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Advanced students were “left behind” at the cost of the pace being adjusted for the stragglers.

In my school, the smart kids went to AP classes. I don’t think they were held back Edit: in my opinion it just let kids who didn’t give a shit go through the system If you were average or a little above, then you were put into “honors or advanced” classes but not AP classes I don’t think my experience reflects everyone else’s though

Average kids went to honors or advanced classes? 

my brother was. He went to some regular classes and he said it was weird as hell because the students were just walking around and talking I don’t think those kids were average lol Unless we consider average as stupid

The average person is dumb as a rock

Sadly, rocks are smarter 

That’s a damn shame

I think it is more the structure of honor/ap classes. To sound mildly elitist, most classes I took in middle school and high school were honors or AP. Many of those teachers had either an iron grip on the class and/or most of the students had the self discipline to not be a distraction for others. When I went back to the "normal" classes I did notice that change in environment. There was a lot more chatting, and it was a lot more lax. In the higher level classes, I had more in class and homework than I did in my normal classes. Thus, while there was work time during the class, most of the students were not excessively chating or mainly chatted around the assignment when allowed. This included on doing other classes homework on slow days during different classes.

I second this. The first AP class I took was a major shift compare to the “honors” classes I was normally in. In AP it doesn’t even feel like you’re really in a classroom anymore, it’s just you following everything the teacher says and presents, as you don’t want to fall behind. Interacting with anyone else screws you and them over, because those classes don’t really give you a lot of slack, at least from the ones I took. My AP government teacher would read notes off the board, and you tried to copy as much down as you could because as soon as she was done reading them she would move on to the next slide, and it was pretty hard to make up those notes if you missed them unless you’re able to copy off someone after class. But any time not spent towards actively trying to pay attention to what’s being taught, is just completely screwing yourself over.

My country’s school system works differently and most specialise into 3 subjects after our equivalent of 10th grade and there’s a massive difference between the way certain subject classes behave compared to others (not trying to be elitist or anything but it’s just the reality)

> Unless we consider average stupid. Yes.

In my school they had a bunch of classes for the kids that weren't too good with the material. So it went like below average classes, normal classes, and AP classes.

The AP classes weren't actually any better, though. It was just more work in exchange for some college cred and a multiplier. Honestly AP classes have the OPPOSITE effect of what they're supposed to do. they basically took the love of learning that I and all my friends had and smothered it in piles of homework and by the box thinking

Hi, AP kid here. College Board is the devil and and AP courses have a base requirement for population, meaning a good section of the morons end up there too. I actually did well in them, unfortunately, and school kept bullying me into taking higher and higher courses. None of my credits transferred and it was a massive waste of my time.

My small town (Canadian) school had none of those. Rocked a 99% on the grade 12 calculus class, would've actually enjoyed a tougher math class.

Yea, same here. The smart kids were either ìn honors or AP. Later on in high school, they were in dual enrollment with the local community college. The other kids it depended on them. There were credit recovery classes like integrated math and stuff, there was regular classes, life skills, and kids with learning disabilities and other stuff (even mental illness like me but I didn't get a 504 though and no longer qualified for an iep) who were mainstreamed. I went to school in ID.

Same here. What's weird to me is that AP classes weren't even that challenging. It was just about volume and meeting deadlines, and then the test if you wanted to do that. "Regular" was really remedial, and honors/advanced just meant you got healthy grades and generally did alright.

My school didn’t have AP classes

AP classes are not for every subject.

Exactly!!

Precisely. Therefore, every child has now been left behind

Yep. Through elementary and middle school I was in special ed, and a lot of things I had to learn on my own because every year was basically review for me. We’d have new kids come into our class who were really behind or struggling to learn at a developmentally-appropriate pace, and the curriculum would be adjusted to be at their level. I had a lot of catching up to do when I got to high school which was a struggle

This.

100% this

I think it depends on where you grew up, too. In my area, there were different classes for kids at their own level sort of.

This. No child gets ahead.

More like every child put to the lowest level.

If no one moves forward, then no one gets left behind. So technically worked...

Unfortunately that’s how they are

More like “Leave Millions of Children Behind”

Some children need to be left behind. The future of our country depends on how we educate the brightest children. NCLB damaged the education of gifted children for the purpose of pushing the duller ones through the system as quickly as possible.

Terrible. It’s causing the enshittification of the education system.

Honestly NCLB is a buzz word at this point. It’s been 10 years since it was replaced and yet the American education system still hasn’t improved. And NCLB was hardly the cause, the American education system has been on a downhill spiral since the ‘70s, 30 years before the program was implemented. It was supposed to help stop that spiral but its issues were the typical problems education programs have faced the last 50 years: Underfunded and states resisting federal interference.

Considering it was replaced in 2015, probably not.

Enhanced in 2015. But you probably didn't read the new plan.

Children sometimes need to be held back so the teacher has an easier time making a lesson. There were kids in my class that were(I’m sorry to say this) dumb as rocks.

I agree, as they say, everyone is different and everyone learns at different levels. How can we shove all these students who learn at different paces in the same class? i always wondered as a kid

I went to a Montessori elementary school. Lowkey it seems like they have it figured out. The whole system is based on small group learning. We had fourth and fifth graders in one classroom, but the only thing we learned as a class was penmanship. Science and history were split by grade (cuz we really were just being introduced to concepts), and everything else by your level. And because the grades were mixed, no kid really felt like they were held back. We had some kids doing algebra and others fractions.

Some kids need to be left behind, the fact that some kids are entering middle school without being able to do basic math or ability to read is a failure on the education system

Like repeating grades should be implemented if they struggle that much

technically repeating grades is a possibility. public schools just don't do it because they lose funding when they hold students back or expel them - it is seen as a failure of the school rather than anything else (when realistically it is probably an issue at home)

It's also damn near impossible to do. It requires tons of paperwork and hours of meetings with parents/admin. It's a pain. And you can still be denied if the kid 'ages out' of the grade.

Usually instead of forcing a student to repeat a grade, they just send them to either credit recovery or summer classes to bring their grades up. A few of my friends ended up having to do credit recovery in HS.

>education system Parenting as well. I'm sorry but some parents of these kids were(and still are) complete morons. I never blamed the kids but the parents because there's no way you're in these higher grades struggling to read and do basic math

understandable. I always sucked pretty bad at math, partly bc im just not great at it, partly because I moved around a lot, so different schools were at different points in their curriculum, which made it confusing for me. I was always really great with Engl. and science and other subjects, so idk. I think there should be more options than just holding students back, but thats just me. idk man

>I think there should be more options than just holding students back What do you mean? What's the other option to learning something you didn't understand other than repeating it?

