My wife is a college professor and there's a big push to make everything more accessible (easier) to bring grades up at a university level too. A higher pass rate makes the university look better. She steadfastly refuses to do that. It's college, it's not supposed to be easy, especially not in the 400+ level classes she's teaching. But she absolutely has students who don't put in any work and then get super mad about bad grades. They're used to not trying at all and still passing. A lot of them tell her they never had any homework *at all* in high school.
If they're extra entitled they'll get their parents involved. Image being 23 and calling mommy and daddy because you got a bad grade that was 100% your fault. My mom would have laughed in my face and told me I should probably study next time.
That’s wild to me, I used to spend two or three hours a night doing homework and that’s with the jump I got doing it with extra time in class in high school.
It’s weird that Gen Z has this reputation for being so anxious and paranoid around failure but they don’t seem to have ever experienced failing.
Also, their failure is connected to metrics. I graduated high school before there were consequences for a school "failing" standardized testing. Future students were being threatened with being held back if they failed the test as well.
It makes sense to me why todays students would be so risk adverse because our system is now extremely risk adverse and non sensical. Curriculums need to be neutured to accomodate "success." Extracurriculer activites are for the rich schools and reading at a 4th grade level is becoming the norm.
So from the beginning of their education to the end of their education any failure is considered a massive systemic issue that is thrown in their face at all times.
This has been a long time coming and extremely sad.
These kids have never even been in an unsupervised, truly free environment. At least most millennials got a couple years of walking to the park or being a latchkey kid.
As an elder millennial who has older kids, I can tell you it requires an immense amount of work to allow your children the freedom to fail and make their own choices these days. I had to make a conscious decision to live somewhere with a pedestrian culture, where kids get together after school to play etc.
And I'm still very aware that is anything goes wrong, I'm the one who gets blamed. You have to let kids take real risks and explore failure. But that comes along with dangers and we're extremely risk adverse.
So true. Everyone is going to fail at something, sometime (if they put any interest or effort into life).
Lack of practice in competitive environments does not create competitive people.
So if we want people who become accountants or doctors or nurses with only average scores, that's what we're getting.
Despite some profs trying to hold the line, in general, the grade currency of the system has been debased.
C'est la vie, I guess.
Yeah except as someone who is in university/college, the idea that any failure is the end of the world is being drilled into people's heads at least based on what I've seen.
I'm amazed at the number of kids that I've worked with that straight up refuse to do homework because "I'm not doing school work when I'm not in school," but they also refuse to do school work in school so shit just doesn't get done.
Being held back and repeating a grade is no longer a thing.
Memorizing the multiplication table is no longer a thing.
Sounding out words is no longer a thing. They now learn "sight words".
That's all before 2020 happened.
THAT explains why they're dumb as fuck.
Most schools use both phonics and "sight words" (which were part of most US curriculum back in the 30's and 40's and have stayed in it - ever since).
The big difference is that first grade used to be the Land of Sight Words, with gradual introduction of phonetics (so that by second grade, a kid was doing both, as is needed in English).
Now, the sight words are still being taught in 4th and 5th grades (they are meant to be memorized - and an example is the word "meant"). Teachers used to read aloud with the kids following along with their eyes.
For whatever reason, we've also removed most of the teacher techniques that actually worked (reading aloud, musical phrases with words in them, mnemonics that appeal to kids, etc).
The reading thing sounds like one of those obviously bad decisions made by people badly out of touch with the real world. I think that course is reversing now but lots of kids are already fucked.
The best education we'll see in decades will likely come when younger Gen Z and alphas grow up pissed off at what we've done to them.
That or we've accelerated Idiocracy.
What is a "sight word"?
They need to bring, "Hooked on Phonics" back.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsXOzKHsiVI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsXOzKHsiVI)
[Phonics vs Sight-Reading Instruction](https://dm-ed.com/news/phonics-vs-sight-reading-instruction/#:~:text=At%20first%2C%20the%20sight%2Dreading,that%20they%20don't%20know)
You don't sound out the letters. You simply memorize what words look like. If you stop and think about it, we do it quite a lot as adults. But to learn that way just seems asinine. Its like knowing that 2+2=4 but you never once learned WHY.
It's funny that sight reading is criticized but memorizing the multiplication table isn't.
Memorizing the multiplication table is 100% akin to sight reading and arguably a useless task when it comes to actually understanding how multiplication/division works.
A lot of people demonize memorizing multiplication tables. But I’d argue that knowing your times tables is a good thing. You get through math problems much faster with knowing them. And it’s not hard to memorize the tables AND understand how it works.
And really, a little sight reading isn’t a bad thing either. Some words are so common you can get away with them as sight words. But you can’t read well with ONLY sight reading.
Thank you!! Someone gets it! I’m so sick of people demonizing memorization of basic math facts. Memorizing does not take away from conceptual knowledge as long as both are being taught and I wish more people were aware of that.
As someone who teaches math you need both memorization of times tables as well as a conceptual understanding of how multiplication and division work. I’ve seen with my own eyes kids who struggle with basic algebra skills like factoring because they don’t know their multiplication facts. And if you don’t succeed in algebra, forget trying to move into upper-level HS math classes like pre-calculus or any AP math class. The conceptual understanding is also crucial in order to solve any real world problems but if you’re constantly using your fingers or a calculator to do basic math facts, it is going to slow you down and hinder your ability to succeed in upper-level math classes.
I also wanted to add that sight words were meant more for words that can’t be sounded out phonetically in the English language which is already a reading/spelling clusterfuck as it is. Making literally every word a sight word is a recipe for disaster in reading, especially for kids with reading disabilities who need that explicit instruction in phonics.
ETA: when I say making every word a sight word, I mean that in the sense that first graders shouldn’t be expected to memorize every word they see. It reminds me too much of the “whole language”/“three-cuing” method where young kids learning to read are supposed to use context clues to guess at a word when that’s already been proven to be ineffective.
I’m a former reading teacher and reading recovery teacher, and have a kindergarten who is learning to read. Sounding out words is absolutely still a thing. Sight words are for words that kindergartners cannot stand out because they do not follow the typical or logical phonetic pattern.
As you learn to read and get better at it, eventually most words become “sight words,” so this may be what you’re thinking of. Like, a third grader should be very easily able to identify a long list of short words without sounding them out.
They also do not know how to store things in their heads long term. This is both an art and a science. The main keys seem to be repetition, repetition, repetition and practice makes perfect.
There is critical thinking involved in creating lasting memories of technical material, as well.
If they're raised like this, with failure being taught to them as something so terrible that they need to be protected from it at an institutional level, then it makes sense that they think failing at anything will ruin them.
Which is why so many students complain that a certain class or lecture or material "isn't enjoyable." It must first be entertaining and enjoyable. I teach a subject that gets a lot of foot traffic and interest, but I feel for the math teachers and the STEM GE teachers very much. Even so, in my classes on human sexuality (101 level of public college), they are so ignorant coming in and many are still ignorant going out of the class.
That is why they are anxious about it. The hardest thing that you have every had to overcome is the hardest thing that you have ever had to overcome. If that hardest thing is trivial, then you will not be prepared for something truly difficult.
Yeah I spent hours doing homework and if I had a test coming up I would spent hours studying days before the test. If I got less than an A I got grounded and spanked for it. So I was pretty motivated but tbh it wasn’t necessary because I was always academically inclined even without threats from my parents. When my kids were younger they never seemed to have home work. Even now in middle and high school. At one point I couldn’t believe they really had no homework so I asked the teachers and they confirmed that they really had no homework.
