Arguments in favor of giving kids passing grades even when they don't know the material?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s so precious how you think that holding failing kids back repeatedly (because yes, it would be repeatedly) is going to make them think “golly gee whillikers, jeepers, this is serious! I’d better buckle down, start coming to class and extra tutoring hours and doing my homework.”

Step out of your privileged bubble every once in a while.

It's stupid to think these kids who can't do math/read at grade level will be fine and not be a burden on society once they leave school. Some will turn to crime, and who knows.. you could be a victim of one of them.

How's that for precious?

You really need to educate yourself in real life issues. You don’t need to be grade level on math and reading to be successful in a trade. But you do need a HS diploma to earn a living wage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would probably have my kids be truant too if I lived in Baltimore & couldn’t afford to move. Safer & probably not much learning going on in the schools anyway. I’m surprised there’s nothing like Boston’s METCO there.

I'm a Baltimore City teacher and there is a lot of learning happening in my school....for the students who show up. Chronic absenteeism is a HUGE issue and it's gotten MUCH worse since the pandemic. In my class, the student who has missed the least number of days this year is a student who has been absent 12 days. 75% of my class (and probably most others) have been chronically absent which is 18 days (10% of the school year). We cannot hold students back for this. It has become next to impossible to hold students back even if they fail everything. The students who show up regularly are doing fine. Most of them will reach grade level or close to it by the end of the year. But students who miss 40+ days every year aren't ever going to meet grade level standards.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One of the arguments against it is that kids will be bullied & socially excluded by their classmates if they repeat a grade.

I just had dinner with a friend who had to repeat 2nd grade. He turned out okay.

We have a family member who had to repeat 11th grade. He is a 1%er now.

I fail to see where holding students to standards negatively affects them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Viewed through the lens of racial and socioeconomic justice, it would be immensely harmful to hold a student back, simply for an academic deficiency.

BS!

It's terrible for the kid to be uneducated for the rest of their lives.

I'm currently staying at a hotel on the eastern shore of Maryland. I stay here a lot. I'd say about 40% of the workers are blue collar men
doing travel construction/contracting gigs. I'VE NEVER MET ANYONE FROM BALTIMORE DOING THIS WORK JUST 2 HOURS AWAY.
I meet a lot of men from North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina etc that are working blue collar travel jobs on the eastern shore of Maryland and in Delaware. I just talked to a guy on the elevator and he is in the area doing sewer work. He is from Greensboro NC and his employer is in
Greensboro. Young males from Baltimore don't appear to be employable in Maryland in basic construction jobs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s so precious how you think that holding failing kids back repeatedly (because yes, it would be repeatedly) is going to make them think “golly gee whillikers, jeepers, this is serious! I’d better buckle down, start coming to class and extra tutoring hours and doing my homework.”

Step out of your privileged bubble every once in a while.

It's stupid to think these kids who can't do math/read at grade level will be fine and not be a burden on society once they leave school. Some will turn to crime, and who knows.. you could be a victim of one of them.

How's that for precious?

You really need to educate yourself in real life issues. You don’t need to be grade level on math and reading to be successful in a trade. But you do need a HS diploma to earn a living wage.

Have you ever tried to figure a painting estimate without basic math skills?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the arguments against it is that kids will be bullied & socially excluded by their classmates if they repeat a grade.

I just had dinner with a friend who had to repeat 2nd grade. He turned out okay.

We have a family member who had to repeat 11th grade. He is a 1%er now.

I fail to see where holding students to standards negatively affects them.

Those are lovely anecdotes.

99.9% of kids would drop out if you told them they “had repeat 11th grade.” Because you can’t make a kid go to school past their 18th birthday.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Viewed through the lens of racial and socioeconomic justice, it would be immensely harmful to hold a student back, simply for an academic deficiency.

BS!

It's terrible for the kid to be uneducated for the rest of their lives.

I'm currently staying at a hotel on the eastern shore of Maryland. I stay here a lot. I'd say about 40% of the workers are blue collar men
doing travel construction/contracting gigs. I'VE NEVER MET ANYONE FROM BALTIMORE DOING THIS WORK JUST 2 HOURS AWAY.
I meet a lot of men from North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina etc that are working blue collar travel jobs on the eastern shore of Maryland and in Delaware. I just talked to a guy on the elevator and he is in the area doing sewer work. He is from Greensboro NC and his employer is in
Greensboro. Young males from Baltimore don't appear to be employable in Maryland in basic construction jobs.