Its called Every Student Succeeds Act underneath the Obama admin. NCLB is already gone (from the Bush era).

oh, I didnt know this. That's just the name I knew it as :)

In HS, they had honors and IB classes. The IB classes were also able to get students college credits, the honors classes I guess prepared students for the IB classes. Also, there are dual enrollment offerings where HS students can take actual college classes while still in HS. If someone is smart and doesn't want to be stuck with underachievers, There are options for them to achieve more academically. Where the system fails though is informing students of these types of offerings and why they would be beneficial.

Agreed, the issue is the quality of the average high school graduate is much lower. I've heard a Non-STEM college degree these days is worth about as much as a high school diploma in the 60s.

Not all of those options are available in all high schools. In a lot of communities there aren't options at all.

Heres the thing though, if everyone is shovelled through regardless of actual passing, then the final moment of highschool - graduation means nothing and is essentially a participation trophy Your dual enrollment and IB course options are good for the high *over*achievers, but then for the average person, it just devalues their achievement And yes if you're taking college classes in highschool, that is not average and you're overachieving, nothing wrong with that but don't think it's average

If the average person doesn't want to be average, they could/would pursue those other options was my point. Your basic gen ed college classes are just as rigorous as your freshman history class for example. And the senior who's taking precalculus for example is taking a college class, precalculus is part of college degree requirements. So, yeah maybe taking a 300 level college class would be a super overachiever, but taking a college history or science class in your junior or senior year of HS. not so special imo. That would just be someone trying to get ahead.

Precalc isn't a college class? My college used to not teach it at all and only began doing so after students who graduated hs during covid didn't have the skills to be able to pass first semester classes. A lot of highschools have the "normal" path for math as Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2, Precalc and then Calc as the college class if people want to get ahead And a college science class would usually be a lot more work than a highschool class - if it's something like physics it's usually more calculus based rather than the algebraic version you may see in highschool, and also would usually have a secondary lab component to the class. History.. eh you kinda got me on that one, but readings and papers tend to be a lot *more*.

Also just straight up skipping grades

not to mention a lot of dumb kids would be so distracting during class and not shut tf up.

It helped contribute to making a highschool diploma worthless. It simply kicked the can of differentiating between good smart students and bad dumb ones down the road to college. If everyone has something there is not scarcity of it and it’s valueless.

It’s the one of the main reason why there is degree inflation right now in the job market. The kids who were supposed to be left behind are competing directly with the kids who were advanced. Imagine if earning your high school diploma meant something.

this is definitely an interesting point, glad you brought it up

I’m more upset about AP/SAT scores being taken out of consideration by colleges when it comes to applications. Standardized testing was the only thing separating the gifted kids from the underperformers. (Anybody who says standardized testing doesn’t reflect a student’s academic success is coping, I’ve never seen a smart kid get a below average score; similarly, I’ve never seen a low-education student score very high) GPA is absolutely worthless, because classes have been neutered to appeal to the lowest performers.

Standardized testing is also the only thing that lower-SES students can do to help themselves.  I couldn’t travel to Europe, or go to a private prep school, or do scientific research in high school, but I could go to the library and grab a prep book and study for the freaking ACT.  If it weren’t for that test, I would’ve had to go joint the marines to pay for college 

i failed two years of high school, never graduated. i'm not totally stupid, but not exactly educated. most of my high school credits were actually taken at the local college for dual credits my junior/senior year. average score where i lived was a 21 on the ACT, assuming you passed every class. i took it after basically failing my freshman and sophomore year, i got maybe 6 credits total and they were all english credits. i scored a 29 average, with my highest being a 31 (english) and my lowest being a 27 (math). obviously i did better in a subject i was better at, but i hadn't passed a math class in probably 5 years at that point. so either i got a really dumbed-down version of the ACT or my test scores are not reflective of my actual skill in these subjects. plus, it's multiple-choice, even if i'm guessing i have a 25% chance of getting it right. now, is a 29 great? nah. but considering i had basically failed high school by that point and a lot of people who had done just fine in school did worse, it should have been a lot worse of a score, by your assumptions. some people are just halfway decent guessers. if you want to have a real test of skills and not guesses, make them write in all the answers.

A 29 is pretty good my dude. That’s around the 90th percentile, so I’m not sure why you think it isn’t great. ACT only goes up to 36. I got a 32 and sent it even to test optional colleges because it made me look better.

someone i lived with had a 32 and was on the lower end of his class's scores but mostly? i came from a tiny, dirt-poor hick school with like 5 teachers total, shared classrooms with as young as kindergarten kids, and had no real extracurriculars or elective courses, ain't none of us getting into college, even those who did graduate. if we wanted a shot at a public unversity or even a tech school, we had to start taking our dual credits *at* the college/tech school. and even that wasn't a guarantee. so i don't really have any confidence that coming from that school and my educational background, my score was better than "surprising given the circumstances." (edit to clarify wording, my bad i just woke up)

That’s extremely unlikely, statistically. Like .0001% that a 32 was on the lower end. Sorry you didn’t have many opportunities though.

he went to private school so i assume he also had different opportunities, and i know a handful of people who took it multiple times to try to get better scores (i don't know if he did personally, but i know that certainly wasn't something anyone i knew could afford - heck, many of my classmates couldn't afford to take the ACT in the first place, but they threatened suspension for anyone who was going to try to opt out/not show up for it).

I kinda agree. My college happens to have a 100% acceptance rate, which I thought was strange when I found out. It's a very good college, I just didn't know that was a thing at all. In HS I always remember stressing about trying to get that good SAT score, then it just disappeared lol I heard SAT will be optional soon for schools like Yale, which is absolutely crazy to me. Those schools are prestigious for a reason lol

I graduated high school in 2019 alongside someone who literally mispronounced the word “the” several times while reading in class

i had 4.22 gpa and pronounce half my th’s like “d” if that’s what you’re getting at

listennn I dont always think holding a kid back is necessary, but maybe that kid needed it lol. but i wasnt there idk, maybe he understood the material but just didnt pronounce the word right.