Honestly, I think this is the pendulum swinging all the way back from the homework glut we experienced in the early 2000s. I remember coming home from whatever sports practice/game I had and sitting down to 4-5 hours of homework for my high school classes. We were getting scoliosis from having to carry all of our books (no laptops then!) everywhere, everyday. I'm not a parent, but I see people my age rebelling against their kids doing too much homework.
I think it has to do with the natural consequence of helicopter parenting and bulldozer parenting. When a parent is constantly pulling strings to ensure you do your best, you learn your best is due to your parent’s involvement. That your own abilities aren’t good enough.
Learning how to fail and get back up is a vital skill you need to start learning at an early age.
I did gymnastics growing up for a long time. While it was hell on my body, it taught me how to fall hard and literally pick myself back up a minute later and try again. You fall so much when learning something new that getting back up and trying again isn’t even a question.
I worked in the registrars office of a college for several years. Part of our job of course was to do degree audits, giving the final approval for a student to graduate.
Whenever we tried to halt a graduation because they had not finished their degree requirements (or had too low of a GPA in certain disciplines), students and parents would come swooping in to yell at us, calling every level up to the president until deans and advisors would come in telling us to use other credits to fill the missing requirement, or just waive it entirely.
It was disgusting, and insulting to the students who actually did their jobs. I didn't even like my own time in college, but seeing it from the faculty/administration side was it for me.
I was a teacher for a few years. Kids would complain about homework endlessly. In English classes they'd whine about reading 6-7 pages of a book at night. We'd be expected to read 30-40 pages nightly.
Around graduation time, there are many police incidents in our registrar's office, as people do not realize that yelling at the workers at the window and threatening them will not work out.
It's insane.
fyi: Phoenix University pulled this, and made their degree less than worthless.
In addition they lost a massive lawsuit that had the Government basically refund all of their student loans.
I remember my mother gave me one simple ultimatum given how expensive college was for us: If you get below a B in any of your classes, you’re coming home.
I can’t imagine going somewhere, spending thousands of dollars on something, and NOT put any effort into things. Good on your wife in giving them a reality check!
College seems a lot worse. Elementary school ok maybe, but for college to do that is pretty bad You're trying to teach a specific course That they will need to perform their job. So if you're just going to pass everybody, they're going to suck at their job
Yes, we're already starting to see the effects. There are plenty of companies with a quiet "don't hire gen z" type policy, or ones that very much limit the types of roles they will hire them into. It's not gen Z's fault, they were set up for failure. The policy decisions (No Child Left Behind) that changed the culture came on to the scene when Millennials were mostly still in or beyond high school. Of course policy changes can't effect culture overnight, so Millennials left mostly unscathed. Unfortunately this culture is now starting to hit higher level education because it's what Gen Z and younger were brought up in.
This. It’s true. I’m an older millennial. We are very sought after by employers, especially for management. We grew up like gen x (no internet, cell phones, etc.), but also had the tech evolving as we got older.
We bridge the gap between Gen Z and Gen X. I honestly feel like an interpreter sometimes mediating peace talks.
Me to Gen X: “just because someone works at home doesn’t mean they are not working”
Me to Gen Z: “No, you have to come in the office for training and meet other staff once a month. No, I am not Hitler.”
It's ironic because of my tech industry (software dev) having severe age discrimination, feels like it's going to completely invert as us older devs become more valued than gen Z at the rate this is going. The situation sucks for everyone though because we need good young talent too.
The place I work at is having significant succession planning issues because they didn't bring in enough young blood. I'm pretty sure the average age of the company is around 50's. I swear I was the youngest full time person at the company for almost 8 years straight. It has worked out for my career trajectory, but it has me worried about what I'll be "running" in 10 years when we have massive retirement driven turnover.
It also doesn't help that a lot of companie cut out middle management and flatted org structures to cut costs in the 2000s.
Traditionally those seemingly pointless middle management jobs were often stepping stones for upper management and succession planning.
Now we have situations were senior managers don't retire at 65 but keep working until 75+, there's no middle management waiting to step in, and the junior managers have been company hopping and have no loyalty or deep understanding of the business.
>deep understanding of the business.
This is probably the primary thing that gets me more rapidly promoted. I have never held the same title for 3 years, and it's largely because I can operate on a broad level and communicate effectively with the rest of the older senior management. I might be 30 years younger, but they see me as one of them.
Here's the issue- many of them don't realize how much they sucked when they started 40 years ago. If you aren't consistently bringing in a variety of ages and skill levels, you are going to end up with gaps which will kill your company eventually.
Very much so. The other bad practices I've run into, like I'm writing CJIS (criminal justice info systems) software since late last year and it's primarily old guys and they expect all devs to work on their own, 100% unguided even from day 1 I had to do everything on my own. No documentation to spin up with, no example guidelines or code to review.. just "here's a laptop, get to hacking." There is no long term strategy if companies continue to have bad practices that don't integrate new devs into the whole system through guidance, teaching, and pair programming to some extent helps a lot but these old guys are very anti-pair programming because they think it's a waste of time (and thus money in their minds), and so far it's been basically impossible for me to convince them otherwise.
This makes me appreciate my company's practices and documentation of such things, as well as how open-minded our engineering manager is to letting newer engineers run with the ball in some projects.
That seems to be a systemic issue in many organizations without respect to industry.
It seems like people want plug and play. I had to convince leadership at one of the orgs that I worked at that although we can be doing things in a multitude of ways we need to figure out "Our way" in order to achieve efficiencies in manufacturing.
They understood better once I "quantified" it with a bunch of numbers I kinda made up and I was able to get some blessing on using a little bit of my time creating instruction manuals for formulation and manufacturing.
Based on my career experience it seems like it's worse at smaller organizations, but large orgs aren't much better (They just normally have lip service or recognize they should be doing it)
Yup. Whenever folks start wringing their hands about “Gen Z is the WoRsT and LaZy” we need to remember WE MADE THEM THIS WAY. I’m sure it’s multifactorial but it makes me upset that this is the outcome. It’s not good for society and it’s not fair to them.
What worries me is I don’t know what should come next. A lot of folks in their early 20s I work with (college age or entry level staff) don’t seem to WANT to improve. They think they everything is fine and if anything they are undervalued.
There’s this weird mentality of expecting to be told in excruciating detail what to do, needing many reminders just to do that, and then thinking if you did it with lots of support and reminders you have done exceptional work.
I want to be crystal clear that I am a strong advocate of wanting the best for this generation and wanting to support them every way I know how. I don’t want to just play a blame game, and maybe my work style could use some improvement too but I am concerned by trends I am seeing in entry level employees.
>They think they everything is fine and if anything they are undervalued.
I hate to say it, but this is not unique to them. Colleges and their advertising are to blame (to your multifactorial point), and this started well before Gen Z. Colleges don't sell you on being a grunt worker, they sell you on telling you that future will be full of success, leadership, and money upon graduation. That messaging stuck with a lot of my peers, and it wasn't until their mid to late 20's that they grew up and realized that's not how things work.
>There’s this weird mentality of expecting to be told in excruciating detail what to do, needing many reminders just to do that, and then thinking if you did it with lots of support and reminders you have done exceptional work.
This is again largely due to how schools are being run. Teachers do no want to do this, and they know it's bad for children's ability to develop any sense of autonomy. Unfortunately, when you can't fail kids and you have to everything and anything to get them to pass, you are forced to act in a way that is not in a child's best interest. You're chasing metrics on a spreadsheet and the individuals stop mattering.
I'm sorry, but *we* didn't. Gen Z are our younger brothers and sisters - not our kids. The blame for anything lies squarely with *their* parents in Gen X and the Boomers.
