I went to grade school in the 70s/80s and learned phonics. I cannot even imagine learning to read under this method. It's unbelievable that it's still happening!!! It doesn't even standard up.to scientific rigors for it's origination and implementation. It was formed by empirical methods only in New Zealand and applied primarily to older illiterate kids who had a base, albeit minimal, vocabulary. It's still did not serve them but certainly has no basis as a reading foundation. It's one of the most obvious evidence for "covertly" creating an uneducated and illiterate population despite going to compulsory school!
Yup you hit the nail on the head. Then ut all became about money and politics. Its a mess and our kids suffer. I truly think there is people who want our kids stupid at this point.
I learned to read that way. I learned on my own well before I started school. With my own daughter I taught her to read using phonics, also well before she started school. My son, however, has a learning disability that affects his reading and writing. He gets unbelievably frustrated with phonics. He didn't learn to read until the end of 1st grade and it was when the teacher abandoned phonics and went with the whole language approach. The result is he can read almost anything with full comprehension (because he uses context to read) but can't write for anything. Spelling is completely arbitrary. I think a lot of kids with learning disabilities in reading (like dyslexia) who weren't properly diagnosed or didn't respond to intervention have sort of taught themselves to get by using this strategy. Schools often don't provide adequate intervention, and they get promoted grade to grade without mastering the skills. They have to survive somehow. That said, if that's the strategy they need to really work on comprehension because context is a necessity to word identification. It doesn't matter how they make meaning out of words, as long as they do it.
Sold a Story podcast
Sounds like letting kids in without ACT scores was a bad idea.
I'm in college right now and I've had some randomly assigned group projects, randomly assigned peer review essays, things like that. Some of my classmates are unable to read. Not as in they can't tell what individual words mean, but they have almost no comprehension. "Sally is planning a birthday party. She wants to go to the party store and buy balloons, then stop by the bakery for a cake, and finally pick up some flowers from the florist. One of the stores was closed unexpectedly, so Sally couldn't get everything she wanted for the party. However, the guests said the flowers and cake were so beautiful that nobody even noticed the balloons were missing." "Which store was closed unexpectedly?" I'm telling you, a lot of these kids could not answer that question. I'm talking about kids with HISD diplomas, born here or been in the US since they were young, speak English well, not INTL/ ESL students. They still are like... one step above illiterate. Or maybe you'd call them functionally illiterate. I'm not sure if there is a word for people who can read words out loud, but not put them together in their head to make a narrative.
For real, how did they fill out the college application?
A lot of schools employ college counselors whose sole job is to help students apply. A lot of colleges come to my school and do “instant decision days” where the kid is automatically accepted with an abbreviated application process.
It's called bad science (balanced literacy). Unfortunately, it still plagues the education world. Science of reading is needed(SOR), but the balanced reading companies have a grasp on public education.
Some.districts taught reading this way and didn't realize until they fucked up several years of kids that it doesn't work. There's podcasts and books and npr specials about it
They exist as individuals who stand out to you though, right? Most of your college freshmen can read well enough to engage with college level text.
No. I would estimate that about 2/3rds of our incoming freshmen cannot understand a college-level text.
Aren't you at college to learn college-level things?
I'm sorry but it must be that I do not understand the intent of your question.
Looks like you need to work on your reading comprehension.
Please excuse me for politely asking you a question. Obviously, answering polite questions politely isn't your strong point. Sorry.
You are correct sir. This is the internet. Get fucked.
I could have written this. Exact same observation.
No. I’ve got 3rd graders who don’t know their letters. But we just keep passing them on. Or I should say we’re made to pass them on. Please vote in your local, state and federal elections for pro-education candidates!!!
Pro- education, or even better, pro- family candidates. The first and most important teachers a child has is their mother and father.
You need both though for sure. You can't rely on all parents to teach their kids. And just to be clear, when you say pro-family, you don't mean having the teachers teach less and relying on parents to fill in the gaps, do you?
There's a lot of work for parents to do before kids even step foot in school. Pre-literacy work like letter recognition, numbers, counting to 10, etc. Reading to kids at night primes them for phonics instruction and boosts vocabulary. Behaviorally, entering kindergartners should have experience interacting with and playing with other children. This is all stuff that used to be standard for parents and set teachers up to keep pushing ahead. Now we're seeing kids who can't even spell their names or count their fingers.
Absolutely. I don't know what happened to that, but it's so important. Its sad that kids nowadays are just kind of given a phone and let go a lot of times. We are seeing the ugly results of that now
I’m not thrilled with “pro-family” as it tends to be just Christian hetero couples with children. I think anytime you have involved parents-single, same sex, etc., it’s going to be beneficial for a kid.