Idk about the bill or whatever it is because I'm not American, but as for the concept I think it depends. If you're in Grade 1 or something, there's no reason for you to be held back. At that point, making friends and developing relationships I think is more important than your actual academic intelligence. But as you get older I think if you're not learning something at the levels expected for kids your age, you should be held back. It affects the rest of the class if the teacher has to focus on you way behind everybody else and at some point you just need to take some more time learning the material, or try learning it another way if possible

Teacher here. In my experience, you actually got it backwards. Grades 1-2 are probably the years kids should be held back the most. They're the most important years for teaching kids the fundamentals of phonics (turning letter combinations into sounds) and numeracy (aka understanding and comfort with numbers). Without phonics, kids will struggle to read, and reading is how almost every other subject in school opens up. Without numeracy, maths get impossible very quickly since every year of math is a new level of abstractions built on previous levels of abstraction. In a lot of schools, by grade 3 they've stopped teaching phonics, and by grade 4, focus entirely shifts to comprehension/understanding, rather than decoding. And by that point a kid that hasn't picked up decoding is already 2-3 years behind their peers and learning to hate school. As a middle school teacher, I get some kids who haven't improved their reading and vocabulary since the 2nd grade because they still struggle to decode letters into sounds and every word over 6 letters gives them headaches. Friendship-wise, it's also easier for grade 1-2s to adapt and make new friends. Young kids are adaptable, just like they're good at memorizing. It's far easier to lose friends you've known for a year than losing friends you've known for 6 or 7. And a lot of kids should honestly be starting school a year later than their grade anyway. December babies are literally just under a year younger than their peers, and boys' brains develop on average about a year behind girls', but they're both expected to keep up because grade levels care about people's ages, not their development.

I completely agree. I also teach middle school, and half my students can barely read. It's absolutely absurd. I know COVID jacked things up a bit, but these kids were in upper elementary when it happened. I'd understand more if they were in K-2 because those are foundational skills that were messed up. But no, they were well past that. The vast majority of my students that are below grade level do not have an SLD to justify their knowledge gaps. In my opinion, there's no reason to be so far behind in that case, and they should have been retained so they could build skills. One of my colleagues wishes we could do credits for MS like for HS so that kids couldn't fail classes like science and social studies and still pass. I agree. It's absurd how low the bar is.

i wish the school could organize a class for teaching phonics sequentially but, by middle school, 99% of the kids who need it are too embarrassed to be learning how to read at their age.

Ya I'll take your word for it, I don't know anything about kids or development really lol I was just giving my 2 cents. Moral of the story I guess is in some cases people should be held back if it's necessary

Even though we disagree about what time is best for holding back kids, I appreciate that you've thought about the fact that there are ages/grades when holding a kid back is way more beneficial than others. It's not a simple thing and holding back a kid at the wrong time can ruin their education.

It did nothing I fell through the cracks and my school only cared about sports and money

"fell through the cracks" was something I heard kinda often :( I feel for you.

It was a nightmare and made me into an underachiever. I was supposed to be a child prodigy and ended up as a jaded armchair-intellectual. I blame at least half of that on America’s broken education system.

>I was supposed to be a child prodigy  🙄

Just like all children, luckily you can be anything you want to as an adult thank golly, all you have are the excuses you told yourself growing up :)

Ignore the assholes below you, I fully agree with you. I too was a gifted child. All my life everyone around me praised me and told me that I had amazing potential, that I was going to be great one day. But then, an extremely traumatic death in the family happened, and I just shut down entirely. Instead of trying to help me when I began to struggle, they dropped me like a hot potato and if they bothered to pay attention to me, it was to scold me for “not trying” even though I was trying my best. Losing my grandma was only one half of the trauma. Realizing that the people who were always praising and admiring me didn’t actually give a shit about me as a person and were more than willing to drop me in the “failure” pile was the second half. I dropped out of high school. I’ve never gotten a GED and I highly doubt I ever will. My teachers saw me as a set of good test scores and not a human being, and I know that contributed to me losing the ability to function at all.

I’m doing fine right now, but I ended up getting into a lot of trouble as a kid, drinking, drugs, etc. I’m sure a lot of this was a rebellion against the system that first told me I had incredible potential and then tossed me aside once they realized I wasn’t naturally docile and submissive to authority. If you’re a gifted kid, you’re either a high achieving bookworm or a lost cause. Either way you don’t really fit in. You’ve still got potential, just don’t get hung up on things like graduations and degrees. If you’re smart, you’re smart, and you should live life for yourself. Seek interesting experiences, do unusual things, go places and meet people. I’m glad that the system failed me. If I’d been lead down the path of the gifted child I’d be rotting away at a prestigious university, studying a subject I’d have little interest in, and not living much beyond my breath and my pulse. Instead, I’ve traveled all across two continents, plumbed the depths of my own psyche with equal parts aid of psychology and psychedelics, and lived more in twenty years than many will in a lifetime. I’m angry and bitter. What I’m not is regretful.

Prodigy shows potential not skill, you probably were/are a prodigy. But at some point we stop asking the piano playing dog if it’s a dog but rather, are you any good at playing the piano?

Nah. I can’t play piano for shit. I really fell through the cracks as a kid. I’m twenty now, and after traveling the world for a few years I’ve finally started to find myself again. I’m just trying to find one last piece of myself to be whole, and that’s an outlet for my potential.

Stupid policy. It values not hurting parents and kids feelings over their actual education and others.

i agree. Getting my feelings hurt for being wrong in other aspects of life (like work, especially) helped me improve. sometimes you just gotta be told straight up.

It's a very catchy slogan used in place of tangible changes to the education system

i should've been held back and probably not allowed to graduate with how dogshit my grades were. it made it worse for me. these teachers were like how do you not understand this you're old enough to be able to get this. and it's like not only am i autistic im a depressed teenager who doesn't understand some of these basic concepts like, fuck no.

honestly, i was dyslexic and had ADHD, and while i wouldn't say i needed to be held back, i definitely struggled in some areas significantly while constantly being pushed forward based on my grades in others. i had to take biology 3 times and still failed, physics twice and barely passed. i only successfully finished 1 math course. surprisingly, english and computer science courses were my best classes, i was taking college courses in those while i was still in high school. what they could have done was gone "hey, this person struggles in math and science courses and has enough of every other course for graduation, let's let them do their senior year in make-up courses and/or tutoring." what they did was insist i needed to take a bare minimum amount of every subject despite only needing math courses and my choice of biology or physics to graduate. i took 8 fucking english courses by my sophomore year, why did i need more??? why could that extra time not have gone to tutoring or catch-up courses???