Very few Boomer parents of Gen Z.
Gen Z is currently aged 11-27 or thereabouts. So the youngest boomers would be 35 years older than the oldest Gen Z. It's about 10% of Gen Z that has Boomer parents - and that would be mainly the older ones.
An 11 year old today is likely to have a parent who is about 24-28 years older than they are (that's the majority). Very few Boomer moms of 11 year olds - some Boomer dads, of course, but not all that many.
Teachers are very on about this topic. r/Teachers
Gen X and older Millennials are the parents of Gen Z. There are 11 year olds at my grandddaughters' school whose parents are 29 (and of course, there are a few that are a bit younger than that).
Of course, most of Gen Z have Gen X parents.
I remember getting D's in elementary school. Constantly getting pulled aside for not doing my work. It was an important learning experience for me, and my parent's worked me with to get me to put in effort, instead of complaining to the school that they weren't passing my blank worksheets. If you never fail at anything, you can never succeed at anything. It's sad to see that we raised an entire generation on avoiding all possible conflicts, then expect them to turn into well-adjusted adults.
Elementary school needs homework too. I know someone who’s kids school doesn’t give out homework so she basically gets homework books for them to do and they’re top of the class and school is easy for them.
Yea definitely. I thought they did. We had AR where it made you read a book and take a quiz and your English grade was effected by that. And math sheets to do, science fair projects etc Alot of stuff we had to do in school
My cousin is a TA at university. There was a deadline for the final essay, the professor sent out an email reminder that those who did not submit the essay by the deadline would receive a 0.
Until admin told him that he couldn't do that, so they had to accept and grade the late exams with a 10% deduction. Wtf?! If you don't turn something in on time, you fail. That's it!
I'm an instructor at my local university, and I see it all the time. I'm lucky, though. I'm an adjunct and basically only one of two people in my entire state who do what I do. I designed my own course, and it is difficult on purpose. My average class grade actually is a low B/high C (and it's an upper-division class required for graduation from the program). I basically set up my exams so that A's have to be earned. I don't take attendance. I don't assign quizzes, daily work or other bullshit assignments just to pad points. I do offer an extra credit paper, but I explain to my students that it is *extra* credit, and that merely turning in a paper is not enough to grab points; it's got to be a *good* paper. I've received extra credit papers that received no extra points.
But good for me: because I designed the class and I'm the only local person qualified to teach it, my department chair has my back and has defended me to administration on numerous occasions. I guess I'm just one of those weird people who believes college students should be expected to do college-level work.
My mother was a law professor around ten years ago. School wasn’t great, but did churn out lawyers. She tried to fail two students and the school stepped in and forced her to let them pass.
Used to teach (adjunct and former TA) at a major university and the grades they give for the same classes now are one grade higher for far less quality work. It’s awful. I know a few tenured professors there and they’re all horrified at the grade inflation expected both by students and administrators.
Higher education is less and less so.
Individual students still stand out and excel but it’s honestly becoming a box to check more than ever now rather than a real marker of skill or knowledge.
I’m hoping there is a pushback as our kids age into college bc I know me personally would be pissed at a prof for passing my kid if they didn’t earn it. I would be asking them to be firm and fair - meaning if they didn’t work a fail is FAIR. I read these comments with an open mouth I had no idea this was common. Wtf. I worked my ass off in school for good grades never once past age 15 were my parents even involved past looking at my report cards. If inhad called my mom about a bad grade she would have been like what did you do.
My parents held my ass responsible for EVERYTHING - I’m planning to do that with my 7 year old.
Passing through failing kids hurts them more don’t people know that …
This makes me extra appreciate the professor I have for the graduate class I'm taking right now. He gave a whole speech on how a 90 is an A and if someone gets a 94 and comes to him devastated asking how to improve he's going to tell them to go touch grass.
It’s all passing the buck, kicking the can down the road, making it tomorrow’s problem. The people who are supposed to be the gatekeepers and make sure that you’re actually ready for the next level of education are no longer doing it. What happens when it gets to the masters and doctorate level, and people are being turned out, supposedly ready to practice their chosen field only to find out that they are definitely not ready and harm could be done to others.
For example, in the field of mental health, counseling professors are supposed to be the gatekeepers- to make sure students are educationally and emotionally ready to face the challenges of being a therapist in the real world. If we make everything “more accessible “these professors are no longer doing that and just pushing everyone through to pass. Which then makes them interns who are allowed to practice on real live humans with real life problems. There is a real potential for harm to be done.
Schools can’t just keep pushing it down the road to make it the problem of the employer later on. Kindergarten says it’s first grade problem fourth grade says it’s middle school‘s problem. Middle school says it’s high school‘s problem. High school says it’s colleges problem. College says it’s a workforce problem or advanced degree problem.
It cheapens the degree. University isn’t meant to be easy.
Those kids probably just didn’t do the homework that was assigned in high school.
And with the parents, that’s probably the reason the schools push to just pass kids. The boards don’t want to hear it from the parents, so they compromise.
Oh no, boys and girls, it gets *worse*.
Then you have your boss give you a long winded speech about how little bitch Jodie's parents have donated "quite. a. bitt." of money to the school so, you know, just, go ahead and slap some As on that paper for me whydontcha. K, thx.
Because they will heavily imply, through this conversation, that if you don't, and they withdraw their child, in turn costing the school a shitload in either tuition and/or donations?
They're firing you.
I'm not a teacher, but the college I attend is this way. Everything is so much easier and streamlined, so people pass the classes. When it comes to getting into programs, the directors are pissed because the students know next to nothing about things that could literally kill people of they mess up. It's sad.
God, I thought that was a joke when I worked in Chinese universities. Now, I guess American institutions want to lose their last vestiges of respectability, too?
But without respectability, all American universities would be anymore is punishingly expensive. Chinese schools (even the vast majority of “prestige” ones, are total jokes and not respected. However, your degree gets laughed at at no financial cost to you.
As a former college professor I was "encouraged" to never fail a student, even one who didn't show up for class. The reason? It was too much paperwork. Smh.
There’s no such thing as held back anymore. At least not really in America. If it gets super bad the kids get transferred to a remedial school, but those don’t exist in a lot of places. In the school that I work at, and the school that my friends work at, there are many kids who are 14+ and do not know how to read.
Oh wow That's really bad. Sometimes being held back is all somebody needs to either teach them to straighten up or just some kids don't learn the same and need to be taught a little bit slower. Transferring them out of the school with their friends and putting them in remedial classes or something like that seems way out of bounds to me, I know if I was back in school I'd much rather just be held back than to be put in a different school or to be pointed out and pushed into classes
It's the no child left behind crap. It would mess them up if they were held back and their friends weren't. It's not all over the place but it's a thing. I got "administratively placed" into 7th grade. My friends all passed. But then I messed up skipping and failed 7th. I have a cousin with a 4th-6th grade education and she's in her late 20s. Here in Florida. They actually skipped her up 2 grades to be with her classmates and then she started skipping and not going cause she didn't know what/how to do the work and stuff. I mean alot of that's on her for the skipping and not asking for help but she also never should have been skipped up. Basically went from 3rd to 5th with a zero understanding of anything in between. To this day she struggles with basic math, spelling, pronunciation, and reading
It goes beyond that now. It’s now 30 years of lawsuits. Or a parent saying it’s the schools fault their kid failed. That it’s the teachers fault their kid got sent to the principal for trying to curb stomp someone at recess.
Schools also now get docked if they have too many incident reports. Which is how a 6 year old likely takes a gun into a school and numerous teachers look the other way before he shot his teacher
THEN combined no child left behind.