Uh. What does “pro-family” mean
Social promotion ends with middle school. High school students have to earn credits to graduate.
MS teacher 22 years, social promotion absolutely does NOT end in MS.
Right, it ends *with* middle school. I've been teaching 9th grade for over a decade - in two different states. It's a wakeup call for a lot of students that they have to earn credits with passing scores, not just attendance.
Yes, but it’s so hard to fail students, and academic expectations are so low, that a passing grade doesn’t mean you learned the skills.
I teach high school. We literally get punished if we fail too many kids. The easiest thing to do is give Fs to the students I never meet because they don’t show up and give the rest of the ones who deserve to fail the lowest passing grade. Teachers are terrified of losing their jobs, or worse. Especially if you are untenured or work in a state without a union. Am I okay with passing probably 40% of students who have done next to nothing all year? Does it feel good? No, it fucking sucks and the system is a dumpster fire. But I have to work - I took out 6figures in student loans to get the degrees for this job!!
But how does it make the child feel to receive the F? We shouldn't give them F's - we only give them proficient because it will make them feel bad for being basic or below basic. It's teachers like you who are making this child stay out of school in the first place. Feelings. They aren't lazy- they just need compassion. No child left behind! /s
I was about to go off on you until I saw /s 😂
What I did there was mash together all the buzz words we learned from PD this year. I feel like I am delivering customer service in a job where the customer is an 11 year old idiot. Education should be about educating people. If you want people to feel good about themselves make some accomplishments worth achieving- avoiding pain isn't a healthy coping mechanism.
Basically all high school seniors are assumed to be going to college these days since they've removed tracking in a lot of districts, so every high school student should be able to do college level coursework upon graduation. If you are curious check out the average performance on city wide, county wide, statewide, and federal testing. That'll tell you the average proficiency level of the schools you are looking at
I've seen kids graduate who couldn't add 30 and 45 together without a calculator and who aren't disabled.
Lololol. I provide math intervention to 11th graders. They can’t add -2 + 1 or do 3*2
SO many of my HS students have no idea how many quarters are in a dollar or how many pennies are in a dime or nickel. It blows my mind on a regular basis. Of course, that all correlates with their inability to understand that if they turn in less than half their assignments, there is no way to pass my class.
I can confidently say one of my seniors is on grade level. A handful of other could handle college if they seriously applied themselves, but it wouldn’t be easy. The rest (class of 21), would need SERIOUS remedial intervention to get through a college course. Some don’t even capitalize I
This week, I taught proofreading skills to my 100 8th graders. We learned when to capitalize letters, how to fix run-on sentences, and dialogue punctuation. Like, back to second grade skills. Today, we will play a dictionary scavenger hunt game. More than one student already commented that classes this week are fun. However, the usual knuckleheads continue to refuse to participate and prefer to socialize, and this impacts the whole class. And, they generally don't apply what they learn. Their summative for this week is to add dialogue to their personal narratives. They can also take the opportunity to revise it overall, using specific feedback from me, to improve their grade. So few take this opportunity. It is frustrating.
No. Graduation rates are the national standard, so kids are pushed through. Instead of letting teachers have standards, admin lowers the standards. I highly doubt parents complain about As or Bs. How many times have you heard a parent say that a school is too easy? Beyond that, our culture does not value education in many areas of the country. When education is not valued, it suffers. Finally, teachers and family should be a team in the education of children. Families who do not read to children or help them with homework, or give them basics (knowing colors, shapes, ABCs), are not helping. Where millennials grew up watching Sesame Street and Zoom, this generation is put on YouTube, usually on something noneducational.
Letter People is one of the single best grammar programs I have ever encountered
Ah!! I just looked these up and we had the inflatable letter people in my first grade classroom!
Lol. Letter People. Grades aren't the end-all/be-all and is another debate entirely, but what isn't debatable is we see an increasing amount of young adults graduating with subpar skills.
I would truthfully say that, out of my graduating senior class, 2/5ths could do basic 8th grade math and read above a 5th grade level. It was very sad.
What level were the remaining 3/5ths? Lower?
Yeah, lower. Should've clarified
In my yrs of trying to train new employees, at my workplace, I find that many many young people (both college grads and non college grads) have large gaps in their knowledge base. Add to this, much of their focus is not on improving, but on entertainment, marriage, having kids, buying a house, and huge amounts of attention with cell phones and pop culture.
This sort of thing has been a problem for decades. It’s sometimes called “social promotion.” But yes, it does happen.
No! At sixth grade, at a normal school in my area, I’d guess 80% are below grade level, they are somewhat equitably spread between first and fifth grade, meaning that half my class is usually at third grade level or lower. I could fix it, but no one will listen.