Probably for the same reasons you see teens on J-1 visas from Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Italy, Portugal etc working on the boardwalk in OCMD every summer

The conservative white business owners in OCMD aren’t going to hire a bunch of poor Black kids from Baltimore

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the arguments against it is that kids will be bullied & socially excluded by their classmates if they repeat a grade.

I just had dinner with a friend who had to repeat 2nd grade. He turned out okay.

We have a family member who had to repeat 11th grade. He is a 1%er now.

I fail to see where holding students to standards negatively affects them.

You fail to mention any details about their family backgrounds. And 11th grade is way way too late. I turned 17 in October in 11th grade. I wouldn’t stick around if I hated school and somebody decided I should repeat a grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a worry that having kids repeat a grade increases the chance they will drop out before they graduate

And people who ask this question and who advocate for eliminating the 50% rule and the like forget that HS graduation is good for all of us. Kids who could be held back and who rely on the 50% rule aren’t going to be competing for coveted college spots and financial aid. But without a HS diploma, it’s almost impossible to get a job that pays a living wage and has health insurance and paid time off - all of which are good for the rest of us who don’t want to support them and don’t want to see them get into lifestyles that harm us - like being homeless or engaging in drug related activities. Also many of these kids will become the people who are fixing your cars, cleaning your railway system, repairing your HVAC system and doing other jobs many don’t want to do and don’t want their kids doing.

If someone can't pass high school, I wouldn't want them fixing my car nor touching my HVAC system.
You are assuming that this sort of work does not require intelligence and thinking skills. They do and in fact most require passing, at minimum, vocational training. These are highly engineered machines they are handling.

I think the jobs you are referring to that don't require much intelligence is lawn care, janitorial services or delivering newspapers. At the upper end, maybe pipe fitting or welding.

I know many kids who D out of HS and go into things like auto repair and HVAC, which is why I used those fields as examples. People can be really highly skilled in an area yet really struggle in other areas. You don’t need to be able to pass a foreign language or high level English and math to repair cars and HVACs. If you think the people who are working on yours have that skill level, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

Precisely because the public education system, I don't trust most "repair" people.
I do a lot of research before I send in things for repair. And I ask questions of the people doing the work to get an idea of their competency and understanding.

This made me laugh. Any minimally competent marketer can satisfy you that their staff are highly educated.

And this is why I try to understand what the possible problem and solutions should be. I can smell canned sales talk immediately. Maybe you can't.

[Anonymous]

Student debt is ruining lives and contributing to our piss poor society. If we want to make education beneficial we need to stop making it the reason for poverty in the US.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Student debt is ruining lives and contributing to our piss poor society. If we want to make education beneficial we need to stop making it the reason for poverty in the US.

There’s no student debt for a high school education. That’s because we the taxpayers are paying for the high school education for everyone. So we the taxpayers should be making sure that kids are learning to read, write and do math at school rather than spending money on emotional things and whatever other insanity they’re wasting our money on this week. Leave the parenting to the parents and just teach them academics at school. Then we wouldn’t have every kid in the country taking out student loans for degrees that they don’t need, don’t want, and only got to prove that they can read and write and do math because a high school graduation doesn’t mean that anymore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s so precious how you think that holding failing kids back repeatedly (because yes, it would be repeatedly) is going to make them think “golly gee whillikers, jeepers, this is serious! I’d better buckle down, start coming to class and extra tutoring hours and doing my homework.”

Step out of your privileged bubble every once in a while.

It's stupid to think these kids who can't do math/read at grade level will be fine and not be a burden on society once they leave school. Some will turn to crime, and who knows.. you could be a victim of one of them.

How's that for precious?

You really need to educate yourself in real life issues. You don’t need to be grade level on math and reading to be successful in a trade. But you do need a HS diploma to earn a living wage.

The HS diploma premium is based on the diploma meaning something. If high schools graduate kids that don't have solid reading, writing, and math skills, employers may eventually scale back their use of a high school diploma as their hiring metric.

[Anonymous]

I was held back and repeated kindergarten. It was a huge benefit for me. I think maybe 10% of boys could benefit from a delayed start or repeating an early grade.

[Anonymous]

No one is making these kids come to school. Read the post above from the teacher in Baltimore City. Hold these kids back and they still won’t come to school. Some kids miss two or three days a week without blinking an eye. No one at home prioritizes them attending school. So if you hold them back they still won’t learn because they don’t come to school.

Unless we could actually hold parents/families accountable for their children attending school (which I’m actually all for as a teacher), holding kids back won’t solve any problems.

[Anonymous]

Is not coming to school a problem in elementary school as well or is it more of a middle and high school issue?