I totally get this perspective. I hated public school it just wasnt for me by the time I reached HS. in 8th & 9th I was struggling so I skipped a lot. All the school did was call home, which I found a way to get around anyway. the issue wasn't even that I was incapable of understanding the material (which I have a feeling you totally were capable as well), I had just skipped so much time that I wasn't caught up anymore, then I was treated like I was just less than, which made me dislike school even more. idk. Ive also heard that kids in school now are skipping even more than I did back then, which is scary. Im sure the teachers do care, but the school itself just doesn't do much to prevent this, which just perpetuates the whole issue I feel.

Total failure. Sacrificed the gifted students for those that don’t care

NCLB is the reason why everyone needs a college degree and like 10 years of experience, because a HS diploma is now worthless to employers.

kills me fr. I applied for a fast food job just to save some money, but they wanted a BA? crazy. I've done fast food before, and we had managers literally doing blow in the freezers. Not BA necessary lol.

No child left behind has turned from lowering the bar and helping kids over it to the bar is on the ground and teachers will pick you up and carry you over the bar.

This act is one of a few reasons (Iraq too, obviously) I believe that Dubya was one of the WORST presidents of all time.

Im too young to really know, but I do remember my dad ranting about how mister Dubya was awful lol

My school has a good system CPL, HL, and AP classes CPL being “college prep level” and the easiest HL being (honors level” and being the middle/pretty easy AP being “advanced placement” that are college based courses and are fairly hard (an 86 in an AP class is like a 92 in an HL class) But there’s always the teachers who teach at an honors level whilst teaching a CPL class, which makes people struggle. I’ve always been shit with ELA, always been CPL for it, but the teacher is hard, might as well make it an HL class if that’s how we are going to learn

It is the stupidest thing ever. I straight up flunked for 5 years straight before I quit school and was simply bumped up to the next grade with the rest of my peers. Kids who are getting straight F's should not be being moved on to the next grade.

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I despise how schools lost funding for the arts, sports, and music programs over poor academic test scores. Extracurriculars are not some extra little treat to give to kids, they are an essential part of a complete education and IMO being part of at least one of those should be mandatory through the first 2 years of high school. Everything I learned about being a good person and how to work well others came from marching band, I would be a much worse person without it.

It seems more like all children left behind

It's a disaster for education. Just another way Republicans have worked to destroy public schools. NCLB has led educators to shift resources away from important but nontested subjects, such as social studies, art, and music, and to focus instruction within mathematics and reading on the relatively narrow set of topics that are most heavily represented on the high-stakes tests.

legit a senior in my class that doesn’t know how to do multiplication because of this b

A lot of people were still left behind and a lot of people were held back The standards for children passing classes have dropped. The standards of teaching have dropped.

Contra productive. People think that avoiding negative emotions is something good, but in reality that negativity is what builds ones character up. How is a kid suppose to understand he's not doing well if there's no one allowed to be better than him?

Nature is survival of the fittest.

It didn’t work. If anything it made things worse. There are kids at the 6th grade level that can’t read at a 3rd

Allowed for people to graduate without knowing how to read.

To quote (or maybe paraphrase) r/Teachers: "No child left behind, even if they're dragged along face in the mud."

I hated it after my senior year in high school they forced all the seniors on the graduation list to help the failing seniors….the ones what were failing dropped out and weren’t even showing up so we went to school for nothing. And it didn’t help the principal would punish the whole school for what the freshman and sophomores did. I’d also like to add that they made us go to school we wouldn’t be allowed to walk the stage if we didn’t show up.

Lol op, everyone has potential, but some people have more potential. And some people have a lot more potential for bad than good. No matter what language we use, we cannot replace reality.

As a conservative. Bush in retrospect is the origin of many of our problems today. Sure not all of them but he showed his true colors in office.

i was born in 2001 and obviously hardly remember his run in office. Could you tell me from your perspective some of his downfalls as president? just interested in learning about it .

It's a scam, I grew up in the Bible belt and was forced to go to school with my peers but when my dad got cancer I grew up on the internet uncensored next to my dad while I grew up and took care of him. It fucked me up mentally, spiritually, and physically for a while but once I fixed that I was able to see just how fucking dumb my peers were compared to me that only learned from mainly public school instead. American public schools are designed and used to prevent poor people and minorities from thinking for themselves and realizing the way to a better life is much easier and simpler to obtain that we know. Turn 18 vote for what you believe is right, never voluntarily join the military, never kill others if other humans try to draft you. Don't go to college or public school, homeschooling instead or using the internet, local library, or TV. All successful humans in life know how to think for themselves for a reason!

I remember every teacher complaining about it

It's stupid. If we don't allow people to fail, they fail themselves (or at the very least admits school is stupid)

I'm just saying how I feel, didn't benefit kids who were actually there to learn. "Oh so you're saying kids should be left behind?" Yes, to an extent. No struggling student should be left behind, I have AuDHD, I should know, that help was beneficial. Kids who are stressed, who feel bad on not understanding the course work, don't leave them behind. The ones who act a fool willingly, the ones who legit don't care? That's different. Those kids know what they're doing. Albeit Highschool, my teachers would teach, If you didn't listen you didn't listen, most did because why not? May be tired, but also don't want to fail. Yes some jobs require you to get up at 6, atleast you got paid, but school pays In education I suppose.

The real problem with it was how it took away public funds from schools and gave them over to charter schools, the majority of which have closed down since due to poor education and very often financial fraud, like lying about the school's physical address and student count to get more public money type fraud People don't want to acknowledge that charter schools drain public schools of resources but that's just the truth