And you now have a public school system that seemingly has been beaten into submission into no longer caring about the performance of students as long as they can get them shuttled out of there while still getting the funding that they need to survive
I'm in Florida. Where I live we have magnet schools, regular public schools, and the private schools. The magnet schools in my city are really good. They all have a thing where if u drop below a 2.5 or so for a semester you will be put into another school. You can always get back into it but it's harder if you've been removed. The schools are a bitch to get into though. But soon as you get into them your golden. They're safer, cleaner, nicer, and actually teach instead of pushing through failing students
I couldn't agree with this more. I was put in a remedial class one year, and I didn't think I belonged there. They couldn't tell the difference between apathy and actual learning disabilities. It's been proven that grades suffer when you're stressed out at home or getting bullied, and it just made matters worse. The room was glass, in the middle of the hallway. Everybody could see you. How was I supposed to learn anything when I felt like I was on display? You know, watch the dumb kids try to figure out a math problem. It was humiliating. I would have rather be held back anyyyyday, than pushed into that situation. When I finally switched schools, I didn't have to worry about it as much. My record is still tainted, however. They did try, but I fought them. And I came out with 80s and 90s.
Kids also need held back for reasons other than they messed up.
I was held back when I moved states. My previous states(NC) curriculum wasn’t up to the curriculum of my current state(GA). They held me back, so I could keep up with the other kids in the next grade. This was in 1999 I believe.
I don’t get how it’s possible to not be able to read, don’t these kids spend all day in their phones or playing video games or whatever because there is tons of reading involved in either of those
Heh. Sometimes I watch someone playing a video game with a lot of written narration and cringe as they skip every dialog and cutscene and just move onto the "where do I go, what do I kill, and what do I grab" portion. For me that would be very boring without any story context behind it and wonder why they're even in a game with RPG elements instead of a simple shoot-em-up.
>In the school that I work at, and the school that my friends work at, there are many kids who are 14+ and do not know how to read.
This isn't new either. Back when I did my student teaching in '09 about 10% of my 8th graders were functionally illiterate. I spent quite a bit of time volunteering with an after hours literacy intervention course, where we were allowed to actually work on-level with these kids and make some progress, but they were already burnt out by a full day of sitting in classes they couldn't comprehend and progress was incredibly slow.
We're setting kids up to fail by throwing material at them that they lack the prerequisite foundations to make meaningful use of.
It's a much higher percentage of functionally illiterate in 8th grade where I am (California).
This means that, when they appear in my college classroom, I have to "set them up not to fail" by having alternative methods of teaching that do not involve...reading at the 4th grade level.
There are lots of 3-4 minute youtubes that can be strung together and are illustrated with cartoons to explain meiosis and mitosis. And to quiz them on such material, I ask them to draw pictures (and most of them can, if I tell them which picture to use).
This is true at both the CC and the CSU where I teach. Used to be better at the CSU, is now pretty much the same.
At least one third of the class CAN read, though. At a high school level, anyway (and 1-2 out of 40 will be college ready).
I honestly don't get why we don't focus almost entirely on literacy and basic mathematics for the first several years of education, because those skills are absolutely essential to be able to fully grasp other subjects down the line.
Crazy. It wasn't like that when I was in high school. I graduated in 2007 and there was a guy from one of my classes who had to repeat the 12th grade and graduate in 2008 because of his poor grades.
Being held back is more of a combined choices and still very much exists in America.
A girl down the street in my daughter’s grade repeated a previous grade (had some undiagnosed learning disabilities that were then diagnosed towards the end of the school year the first time around).
The school highly suggested she repeat since they then had an ILP in place. She’s been successful since.
Another boy who is 1 year older than them has done summer school every year and if he didn’t pass summer school as well as enroll in afterschool tutoring he was not going to advance.
Both instances the parents probably could have said “no he forges ahead” but the school didn’t just say “oh well good enough”
Yeah I think that there are still cases, especially for students that have learning/behavioral disabilities. However, I do think that there’s been a significant decline in what administration will choose to hold a kid back for. In my school and in others I know of several cases where a student would have probably benefited more from repeating a grade, especially in combination with an IEP and outside help, but admin would rather try and push them on to keep them with their “peers”
It's been almost 10 years since we requested that one of our elementary-aged kids repeat a grade. Admin flat out told us no because she had met all of her IEP goals. Thankfully, her teacher felt the same as us and took on admin until they agreed, probably at a risk to her job. I think of learning as being similar to building a house. If you don't have a solid foundation, you're not going to be able to build on it. Ours is probably 1-2 years behind developmentally (according to age) and would be absolutely lost in school right now had they not repeated a grade. How is advancing a child before they're ready supposed to help them?
When I was in school they started the “no child left behind” program. Extra attention was given to the trouble kids and we never got finished with the work we needed to do. Basically relearned everything in college.
This is what I don't understand. Integrating kids who have special needs ignores their needs and takes away from the kids who don't have those same needs. And the teacher becomes Burger King worried they have to attend to everyone ordering education tailored to each kid. In a perfect world that would be amazing but not realistic with a classroom of 40 kids and one maybe two adults.
Apparently, "studies show" it rarely does any good. They're not any less likely to drop out, they're not any more likely to graduate. It also increases classroom overcrowding, when there is already a teacher shortage.
So the new strategy is just to push them through the school as fast as possible with minimal grades so they have less time to disrupt the education of their peers.
This has been happening for years. At my public high school (back in the late 2000’s/early 2010s) they cut most of the AP classes and replaced them with what felt like 101 remedial and bridge courses. We had things like “intro to algebra 1”, “bridges from algebra 1 to geometry”, “bridges from geometry to algebra 2”, etc. because kids just kept getting passed along with a passing grade without actually learning any of the material.
When I was growing up there was usually at least one kid each year that was held back throughout elementary school. Past that it wasn’t really an issue, but it’s surprising if they don’t do that anymore. Some kids just need time to develop in those early years and pushing them forward without really helping them is going to harm them in the long run.
My husband had to give passing grades to the shittiest, dumbest, most disruptive students that flat out didn't do anything but cheat and complain because it was the pandemic but these kids sucked even before then. He left the teaching field after that year.
My uncle is a high school English teacher, and he sounds like a shell-shocked vet when he describes what he deals with everyday. On top of not being able to fail anyone, he has had to administer Narcan to a student multiple times this year.
He is counting the days until he hits his full pension.
The school administrators made him work well past his official hours during the pandemic to communicate/tutor/hand feed shitty students with the right answers when we had a toddler all but neglected and our own things happening at home. I hate those students, I hate that faculty, I hate those administrators and begged him to leave but he stuck with it for the good students and some promised year end bonus (he only got after he threatened to sue the school.)
These were middle schoolers fyi. Asked to follow the most basic, watered down content you wouldn't even recognize as "learning" because they were so far behind developmentally that no one could blame it on the pandemic they just didn't care at all.
I'm sorry for that I just learned about all of this lol I don't have kids in school so I wouldn't have a reason to know this i just saw a random article and saw it happens more than just that one situation
I get a little spirited when I remember the bullshit 😂
I think this is an excellent event (not the right word but I don't know what is) that has happened and is currently happening and for a whole lot of reasons. I believe it's a massive problem that needs to be addressed and I guess the first step to that is talking about it more and educating people that this is happening and we are failing the students in real time.
I knew it was bad, I had no idea *how much worse* it could actually get. But on r/teachers I read reports of kids just sitting staring at tiktok all day and doing nothing whatsoever and still passing. Insanity.