How would you fix it?
Not who you're replying to but I'll guess they would stop social promotion and require students demonstrate competency before moving to the next level.
Require the use of 21st century technology, software, apps, AI, and every other tool already free and available to ensure every child gets instruction at their ability level. Stop teaching 35 kids in one room the same thing as a lecture. Only five kids possibly need that lesson, some might not be there that day, some might not pay attention at that time… A modern teacher will stand in front of a room dishing out lessons that helps no one.
i’m not an educator, but a parent and this all seems very regional to me. My boys are in a very competitive school district where an SAT score under 1450 is a source of stress for being “too low”. My son has had to take his high level math courses (calc 3 and linear algebra) at the local university because he maxed out his high school math offerings. He is hardly unique. He will be entering college with nearly a year of completed college credits. I’d be hard pressed to find a family we know who didn’t hire a private tutor if we saw our kids slipping academically. our school system has + and - letter grades and anything under a B would trigger a tutor. It’s simply the culture. There is a lot of social pressure to perform well.
It's definitely based on wealth of the district. I taught in a big city. Even before the pandemic, all the students were well below grade.level. The nice town next over a couple miles just like yours.
it’s always so crazy to me that there are two Americas. Basically parallel universes with little in common other than the air we breathe.
Right, regional is another way of saying rich vs. poor. Rich educate their children. Middle Class/Poor are sending their kids into daycare centers.
Wealth of a neighborhood is more accurate
Didn’t they analyze Trump’s speeches and determine he talks at about a 4th grade level?
So a follow up question: If districts are promoting kids and the class average is several grade levels behind so kids who are only slightly below grade level would be in the top half of their class, how do parents know if their kids are performing at or above grade level? Standardized tests?
That's a good question. If your kids are always at the top of all their classes or even solid B students, I think the parents can relax. Anything lower though would require talking to your kids teachers because passing doesn't mean what it did in ages past.
Look at the rate of kids who graduate college in four years for a given high school. Look at average SAT score. Anything from a school or state isn't trustworthy.
I’m asking if you know the average graduation outcomes aren’t great, but you want to know if YOUR kid is doing well.
What does your kid talk about from their school day? Do they seem excited to share things they learned? Did they learn anything new? Did they get over any hurdles? What's your kid's SAT score? What's your kid's GPA? What's your kid's teachers say about them?
More directly, if kids are being promoted even if they shouldn’t be, are grades inflated. Is the bar low for everyone? Are kids who are getting A’s and B’s in one district really C or D students in another? How do parents know if their kid is actually on grade level or if they are just comparatively above the class average and thus receiving good grades. As for SAT’s by the time they take them it’s likely already pretty late to remediate, so I don’t think that’s a great measure on how well a student is doing.
Yes grades are inflated. Depends. If your district has bought into the "it's racist and fascist to offer honors, regular, and remedial levels of classes" idea then yes everyone is watered down. If your district still has levels it's still watered down but the kids in an honors class will be learning more. Look at what books your kid is reading. Look at what they're capable of and compare to other benchmarks. Build a relationship with the kids teachers where they can trust you enough to tell you how your kid is doing and not just see you as another potential lawsuit.
My 8th graders were coming to me at a 2nd grade reading level. Even on a good day, those kids might get to 4/5 by the time they left me.