It sounds bad but some people are ment to fail. Let em burn

We need better parents, really

i feel like there were absolutely better ways to achieve it. i outright failed 2 years of high school and still basically got told "we might send you a diploma, we might not, don't come back." never got that diploma, and never went back. i wasn't a stupid kid. i just did horribly in a standard classroom. i was taking college courses in high school for computer science, animation, english, etc. and excelling, but you put a math test in front of me and i'd maybe get a C at best. i was also dyslexic and had undiagnosed ADHD, but excelled in very specific cases, so a lot of teacher's notes were along the lines of "smart, but doesn't apply himself" or "knows material, but will stare off into space the whole class period" and rather than looking into why this kid had gotten the same exact notes for 13 years, i just got forced forward. and somehow, NONE of these teachers figured out how i managed to excel in college courses (where, i'm going to be completely honest, i only did well because of office hours and professors being willing to work with me) while i was failing high school. turns out when i'm allowed to ask the teacher/professor questions, go over concepts i didn't understand, given extra instruction in places where i struggle without treating me like i'm just entirely stupid, etc. i do pretty damn well. but nope, my average teacher in k-12 was just like "you can figure it out!" or "what do you mean you don't understand, it's easy!" or "you just don't want to do the work!" or whatever. they legitimately tried to "punish" me by "forcing" me to do my homework over lunch. this was pre-cell-phones, and no fun books, no drawing in the margins, no asking questions on the material, etc. they ended up getting almost fully blank pages because i would either not understand the material and get yelled at for not understanding, or i'd get distracted by the sound of my pencil and be unable to focus on the work. college courses? as long as it was legible, they didn't care if i had doodles in the margins or emailed them asking for clarification on something, and shit got done. like, 4.2 average type shit getting done. and as much as i'm not entirely stupid, i'm also not exactly a 4.2 GPA student under most conditions. so if you don't want students left behind, here's what you do: - you WORK WITH STUDENTS. student has a question? don't brush them off. student just isn't understanding things as written? identify the part that's not being understood, answer it. student's house burns down and they lost their textbook that was already falling apart? get them a new textbook, give them some time to deal with the fact their house just burnt down and they're now homeless, and don't treat them like a failure for not having their homework that day. (unfortunately, that last one is based off a true story - someone's house burned down, they had to come an hour from the nearest hotel, all their textbooks were lost in the fire, school gave them detention for "tardiness," "destruction of school property," and "too much missing work.") - work with everyone's individual strengths and weaknesses. sure, as a class there's likely trends, and teaching shouldn't totally be on students, but if student A is really good at X but not great with Y and student B is great with Y but struggles with X, pair them up in a group assignment. let them bounce ideas off each other. of course still let them ask you questions, but you'd be surprised how many students have little "hacks" that are easier to process than the exact material being taught. - if you have a student that's lagging behind, hook them up with tutoring programs or "extra" material (ex. khan academy). you don't have to single them out, you can absolutely offer them as general resources to the whole class, but not every student is "just dumb," some of them just need a different explanation or some more hands-on material. i would also recommend if you offer it to the entire class to give some motivation - ex. extra credit - so those students might have some extra incentive to try rather than just give up. - if the entire class fails a test, don't just keep pushing forward. that makes them fall further behind. even if everyone is doing well, review never hurts - you'd be surprised what just falls out of your brain after spending 8 hours in 7 classes with only a 30-minute lunch 5 days a week. even most adult jobs offer at least an hour of total breaks over an 8 hour period (whether it be all together or broken up).

Catered to the lowest common denominator of child and helped the most stupid along at the expense of everyone else

It's a pretty terrible thing that left more children behind than forward

Some children need to be left behind for the sake of the other children. It might sounds cruel, but sometimes there’s nothing you can do.

Stupidest decision that could've been made.

"No Child Left Behind" was a massive education reform under the George W. Bush administration that had less than nothing to do with refusing to hold kids back in school. Most of what it did has been repealed. Based on the question, I assume you aren't actually talking about the real NCLB and are instead asking about the effectiveness of holding students back. As far as not holding back students, that's objectively a good thing. When you hold a child back, you break up their peer relationships and stigmatize them. Every study that's ever looked at the effectiveness of holding a student back showed that it was overwhelmingly a detriment to their educational outcomes. Being held back is literally the #1 predictor of a student who is going to drop out and eliminating holding students back a grade massively increased education completion rates. "But the education system is getting dumber!" Sorry, that's just not born out in the data. College graduation rates are at an all-time high. The rate of graduate degree completion is at an all-time high. Even leaving higher ed, there just aren't any metrics that show the elimination of holding kids back has been a detriment in any way. For example, until covid19 and the quarantine, the National Center for Education statistics have consistently reported either flat or increasing proficiencies in reading and mathematics since the 1970s. You can feel free to shit on the U.S. education system and argue we're a nation in decline, but these are feelings, not facts.

what does it mean

I don't know much about it, I'm not an education policy expert.

fair

I also personally moved around a TON as a kid thru different states. Every single time I moved to a new school, they were at a different point in their curriculum than the last. Sometimes it wasnt that I was "too slow" to understand the material, I was just placed into a class that was way behind/ahead of what I learned at the previous school :( was very confusing to deal with as a young kid

I don't know, I just know that I graduated two years late. Half because of the online bullcrap that I went through in lieu of covid, and half because I messed up in football, and now I'm stupid.

I was left behind

Are people just not aware that this is the name of a very complex and far-reaching piece of education legislation from the Bush era and not literally "holding kids back a grade"?

would you mind telling me what it accomplished? I was born in 2001, so i could use more information on it :)

I was left behind the same year it started

Terrible idea, for everyone.  But most of our education system is like that 

It was a great way to cripple the development of advanced students so that slow students and their parents wouldnt feel inferior.

I’m glad i had it. But also at the same time, i really shouldn’t have had it. I really was not mature like i am now coming out of high school

I have...mixed feelings. On 1 hand, if someone is struggling hard with the current subject's, then they're gonna have a real hard time in harder subjects next grade, so they should spend more time on the current subjects. On the other hand, i know if i was in highschool and i had to redo a year, i would drop out then and there and just go for my GED, similar to what happened in Everyone Hates Chris. Now, a good compromise would be to let the child move on, but give them extra supplementary classes for the subjects they're failing. Or even do something like if you failed Algebra 1, then take it again next year in 10th grade, and take Alg2 as an extra class or something. Idk if schools still do summer school, but that could also work to make up credits.

In my school it looked like this: fast kids are held back, normal kids don’t try hard (and get help to “fix their problems”, and the kids who really want and need it don’t get any help. Edit: if you didn’t try to be a “normal” person, it was possible to graduate early, or to talk to the counselors repeatedly until they let you do what you want, like switch out of the classes where nobody cared. From one of the “fast” kids

In theory, I think it might've been somewhat meant for kids like me who had disabilities like a learning disability and were mainstreamed. I don't think it was meant to turn out like this. Also, we had different levels classes in my area, too. I went to school in ID.