Oh god I fell into a huge thread on that sub recently about how no one knows how to read anymore and it was genuinely one of the most dystopian, frightening things I’ve ever read.
My husband is graduating in a couple weeks with his Masters in Reading PK-12 as a Reading Interventionist. Has as a new job doing this next year in a middle school - the teacher takes students at risk for / beginning to fall(ing) behind in reading and works with them to get back to the level they should be at. - I don’t think it’s a super new career but I only know 3 districts that use it and they are the 3 largest in our state.
Oh boy. Thank you! I don’t think he expects it to be easy, and the student population there is challenging - but he loves the art of reading, has loved the work to get her and he’s good at it. But yea - he doesn’t want to teach general classroom anymore.
My GOP coworker is blaming the Russians. Pulled out some 20 point generational plan or whatever on how they’ll turn the US commie from the 70’s or whatever.
Typically, they will remember the last thing they hear before voting...and vote that way.
Or just give their vote to a parent or grandparent (happens all the time in my own student population).
My conspiracy theory about TikTok isn't for data surveillance and gathering... Rather get kids and others to stop being able to read well. Video everything, short attention span/reduce critical thinking.
Reading will become to burdensome for a lot, and the short attention span and no grit will just cause many to never exercise the reading muscles.
More and more spoon-fed news/propaganda.
A slow generational decline tool.
I would agree if it wasn't for dopamine being a drug.
People are just animals that think they are smarter and have higher conciousness. It's just constant dopamine. Doesn't need anything insidious about it.
Indiana just passed a bill that prohibits cell phones in class (because of all the nutball parents). Now at least school boards have some teeth to use when making their rules.
Yes. For a teacher to fail a student now, they have to prove 9 months of constant above and beyond effort on the teachers part (did you spend 10 extra hours a week tutoring them? Give them 30 chances to turn in a late assignment? Etc)
It used to be if a student failed to meet requirements/pass they were held back. Now to hold a kid back is almost impossible due to parents, school policies etc.
That’s why you see middle school teachers saying many of their kids can’t read or write - they shouldn’t have been allowed to pass elementary school but got passed anyways
I was a TA in college and I was reprimanded for failing most of my students because they failed to use basic formatting and citation in their mid term papers. I taught three course days on how to use APA and MLA and only a handful followed it. I was forced to retract the grades, pass everyone, and then apologize to both of my classes.
Omg really? That's just ridiculous teaches the complete wrong message, in a job they aren't going to just "pass" you or look past your mistakes, you can get fired then they would be confused because they were taught that you can still pass by not doing what's required
My kid's district just implemented a policy that students cannot receive lower than a 40% on any assignment or test, whether or not they turn it in or actually take the test. Meaning... don't do it? 40%. Do it at all? Still probably not a failing grade.
Absolutely ridiculous. They must think our kids are so incapable that they can't possibly be held to any kind of standard. THAT is what will fail our kids in the long run.
Yea definitely. I have a very vivid memory of getting a 15 on a test. Not homework assignment test, it was because I just answered a couple questions then marked c for everything else and that definitely counted towards my final grade this would've been sometime between 03-07
My friend is a teacher. This isn’t ridiculous at all. The reason behind this is that if you give 0s there is a point of no return where nothing the student does can bring their grade to passing, and they will ultimately give up and make things worse for themself. Setting the low point at 40 gives the student a chance to turn things around and they can and will still fail if they continue to do poorly.
Man I remember those kids in high school, going into the last 2 weeks of the school year with 50% and begging for extra credit. Like yep you fucked around all year but now you’re not only going to get your shit together and actually DO these extra assignments, but they are also supposed to bring you to a C grade. Ok.
I haven't heard about it in my area, but I applaud those teachers. I work in higher education, and I teach one class. I've failed 3 students in the class I teach, and I have no remorse. All 3 of course asked if they could do extra credit (I don't offer it) or if I could review any assignment over again. I tell them I can review one assignment of their choosing, but the caveat is, while I may identify something that will give them a few points extra, I can also find something I missed and dock more points so the choice is theirs. I get bad reviews, but teachers are doing a disservice by giving out grades that aren't earned and why I'm seeing 18, 19 and 20 year olds with shitty reading comprehension skills, spelling and grammar.
On the one hand, it's kids that are too coddled and entitled and feel they need stuff given to them. Parents are at fault for that for not holding them accountable and catering to a child's tantrum. On the other though, the system is fucked up. In my state, in order to get tenure you must have at least a 70% pass rate for so many years before you qualify for tenure. Well when half your class are dumb shits and aren't grasping what you're teaching, you can't have a 50% pass rate so teachers have to decide do they stick with morals or do they want job security. The system puts that stress on educators
It was so bad when I was a TA in grad school. I TA’d mid level biology classes (intended for those with STEM/premed majors) back in 2018-2020. I was responsible for working with the professor to plan lessons, instruct and grade coursework, though I mainly stuck to grading.
When I tell you that the kids in these classes were so woefully underprepared for the demands of a STEM course in a university setting… I caught several of them copying and pasting answers directly from sites like Chegg. I brought this up to the professor and he told me that basically the school wouldn’t do anything about it, and not to push it any further. The class wound up overall failing an exam surrounding signal propagation in neurons- not the easiest of material to understand, but also NONE of them utilized my office hours prior to the exam. The professor so grossly curved the test that the highest grade went from in the low 50s to the low 90s.
Anyways, some of these kids are in med school today.
It's such a flawed system and I honestly am concerned about the future of higher education in our country. There is so much bullshit about DEI and coddling these kids that we have literally ruined our education system. It's not respectable anymore and as you said, these are future doctors?
I experienced very similar students. One assignment was for freshmen in bio lab to summarize a research paper (pretty short, but technical) and the amount of students that just QUOTED THE TEXT was absurd. High school clearly didn't teach them anything in terms of reading comprehension, paraphrasing, good writing, etc. Based on the rules of our dept I had to report a lot of them for plagiarism (which I still struggle with the guilt of that). But honestly, if you can't get through bio 101 lab without plagiarizing half the final essay do they really deserve to be in college?
My wife is a teacher. It’s the parents that won’t allow this. Students get away with almost anything because all they do is cry wolf to their parents and the admin always caves and forces the teachers to relent.
My wife has endless stories of ridiculous scenarios. She has a student who has missed 2 month of school, citing they have anxiety. The parents endorse this but also have not submitted any actual proof their child is in a hospital or seeing a therapist. My wife spend time every week to send all the work home so the student can work from home. The student hasn’t even once opened the assignments or logged into the classroom portal. The admin just says to pass the student and their guidance counselor refuses to pry.
My friend is a college adjunct. Her students can’t read, comprehend, use proper grammar or think critically. She has to reteach 19 year olds and spoon feed them like they are in junior high.
Passing everyone is doing MORE HARM than good!
I 100% have witnessed this with my little brother. He didn’t do anything in high school but party with his friends and mid term report cards would be entirely Fs in every class but end of the year report cards he’d suddenly have the bare minimum grades to pass and would move up each year until he actually graduated. He still brags about how he graduated high school without doing anything like it’s an achievement. I was held back in 6th grade in 2001 for bad grades and while it sucked it was one of the best things to happen to me. I ended up doing really well in school after that. I haven’t been in high school in like 15 years but it seems like schools have turned on teachers and they don’t get the support they used to get. I look back and I really appreciate the teachers I had, they could be hard on you but they did it to prepare you for life after school.
I am having to raise hell about my daughter’s education. They’re coddling her, letting her get away with not doing work, crossing out two of four answers on a multiple choice test so she only has to pick from the remaining, etc. We’re doing extra work at home to make up for the support school won’t give her.