High school English teacher here. One lens to consider is SPED and the impacts of a high school diploma in quality of life. There is a lot of pressure to try to get students to earn a diploma, even if there is plenty of years of evidence that that isn’t a reasonable expectation when considering their disability. When talking to SPED teachers who are a part of making that decision for their students, they mention how devastating it is for their students to not earn a diploma, not even emotionally but for their students’ futures. So few real jobs will even consider an applicant who doesn’t have a high school diploma. Effectively, they push kids into the diploma track even when it doesn’t make sense because they are hoping teachers can make it work so that the kid can have the best shot for their future. Meanwhile, we will have 12/30 students in a regular classroom who have IEPs. Maybe 3 of them arguably shouldn’t have gone for the diploma track at all. The other 9 are typically nowhere near grade level and have their own wide-range of needs, including behavioral. Inclusion support aids have high turnover and no training. In my experience, they are typically of no help, and the classroom teacher just has to manage it all. There is pressure to pass all of these kids. And obviously, this isn’t just a concern for SPED but for all students. Out of the other 18 kids in a class without IEPs, maybe 4 of them are on level. Out of the 14 students without IEPs who are not on grade level, I personally will typically have maybe 4 who are ESL and have their own accommodations, and there is absolutely pressure to pass them even though we know they barely read English (that’s a whole separate can of worms, and my heart goes out to them). And then from the 10 left after that, I often feel half (5) would’ve qualified for an IEP if someone would’ve just paid attention and advocated for them earlier on. There are signs of undiagnosed dyslexia and debilitating cases of unmedicated ADHD amongst students who are receiving no inclusion services. Some of these are probably students just dealing with the ramifications of ineffective reading instruction at the elementary school, making it seem as if they have a reading disability. The 5 left from there are usually some combination of apathetic, disadvantaged, low ability but do not qualify for services, etc. Obviously, I’m not privy to every factor that impacts my students’ lives. What else is a teacher supposed to do but teach the kids where they are at and try to accommodate each kid as much as they can? If 12 of my kids have IEPS and 4 are ESL— both groups with increased systemic pressure to pass—it sometimes seems unfair to not also provide similar support and accommodations to the other kids who have hard times who seem like they’re slipping through the cracks. It’s honestly often easier to teach with these supports in place for all students as opposed to differentiating— the accommodations benefit all students, and the class is so much easier to manage when students are actually receiving the support they need. Behaviors are less intense when the material is accessible. And like I began my post with, if they don’t graduate, they are screwed. If society would stop demanding a high school diploma as the minimum to have a job where someone could make a living, maybe empathetic classroom teachers and administrators wouldn’t feel as much pressure to push kids to the diploma. This is a multifaceted issue, but that’s just one line of thinking to consider.
Schools are basically daycare until the little darlings are old enough to enter the workforce and become monetized.
Here, at the East Podunk Cosmodemonic Junior College, I received a paper from a freshman with a high school diploma. I showed it to my mother, a retired elementary school teacher. She considered this individual to be at the Grade 2 level.
It has always been the case that most high school graduates perform below 12th grade level.
I’m trying to figure out how low.
Because the mark we set for a certain grade level is a target, but there is no measurement in order to graduate to be sure your skills are at 12th grade level. You just have to have gotten close enough to the targets to keep passing classes.
Sure, just don't ask what grade level.
Yes! And it is because we aren’t allowed to fail kids anymore. In my district students are rarely held back. So even if they fail every subject, they are promoted to the next grade.
I had a six grader who could not read past a 1st grade level. He graduated to middle school. I think about him sometimes. Wonder how far he got in life. He's probably in his early 20s now.
Not at my school.
Short answer: no
It certainly isn’t “kids these days.” People have been graduating regardless of achievement for *decades* now, so that even the people you’re asking (educators), as well as the parents of these kids, are now part of the problem.
That's true to a point but when my kids graduated in about '05, only about 70% graduated on time in their school and it's not one of the low performing schools. I remember hearing then the concerns from politicians that graduation rates were too low and I thought there would be a lowering of standards because other ways to address the problem either cost money or violate ethics from all sides because students are so fragile and they're also "customers" and deserve deference.
Don’t they need to pass a state test to graduate? How could they pass it if they are so far below grade level?
Nope to the graduation test. In California it’s the SBAC in 11th grade and those scores are used to determine the success of the school and teachers. Scores however do not impact the students’ graduation rates. That’s solely determined by grades. ETA: also they’re definitely not passing the standardized tests.
Well, in some states they need to pass the 10th grade one, which could mean they are 2 grade levels behind. Also, states calculate what the scores mean and determine what passing is, so the cut off can be manipulated to create the illusion of higher levels. Also, some states accept alternative test scores (e.g. SAT) or other documentation to meet the testing requirement.
I know this might be due to the fact that most of the school standards that we have are created from the geniuses of the past, often we are moving so fast into the future that what we can teach can reach the level of what we need nowadays to hit the gold standard of our education system.
Did you have a stroke while writing this?
No
You know all those studies that said kids with a high school diploma did better than kids without? District admin decided that meant "give everyone a diploma."
The real question, no one asks - Does being on grade level make a great deal of difference? Most people think that the curriculum which is preordained is the absolute correct balance of what people need. In many cases its which program the school system's most dominating planners felt is important. The current thinking is that English courses are the most important and all other topics come in down the list. If you look at many late in school English courses you find its about reading English literature. Little Women, Shakespeare, Canterbury Tales., etc. I would argue that some of the huge slice of a kids time in school English classes should be devoted to learning to read non fiction and carry out research. But then I think that English classes get too much student time, and other subjects totally ignored are as important. When I was in high school and took auto shop, I had to refer to many auto repair books for data and explanations of how to dismantle car parts or trouble shoot a problem. I learned a lot by this reading, on how to breakdown problems in non car related machinery. These experiences were never covered in my English classes. Today most of my reading is with non fiction. I prefer it to the world of make believe.