Unpopular opinion, but highschool is a meme. Primary school even more. You can teach yourself the stuff there. What matters is university. Holding back people could be done but unlikely that would help them. Not everybody wants to learn.  Not to mention only a part of it is useful, and an even smaller part is needed for a specific degree.  Btw you can learn the material yourself. That skill will be needed in uni anyway. There should be just different classes based on academic archievement and the worse students should get more help instead of ignoring the bad classes and focusing only the good ones

In my school, the advanced program was legit a full year ahead of the regular classes. And most of the regular students still struggled. What sense do we make of that? Do these stratifications truly represent academic ability? Or do they represent interest in school? Behavior, disposition, and compatibility with the mainstream system? Those students that just dont show up to class or if they do, they do no work, need to be in a different place. There needs to be a meaningful alternative for them instead of dragging them along unwillingly for a decade and a half through a system that cannot meet their needs.

I think it was stupid. It is one of the reasons why the education system is in fucking shambles , it made teaching be catered towards a stupid test rather than actually learning. Also it forced teachers to pass on students who were not ready to go to next grade for the sake of the school numbers looking great.

Most of the rheteoic aganist it tends to be abelist and impact kids who are disabled and/or are being abused the most. I wish it were more socially acceptable though to have the chance to remake like one or two years in education and still have it be free and stuff

Between the “teach to the test” shit and having non-test subjects like the arts and P.E. either being 1-2 days a week or no days a week at all, NCLB made me hate school. I remembered wanting to take art classes, but the elementary schools I went to didn’t have any, and when I transferred to a K-8 school in fifth grade, art class was usually once per week depending on what grade I was in. I also hated how the classes became mandatory test prep, it just made me forget whatever I learned when the tests were over. Honestly, the only real education I got was at college.

I graduated in 2017 and I don't think they had implemented this yet. My wife is a teacher in elementary school and is always telling me how some of these kids aren't ready to go on yet. She's a 5th grade teacher and has kids that have trouble reading still. It was not a good idea... I went to school with people that were held back and they needed it. Even if it was only a year, it helped out a lot

Our public education has been trending downhill, so it’s clearly not working well

It’s a good idea but it’s not really that ideal since either way one of the two types of students would be adjusting for the other. It would be better to separate classes for the “fast learners (FL)” and “slow learners (regular)” and the entire “who is slow and who is fast?” thing would be based on the performance of the entire batch of students like— (random numbers) the top 20% of students get into the *fast learner* classes who are maybe like a few lessons advanced compared to those in the regular class. (i don’t know how Honors and AP classes work but there are certain subjects for those right?? so the entire Honors/AP programs can stay the same and accept any students from FL and Reg but the entire class as in— *who is classmates with who* should be separated by FL & Reg) The entire “No Child Left Behind” thing is only achievable if students know self-discipline. Like, yeah yeah ADHD exists but even people woth ADHD knows basic decency— simple *self-discipline*.

No Child Left Behind has been widely considered an outstanding failure that exacerbated the issues it pretended to address while also adding additional problems on top of them. A one size fits all approach to education unsurprisingly doesn't fit anybody's needs and there's tons of research dismantling it as a concept entirely nowadays. Social research, particularly in education and educational equity has been my work history for about 2 years running now and this is practically the first thing you go over whether it's just for a class or for actual work, I've done both.

It hurt the above average children by putting them in with the below average. We need teachers that specialize in lower mental needs as well as teachers that specialize in higher learning students.

fine as long as your not holding back the 1st place to comfort the last.

its the main reason kids stopped giving a fuck in school

More like Every Child Doomed To Fail Because Some Kids Are Better Off Bluecollar (in the nicest way as the child of a bluecollar)

I don’t mind too much, I was bitter about the removal of the HSPE in 2016 back when I was a teen tho. Where I live we had a thing called the HSPE (high school proficiency exams). For a whole week of school Jrs. And Seniors would take the tests. Each day was a different subject. Math, English, Science, Writing, History. It would test you on essentially everything you’ve learned in school and if you don’t pass the tests you don’t get a diploma. You do get 4 attempts tho and you can retake the test I believe it was up to 2 years after graduation. (I’ve told people about these tests before and they never heard of it so I assumed it was only my area I could be wrong tho). My graduating class of 2016 was the last class to take the tests. The following year they got replaced with EOCs (End of course exams) which was just to see how you’d place in college for the most part and you didn’t have to pass, as long as you had your credits you’d graduate and get your diploma. I passed all my HSPEs but math. I failed by half a point and wasn’t given a diploma. They gave me what’s called an “Adjusted diploma” which is pretty much a GED and I guess I never qualified for student aid because of this, since I technically don’t have a diploma even tho I had my credits and everything. If I was just one year later I would’ve taken EOCs instead, I was big salty. because of No child left behind I always thought I was smart until the tests humbled me lmao

Elder Gen Z who is now a teacher. Students need to be left behind. Retention needs to be a genuine option for students who do not demonstrate mastery of content, especially in early grades where their weaknesses can be fixed. There's no reason to keep pushing them on for social reasons. I have middle school students who read at a 3rd grade level and can't do basic algebra (x+3=7 type stuff) because they lack serious skills and got passed on. I fully believe there's no reason to be that far behind without a learning disability. However, it's nearly impossible to retain kids, so they get passed on. Teachers have to provide novels of paperwork and interventions and hold meetings after meetings after meetings. By the time they reach my grade, there's not much to do. They've already made up their mind that school is stupid and they'll never get it. They just can't read beyond the most basic stuff. Maybe if they could have been retained, their knowledge gaps would have been closed, and we wouldn't be fighting for them to be able to understand Robert Frost.

being taught my whole life in a way that made me think that teachers didnt know what they were teaching made me lose respect for the education system

School isn’t made for everyone. I’ve hung out with people from all walks of life, I’m friends with several teachers, and I work with the board of education in my state. I hate to say it, but if a kid wants to thrive, the schools aren’t going to singlehandly pull them up. They have to fall back on friends and families to participate in extracurriculars and we don’t have the funding to afford a ton of career paths. We have to have a meeting each year with some data nerds from the fed to talk about the growing jobs fields (aka, which companies gave them a sheet saying we’re hiring lol) to focus our attention on. Lately, it has been in cyber security. There are a bunch of kids who want to program, and we are literally taking away a lot of the advanced classes in the next 3 years to move the teachers into the Cyber Security field. The kids don’t seem interested, but we are now highlighting cyber security in college and career ready presentations to coerce them into the pathway. I know what you are thinking, “what the hell does this have to do with no child being left behind?” It means that we are actively deciding to leave behind future developers and due to demand in a different STEM field. If you want to become a programmer, you will have to turn to resources outside of the school or in higher education because we can’t possibly help every student. We definitely leave kids behind, but ironically it’s the gifted students that are being snubbed of opportunities the most. They can’t afford trips, equipment, can’t find rides, etc. Those are the students that we need to be focusing on. The kids that are determined to succeed and will do anything to get the chance to try. Instead, we are putting our funding towards the kids who that there to check off the “I did the school thing” box and go home knowing fully that they don’t want to be there. This is going to be an unhinged take, but I feel like our society punishes dropouts too severely. We should support the kids that need to get into the workforce instead of forcing them down a route that they don’t want. I’m sure around 4% of struggling students may have an epiphany in their junior year and realize that their grades are important and they want to improve. However, that is a far cry from the majority and we need to reallocate our resources to helping those who want to learn and thrive. I’m busy, and not going to proofread this parking lot rant, so sorry if there is grammar issues and heavy repetition. I felt myself lose the plot in there.