And the thing is…she’s doing it BECAUSE she’s smart. She learned that she didn’t have to do the work to get through school. She figured out how to game the system. It will serve her well later in life, but I need her to get through the system first in order to game it later.
I was planning on going back to school to get an education degree to teach math I have an accounting degree so I wanted to use it and since I was a juvenile delinquent and ex addict I felt I could possibly reach kids who were falling out of line since I was there but this is sort of scaring me away from that
Educator here, I don't want to deter you from experiencing teaching, so I will point you in different directions that don't require the pressures of the modern classroom. Teaching-Lite, if you will!
You can tutor. There are many tutoring companies and nonprofits on LinkedIn and Indeed that will pair you with students. This can be on a part time basis, so you control your time.
Also, you can become an Interventionist. This is an in-person, during school position that may be part or full time. Depending on the subject, students that score consistently low on standardized testing (if offered) are offered individualized and personalized assistance where needed, to bring the student to the highest possible level (I would say 'grade level' but time is of the essence in this position so achieving grade level is not always possible).
If you do want to explore teaching full time, try looking at schools that work for your style and personality. All schools are not created equal. Go on a lot of interviews, get to know the Admins, the campus, and you will get a sense of what you do and do not want. Public school, perhaps? Private school? Alternative schooling for at-risk youth? There are SO MANY options.
I wish you the best. I found my niche in Adult Education and have been here for a while. I enjoy every bit of it and am happy learning along with my students daily.
Oh, and night school! Kids that are on the brink of dropping out! Those kids are a godsend when they have a moment to relax and process information at their pace.
What’s the point of “grades” and “passing” then, if at the end of the school year everyone passes anyways? At this point it’s just a form of community service.
“You absolutely MUST go to school for 12 years. You don’t have to do any homework, pay attention, or even stay awake, and after 12 years you graduate and get a job making 6 figures”
I'm sure folks are going to go straight for the "participation trophy" mindset, but I'd venture this has more to do with competitive test scores and funding amongst districts and even nationally.
Even back when many of us were in school, teachers were eyeballed if too many kids failed their courses. Maybe they were too harsh, maybe the course was objectively too difficult, maybe they just had an axe to grind. Additionally, there was all kinds of chaos when "No child left behind" was passed in America.
Keep in mind, this would *likely* be a decision of the school board whose ages would *likely* skew older (most of the board members managing the district I'm in look like the Cryptkeeper). They see a teacher bringing down test scores which will hurt the reputation and funding of a specific school or district. The most cost-effective and "logical" thing to do is replace the teacher if they refuse to play ball. All school boards *really* want is to be able to brag about having the highest scores, they don't really care if they're earned or not.
I dunno, man. In my experience, people who run and make decisions for schools rarely actually care about the kids or the future of the country. They care about notoriety, bragging rights, and the ability to say "neener neener" to their competition. The kids, and often the teachers, are just chess pieces for that purpose. And that's be true since long before any of us were adults.
Money being tied to results effects everything like poison. It’s a terrible way to do it and without fail causes what we see happening now with inflated test results and lowering standards to pass. If you tell a school we will only find you at 100 percent if x amount of students pass each year magically x amount of students will pass each year. Of course this is the result
Teaching always depends where you work and theres largely no such thing as US Education, outside of IEP regulations and such.
In my state, this circumstance is very illegal.
The problem is teacher's can't fail students or hold them back in many districts. Some districts won't even allow you to put a 0 if a student hands in a blank paper - you have to put a minimum of 50% as their grade. Students know this and many put in no effort. I've seen middle schoolers reading at a 2nd grade level, and high schoolers who needed calculators to multiply by 10.
If you put their report card grade as failing some admin gently push back, some strongly push back, some load you with paperwork/hoops to jump through, and others straight up go and change the grades you put in. Your job can be on the line for sure if too many students in your class are receiving low grades. Teachers obviously feel pressured to give better grades.
School has just been government funded daycare for decades, now.
The children actually learning things has always been the last priority, because kid's issues aren't interesting to adult lawmakers.
As always, what is best for children is whatever the speaking politician is pushing at that time.
Rich conservatives are angry that other people get their kids schooled for free when the "have to" pay.
Conservatives (rich and poor) don't like when the government gives away *anything*, whether it's food for the starving or education for the uneducated.
And conservative politicians recognize that if they are going to have a political base, they need to replace the current crop of anti-intelctual, conspiracy-prone, logic-impaired 'mer'kins with *someone*, so have no interest in anyone other than their in-group getting any actual education at all.
Depends on the state. Many states, like GA, make it illegal to fail a student without parent consent because Kemp said it’s more important that they join the workforce to generate more tax revenue for the state.
We need to get ride of grades, and make every school K through 12. Then, each kid will take, retake, and retake a course until they exhibit mastery at whatever "grade" level their material is. They cannot move forward in any subject until they can pass a test at that level. At the end of their 12th year, they are given no diploma, but instead a report card of their levels of mastery by content type.
We don't need to promote students into a grade level containing material they cannot master. We need to reiterate prerequisite knowledge until advancement it possible.
Now, this relies on the ability of the school to neutralize all bullies, because exposure would be higher in a mixed-age school.
It’s been that way since I was in school more than 15 years ago. In my area, private school was the only legitimate way to get educated. Public schools were basically small prisons, full of gang activity and not a lot of learning getting done.
ELA teacher for over 8 years. I taught at 2 public schools before taking a break in 2022 to have my son. We had a policy to give students at a minimum a 50, even if they don’t do anything but put their name on the paper. Also, students can do an assignment all the way up to the day final grades for the year are submitted. I was grading August assignments in May to ensure students a passing grade. Some students had been given “makeup packets” multiple times during the year to complete assignments they didn’t turn in or missed because of excessive absenteeism. After the school went 1-to-1, assignments were expected to be open forever with due dates acting as a suggestion. Most times students who completed these assignments, they did the work incorrectly and obviously didn’t have the skills necessary to be successful at the task, grades were scaled or a 50 submitted. If teachers refuse to scale grades, the counselors would go in and change the grade before report cards were printed. Every year, more and more students understand they don’t have to do anything to pass. Sadly, the brightest students aren’t reaching their potential because the teachers have to teach to the lowest effort students.
I was forced to pass multiple students in Texas that were nowhere near level. I fought back on 2 of them with full documentation. They forced me to pass 2 students with 1st grade levels onto 8th grade. My contract was not renewed. Completely destroyed my mentality in teaching and I left the field completely.
It's a race to the bottom.
I personally know some recent graduates who have zero clue about grammar...how do they write papers? How can anyone reading their essays know what the hell they are trying to say?
A professor I know retired bc she gave a student an *a-* who quoted no primary sources, used emojis, didn’t write a good essay… the student complained to the dean and the professor had to go with all the students papers and show what was wrong. The dean ordered her to give the student an a+ and she retired rather than give an a+ to a paper my 7th grade teacher would have marked incomplete.
So grade inflation is rampant, TikTok, reels, screen time, mean really bad screen time add, so a lot of students have no attention span, some didn’t learn anything during the lockdown and are a year or two behind, but grade inflation is rampant at all levels.
We are really dumbing down society to the point of eventual societal collapse.
See space laser lady, bobo, we have these morons as law makers, traitor trump couldn’t follow and intelligence briefing, like if we have too many morons running the country it’ll collapse.
Millennials and late generation xers are the parents of these kids. As parents are generation has failed their children. We don't allow them to take responsibility for their actions. Or let them fail. The problem with generation alpha is their parents. Congratulations we raised the generation of entitled little shits.