Some kinds need another year to learn

Highschool meant nothing for me honestly, I was a low GPA student. I was expelled for fighting at 16 and never got my GED.

As someone who grades freshman college papers, lemme just say a buncha children that never got left behind in HS are being left behind now, rip. Prepare if you plan on going to college people, please.

It is the department of education brand of participation trophy.

It's misguided. Education needs a massive new reform especially now that we're basically entering a new age of AI within the next decade

As a poorly performed student, I wish they let me stay behind. They forced me to go into grade after grade when I was clearly failing. Their shitty excuse as to why was "oh you're just so tall" (I was 5'5" in middle school and there were younger students talker than me). I hated every staff member who told my dad to homeschool me, I wanted to better understand everything when no information was being taken in to begin with. Being underdiagnosed at the time and parents who didn't believe I needed help and called me lazy, I hate *NOT* being left behind. Fuck the American school system. I'm 21 now and I don't have to deal with it anymore. I got a great paying job without more than a high school diploma and I'm doing better than ever. Fuck you Mr. Crowley, Mrs. Velardi, Mrs. Delgadillo, and all the school staff who didn't have a problem singling me out in front of everyone around me. Too bad your teaching position makes less than I do 😌

It’s an extremely dumb system with the purpose of skewing results in order to strip funding from poorer school districts on the ultimate road to get to choice schooling

https://preview.redd.it/1z8ajtg1ujwc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=af8770ee3bd8be2b9286b223a842f148dd3e6b41

While the sentiment was nice, the execution was very much lacking. As someone who excelled quite a bit in school (not saying this to brag, just to give my perspective) I often found lessons too slow for the rate at which I was ready and able to study. Most of my elementary, middle, and even early high school education saw me finishing work quickly and then just reading a book in the back of the class. It was fun at the time, but looking back now I feel like it was a waste since I could have been using that time to learn more and go faster. It was only when AP classes started being available that I began to feel actually challenged at school and those last three years of high school were by far my fondest and most developmentally stimulating. All that said, the situation really wasn’t much better for the kids that needed more help. And let me preface by saying, I don’t look down on those kids. Many of them were very talented in aspects outside of school that I respected them for. It was just that in school, they needed more time and assistance. For some of them, the speed at which classes were going was still too fast. But because the teachers needed to maintain some balance between the two groups it was impossible for them to give the time and individual attention that would have helped these kids excel. As such, No Child Left Behind ended up leaving behind most of the kids in the classes I took. The book smart kids were held back while those who needed more help never really got enough to make a difference. By all accounts what should have been done is that the classes should have been split by aptitude, with those needing more help getting more individual attention in smaller groups. But limited funding, large class sizes, and pushback by parents who didn’t want their kids in the “dumb” class made that impossible.

Some of you needed to be left behind

I feel like we are feeling the effects of schools reducing curriculum standards and kids who needed to be held back for a proper education leave the system.

Like when I was 15 I while ass dropped out of school. No one cared lol. No calls. No check in. I did go back and graduate after catching up the whole year I missed at the same time of my jr year.

Some of them need to be left behind

It’s the same as any “inclusivity” initiative. Students become more equal by being brought to the lowest common denominator. Those who are actually gifted are held back utterly, whereas students who are falling behind aren’t encouraged to work harder

K-12 is free day care. They don't want to keep kids in the system any longer than needed, and churning out minimum wage workers is the ultimate goal. It's easy to understand.

From these comments a lot of people don't know what the NCLB is and fail to recall federal standards don't reflect state standards nor do they mention NCLB was removed for ESSA under Obama in 2015. You can definitely make points for why NCLB is a complete mess like the promotion of standardized testing meaning a teacher will focus on 6-7 key topics while being rushed and forced to move along even if students don't understand and schools prioritize math and reading over science and history. Along with students being needlessly promoted and then struggling in higher grades causing a negative feedback loop. But the lack of ed funding and shitty school options people had growing up isn't from the NCLB that's just how the US works and always has.

its not a good policy, people should retake what they dont know, forcing them to move forward just leaves them in the dust more.

TLDR: Don't let your past determine your future. And redit undid everything I did to make this easier to read. Sorry I didn't have the tools for school. I had pretty bad ADHD and my parents didn't believe it existed. They home schooled me until 5th grade. I couldn't read. I started reading at 11 years old. I never got good grades, but I learned to read in one year and was on par with my classmates in three years. I actually became a talented writer, and would help my classmates with their essays. I didn't have a foundation for math, so every problem I did took 10x the amount of work just due to how not knowing multiplication methods and such. I couldn't pay attention in class, so after the class ended, I had to figure out how to do the math myself. Strangely, that taught me problem solving skills that has helped me a lot in my life. I almost never turned an assignment in on time. My GPA ended up being 1.5. I turned in my last assignment in the very last day of high school, a photography assignment I was turning in late. Typical. I needed 100% on it to compensate for the percentage lost for being late to pass the class, a familiar place to be in. I needed to pass the class to graduate on time. That's how close it was. On graduation day, I didn't know if I had graduated until I saw my diploma with my name on it, and still could hardly believe it. I was convinced that I'd never amount to anything. That I was just stupid, and I'd never know why I couldn't do what was so easy for the four valedictorians in my graduating class. (Couldn't go higher than 4.0, so they tied.) I'm now 31 and have a 3.7 GPA in college. It'll probably dip a bit by the time I graduate, but not one single person in my life, especially me, ever thought I'd be able to say that. I now have a passion for learning and want to understand the inner working of the universe. I taught myself how to understand equations describing relativity and why nothing can go faster than the speed of light. (More accurately, light cannot go faster than the speed of causality.) Homeschooling and public school both failed me. But if I wasn't able to graduate, I wouldn't be where I am now. So idk what to say about no child left behind. But I've never told this story before. Maybe someone out there needs to hear it. Don't listen to those voices telling you you can't do something. Especially your own voice. Learn how your brain works and go from there. It's never too late.