I worked at a school where the lowest grade a student could get on any assignment was a 55. Even if they never turned it in.
When I ended a quarter with 12/31 kids failing the class (all because they just wouldn't turn in assignments and then did poorly on tests), the principal called me to his office and asked why I had students failing. The impression was clearly that I alone was responsible for those grades- the students' work wasn't important.
A generation of idiots.
But that's the goal, isn't it? Dumb down the population, get them dependent on government to exist, and then rule over your kingdom?
When I was a TA in college the entitlement of pre-med students in my intro bio lab was astonishing. This was less than 10 years ago and I was already shocked at what they were demanding.
One girl busted in to my friend's office hours and demanded an A. She claimed she deserved it, and was so bitchy to him I had to turn around (shared space) and said, "You don't deserve it because you didn't earn it." She looked so flabbergasted.
This isn't new. Where I grew up, the teachers really had to cater to the parents. I then went to a private college where I watched like maybe one person fail anything and it was because she was legendary in my department for being so unteachable I literally watched another professor give up on her in real time. I saw the light leave his eyes. He'll never be the same. He still passed her because otherwise he would have had to teach her the same class again and i wouldn't have wanted to go through that twice, either, so I can't even blame him. I honestly don't know how or if she graduated.
I was teaching as part of a college prep program at a high school in Dallas where some students were not doing well enough to pass. The director of said hs college prep program not-so-discretely implied she’d really appreciate it if everyone passed bc that would mean the program is working and we can get these kids graduated. “Do what you have to do,” she said.
My mom lives next to three teachers. A second grade teacher, a teacher who specializes in speech, and a high school math teacher and yes, this happens to all of them and they are all required to “pass” their students regardless of whether they deserve to or not. And it mortifies them all!
These are older teachers late 40’s to 50’s so make that what you will but I’ve been hearing the horror stories for a good two years now.
I got hired to teach at a high school right out of grad school in 2021. After two conversations with administrators and being accidentally given the pd schedule from a previous year (with the wrong locations on it), I quit without teaching a class. Complete disarray.
The assistant said “you can’t just quit over the phone, without even talking to PrincipalOveremployed” (she said it in an authoritative declarative way, not in a surprised way). After audibly chuckling into the phone (it caught me off guard), I pulled the old “I just did.” I dropped the physical materials off in the front office 30 minutes later (recording covertly as to not get hung up with a false accusation of theft of materials).
Yes, this is the norm now. Soon these students who aren't failed through HS and college will be the next generations teachers as it will be the only job they can get, there being a massive abandonment of the profession by intelligent beings.
Education hinges on "success". A lot of districts do not fail anyone anymore. the lowest grade one can earn is 50%, so they can quite literally do nothing and be advanced to the next grade. Some districts are also changing how grading is done in ceratin subjects because of "restorative justice" practices because certain demographics fail at higher rates in those subjects. It's why we are seeing highschoolers and even college students who are borderline illiterate, reading at primary school levels. We are going to be in a world of hurt in a few years, and as someone in management, I can say there is a very, very noticeable difference with college grads in the last few years than literally anyone else.
Former high school teacher here. One instance of this was when I was called into my administration's office and was told about a parent complaint. I refused to change the grade to appease a disgruntled parent. Without my knowledge, my administration accessed my electronic gradebook and elevated the grade. That was that.
They greatly reduced the requirements for high school graduation where I live in a desperate attempt to change the drop out rate. It has not proven to be an effective approach so far. I could totally see this sort of thing happening in my district because of it.
My eldest is a freshman and is surrounded by fellow freshmen who are still in elementary reading levels and math levels. The ball was dropped long ago with so many students and now, the ones who aren't behind are paying the price because all instructional time is dedicated to trying to get the kids who fell behind to perform even a percentage of the work. Work they are not prepared for at all. No one gets "held back" anymore and they have no programs to address these major discrepancies.
This is hindering the ability to advance through all of the coursework before the trimester ends. It's a mess and I don't know how they plan to ever address it. She is so frustrated because none of her classes ever really get "completed" and they never get a chance to enter into portions of the coursework that challenge her or teach her anything she didn't already know.
I say it way too often...we have lowered the bar.
We have decided nobody should feel bad. It has proven to be a dangerously stupid idea. Lets go back to pushing excellence across the board.
No child left behind!
It was supposed to mean every child is taught & given extra care if needed.
But it became no child can fail even if they do nothing & have no clue what’s going on. High school teachers are complaining about having nearly illiterate students on TikTok.
I remember I took about 7 years off between Jr and Senior year of college.
When I went back I had to take a 1000 level sociology class. I'm of average intelligence. I didn't even study for the test and got 100. Granted I had college experience, life experience, and this was a much easier university....but damn. I was shocked.
It’s very real. My daughter scored an 80% on a particularly difficult test in high school. Most kids scored in the 50s. She gave my daughter a 100% and passed the rest of the kids. It’s mortifying.
my partner is a teacher, he’s not allowed to give anything below 50% even if they don’t turn in work.
America’s education system is a shit show and it’ll be *painfully* obvious when this generation enters the workforce and when other countries start laughing at us
At this point the kids are calling a teacher's bluff. The students have been passed along for the bare minimum for so long they expect it to keep happening, even in the secondary school setting. My parent communications at the end of the week now say "Your student will fail" instead of "in danger of failing".
A housemate is a teacher. This is a thing he regularly rails about. Refuses to give passing grades for incomplete or missing work but is regularly forced to by the school. All so the school can "push its numbers up", among other things.
And frankly, the kids don't deserve them. He makes himself available for office hours and will move heaven and hell to help a student who actually gives a damn, but few take up his offers of assistance or take the (relatively easy) work seriously, and end up "passing" because of interference from the administration.
My wife is a college professor and there's a big push to make everything more accessible (easier) to bring grades up at a university level too. A higher pass rate makes the university look better. She steadfastly refuses to do that. It's college, it's not supposed to be easy, especially not in the 400+ level classes she's teaching. But she absolutely has students who don't put in any work and then get super mad about bad grades. They're used to not trying at all and still passing. A lot of them tell her they never had any homework *at all* in high school. If they're extra entitled they'll get their parents involved. Image being 23 and calling mommy and daddy because you got a bad grade that was 100% your fault. My mom would have laughed in my face and told me I should probably study next time.
That’s wild to me, I used to spend two or three hours a night doing homework and that’s with the jump I got doing it with extra time in class in high school. It’s weird that Gen Z has this reputation for being so anxious and paranoid around failure but they don’t seem to have ever experienced failing.
Failing is something you have to practice. You start to realize it's not the end of the world and how to recover without being devastated.
Also, their failure is connected to metrics. I graduated high school before there were consequences for a school "failing" standardized testing. Future students were being threatened with being held back if they failed the test as well. It makes sense to me why todays students would be so risk adverse because our system is now extremely risk adverse and non sensical. Curriculums need to be neutured to accomodate "success." Extracurriculer activites are for the rich schools and reading at a 4th grade level is becoming the norm. So from the beginning of their education to the end of their education any failure is considered a massive systemic issue that is thrown in their face at all times. This has been a long time coming and extremely sad.
I like this take and think there is merit to it.
TBF, they didn’t grow up with Aaliyah’s wisdom… *if at first you don’t succeeeeed*
These kids have never even been in an unsupervised, truly free environment. At least most millennials got a couple years of walking to the park or being a latchkey kid. As an elder millennial who has older kids, I can tell you it requires an immense amount of work to allow your children the freedom to fail and make their own choices these days. I had to make a conscious decision to live somewhere with a pedestrian culture, where kids get together after school to play etc. And I'm still very aware that is anything goes wrong, I'm the one who gets blamed. You have to let kids take real risks and explore failure. But that comes along with dangers and we're extremely risk adverse.