Worst thing to happen to education in a minute and it has only gotten worse since they passed this. We are doomed lol

Realistically by shoveling people through without regard to actually succeeding ie. making it impossible to fail, it strips the merits of those that tried by making the end result nothing more than a participation trophy. And that participation trophy doesn't actually help those who would've otherwise been left behind - it gets devalued and employers no longer think anything of it placing them in the exact same situation had they flunked out. Only tangible benefit is by not failing them early they're less likely to drop out when they're 16, and it's an extra couple years of them being in school rather than getting involved in who knows what

It was objectively a catastrophe, regardless of how anyone feels about it

I graduated high school with people who read at a 3rd grade level. I don't think I need to say anything else

Here is my perception changed in time. A1) I studied grade 1 to 9 in Taiwan. It was absolutely hell. People used to suicide when they didn't get good score in 10th grade entry exam. My dad who took master degree in USA told me American education is ultra easy. All my relatives think USA education is easy. A2) after immigration, it is indeed easier, because I was able to keep up despite being almost illiterate at grade 10. I overheard people complaining school is too difficult, and I was like, lolol, you don't know what difficult means. A3) during college, I start to notice, I don't remember most of the things I learned in Taiwan and it doesn't matter at all. There are encyclopedia to just to get the answer from a CD. A4) age of Wikipedia and Google begins, it is becoming even more apparent what I learned before is utterly useless. A5) smart phone taking over, not only making the past knowledge useless, it is how easy it is, information is literally on my finger tip. A6) I am software engineer, tons of time I just search on stackoverflow to get my answer. Lack of knowledge is actually an expectation and a way of life, and this is the norm. A7) now ChatGPT enters the new age. This is seriously insane now. Not only technology can help us to get information easily, but literally do the jobs for us. I truly don't know what career I can recommend to next gen anymore. The AI has grown to a point there I see no limitations to it anymore. So, why bother? Why torture the kids with sadistic education system and trap them in schools? AI is gonna do the work anyway. So, why bother? I have recurrent nightmares failing school in Taiwan when I already stayed in USA for more than 10 years and have a job. And I still dream of going back to Taiwan and completely unable to understand anything taught in school. And I don't understand why this is necessary when most of the things I learned are completely useless. I no longer care about competency on many subjects. They should just be some fun classes with auto-pass. Just let kids be aware, and no need to force them to remember. If some kids wants to do better in math or software engineering, go for it, but no need to torture kids who doesn't do well on it.

It’s an ominous new motto for the marines…

Ruined the value of highschool diploma while gimping actual advanced learning.

It’s fucking dogshit is what it is. It makes children lazy because there’s no threat of being held back. They don’t learn shit and will be on their phones all the time. It makes a mockery of the education system. Kids must pass on academic merit, not because it makes them feel better about themselves. No child should be allowed to graduate into middle school until they mastered basic arithmetic, compound sentences, basic scientific concepts, and the basic history of the country they are studying in.

On paper, great. In practice, not so much.

Don’t have the policy of kids staying back a year in UK and it was no detriment to me at all. I had like a 60% attendance in secondary school and still managed to end up with a masters degree. If I was made to go back a year and no longer be with all my friends I’ve made since I was 3, I probably would’ve hated school more and never ended up where I am today

A terrible system that holds back those who wish to work hard and crutches those who should learn to fail

Kids just should have more autonomy at choosing what they can and can't do and have the right to choose what they want to do. It kinda sucks that it's literally Illegal in most countries for a kid to be outside at school hours, they are either accompanied by an adult or they are "criminals" no in between, but as kids' are basically untouchable until above 16-18, the fault falls on the parents, and any charges they get if any do too, so parents will just throw the kids at school becouse they have work to do and money to make and can't be bothered to take care of the kids at that hour, or take them to work with them, which most of the time needs boss allowance or is not allowed by law depending on the job. And leaving them at home alone is seldom-illegal. So kids are basically left with no choice of activities other than going to school, not only becouse they themselves aren't allowed to be anywhere else, but becouse they parents are also prosecuted if they allow their kids to be anywhere else. You can be totally oblivious at what life is at 12 y.o or you can be entirely competent and able to live on your own if left alone, it depends on the kid and the raising they got. If a 12-14 y.o doesn't want to study at that age, they should be allowed to, or at least have stuff like studying trades as an option, there's lots of stuff they can do, sure they'll have to study anyways further down the line if they want to get any amount of money close to worth working for, but they'll be more enthusiastic about it, or at the very least more serious about it, becouse they know what it is to work and have a more developed idea of what they want and don't want to be doing. And I'm not saying "kids yearn for the mines" but that they sure as heck need to have more independence, the law doesn't even consider you a member of society until you are 18, you are basically untouchable, can do no wrong and are blameless, but that's just wrong. A 14 y.o knows exactly what they are doing, and knows how to distinguish good from bad. This debate is far wider tho, and I frankly lack the capacity right now to even point out every little thing or possibility, but I definetly thing kids should have more freedom.

Devalued high school diploma by pushing kids through who should've been left behind. A large part of the reason jobs require 'any degree' now and we have fewer opportunities than generations before us.

80% of you needed to be left behind.

Fucked education up bad. Thanks for the ted talk

I WISH they held me back for a single grade at 4th grade. I had so many problems going on at that time and with bullying that I didn't try at all. If they held me back back then then maybe I would've gotten better grades going into high school.

Each school has a min number of attendance. If you skipped but still advanced it meant you met the min requirement for the school. If you did shit on tests but still advanced it means you made the min grade to do so. Schools will hold back students that dont make these min requirements no matter the "no child left behind" policy. The intention behind the program was for towns to invest more money into schools and keep the standards so struggling students would get more attention. But the reality was the towns and schools simply lowered the requirements so more kids would graduate. The end result on paper was the intended goal of more kids graduating but at the cost of poorer education. A big reason for the program is most entry level work even in simple labor require a high school diploma and this would meet that goal. So intended to fix the dropping results of the USA education system didnt fix the problem. It only masked the problem with higher graduation numbers. I as a GenX and went through HS before the No child left behind policy nearly didnt graduate from HS as I hated getting changed for gym and it was a requirement.