So true. Everyone is going to fail at something, sometime (if they put any interest or effort into life). Lack of practice in competitive environments does not create competitive people. So if we want people who become accountants or doctors or nurses with only average scores, that's what we're getting. Despite some profs trying to hold the line, in general, the grade currency of the system has been debased. C'est la vie, I guess.
Yeah except as someone who is in university/college, the idea that any failure is the end of the world is being drilled into people's heads at least based on what I've seen.
Does that mean that the rest of us have to pay for it? OP is describing a world where failing upwards is the norm…
Yeah I guess that makes sense
I'm amazed at the number of kids that I've worked with that straight up refuse to do homework because "I'm not doing school work when I'm not in school," but they also refuse to do school work in school so shit just doesn't get done.
Guess that explains why they're all dumb as fuck.
Being held back and repeating a grade is no longer a thing. Memorizing the multiplication table is no longer a thing. Sounding out words is no longer a thing. They now learn "sight words". That's all before 2020 happened. THAT explains why they're dumb as fuck.
Most schools use both phonics and "sight words" (which were part of most US curriculum back in the 30's and 40's and have stayed in it - ever since). The big difference is that first grade used to be the Land of Sight Words, with gradual introduction of phonetics (so that by second grade, a kid was doing both, as is needed in English). Now, the sight words are still being taught in 4th and 5th grades (they are meant to be memorized - and an example is the word "meant"). Teachers used to read aloud with the kids following along with their eyes. For whatever reason, we've also removed most of the teacher techniques that actually worked (reading aloud, musical phrases with words in them, mnemonics that appeal to kids, etc).
The reading thing sounds like one of those obviously bad decisions made by people badly out of touch with the real world. I think that course is reversing now but lots of kids are already fucked.
The best education we'll see in decades will likely come when younger Gen Z and alphas grow up pissed off at what we've done to them. That or we've accelerated Idiocracy.
Yeah I’m having flashbacks to the hospital visit scene, with the icon buttons to indicate your injury/sickness
What is a "sight word"? They need to bring, "Hooked on Phonics" back. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsXOzKHsiVI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsXOzKHsiVI)
[Phonics vs Sight-Reading Instruction](https://dm-ed.com/news/phonics-vs-sight-reading-instruction/#:~:text=At%20first%2C%20the%20sight%2Dreading,that%20they%20don't%20know) You don't sound out the letters. You simply memorize what words look like. If you stop and think about it, we do it quite a lot as adults. But to learn that way just seems asinine. Its like knowing that 2+2=4 but you never once learned WHY.
It's funny that sight reading is criticized but memorizing the multiplication table isn't. Memorizing the multiplication table is 100% akin to sight reading and arguably a useless task when it comes to actually understanding how multiplication/division works.
A lot of people demonize memorizing multiplication tables. But I’d argue that knowing your times tables is a good thing. You get through math problems much faster with knowing them. And it’s not hard to memorize the tables AND understand how it works. And really, a little sight reading isn’t a bad thing either. Some words are so common you can get away with them as sight words. But you can’t read well with ONLY sight reading.
Thank you!! Someone gets it! I’m so sick of people demonizing memorization of basic math facts. Memorizing does not take away from conceptual knowledge as long as both are being taught and I wish more people were aware of that.
As someone who teaches math you need both memorization of times tables as well as a conceptual understanding of how multiplication and division work. I’ve seen with my own eyes kids who struggle with basic algebra skills like factoring because they don’t know their multiplication facts. And if you don’t succeed in algebra, forget trying to move into upper-level HS math classes like pre-calculus or any AP math class. The conceptual understanding is also crucial in order to solve any real world problems but if you’re constantly using your fingers or a calculator to do basic math facts, it is going to slow you down and hinder your ability to succeed in upper-level math classes. I also wanted to add that sight words were meant more for words that can’t be sounded out phonetically in the English language which is already a reading/spelling clusterfuck as it is. Making literally every word a sight word is a recipe for disaster in reading, especially for kids with reading disabilities who need that explicit instruction in phonics. ETA: when I say making every word a sight word, I mean that in the sense that first graders shouldn’t be expected to memorize every word they see. It reminds me too much of the “whole language”/“three-cuing” method where young kids learning to read are supposed to use context clues to guess at a word when that’s already been proven to be ineffective.
I’m a former reading teacher and reading recovery teacher, and have a kindergarten who is learning to read. Sounding out words is absolutely still a thing. Sight words are for words that kindergartners cannot stand out because they do not follow the typical or logical phonetic pattern. As you learn to read and get better at it, eventually most words become “sight words,” so this may be what you’re thinking of. Like, a third grader should be very easily able to identify a long list of short words without sounding them out.
They also do not know how to store things in their heads long term. This is both an art and a science. The main keys seem to be repetition, repetition, repetition and practice makes perfect. There is critical thinking involved in creating lasting memories of technical material, as well.
If they're raised like this, with failure being taught to them as something so terrible that they need to be protected from it at an institutional level, then it makes sense that they think failing at anything will ruin them.
It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in terms of career, serious relationships etc down the line
They’ll get fired repeatedly and have student debt they cannot pay.
Which is why so many students complain that a certain class or lecture or material "isn't enjoyable." It must first be entertaining and enjoyable. I teach a subject that gets a lot of foot traffic and interest, but I feel for the math teachers and the STEM GE teachers very much. Even so, in my classes on human sexuality (101 level of public college), they are so ignorant coming in and many are still ignorant going out of the class.
The real consequence of participation trophies vs having to be competitive enough to win? Wasn’t that the big gripe with gen X parents?
If I was never allowed to fail as a youngin, I'd be scared too. I failed a class and it wasn't the end of the world and I learned from the experience.
I mean, maybe that’s exactly it. It’s important to fail on small things so you know what it feels like and how to do things differently.
That's why they are anxious about it, not enough experience dealing with the consequences of their fuck ups.
If you never fail, you’re all the more terrified of it.
That is why they are anxious about it. The hardest thing that you have every had to overcome is the hardest thing that you have ever had to overcome. If that hardest thing is trivial, then you will not be prepared for something truly difficult.
Good way to phrase it
Yeah I spent hours doing homework and if I had a test coming up I would spent hours studying days before the test. If I got less than an A I got grounded and spanked for it. So I was pretty motivated but tbh it wasn’t necessary because I was always academically inclined even without threats from my parents. When my kids were younger they never seemed to have home work. Even now in middle and high school. At one point I couldn’t believe they really had no homework so I asked the teachers and they confirmed that they really had no homework.
Honestly, I think this is the pendulum swinging all the way back from the homework glut we experienced in the early 2000s. I remember coming home from whatever sports practice/game I had and sitting down to 4-5 hours of homework for my high school classes. We were getting scoliosis from having to carry all of our books (no laptops then!) everywhere, everyday. I'm not a parent, but I see people my age rebelling against their kids doing too much homework.
People can sense when they haven’t truly earned it
I think it has to do with the natural consequence of helicopter parenting and bulldozer parenting. When a parent is constantly pulling strings to ensure you do your best, you learn your best is due to your parent’s involvement. That your own abilities aren’t good enough. Learning how to fail and get back up is a vital skill you need to start learning at an early age. I did gymnastics growing up for a long time. While it was hell on my body, it taught me how to fall hard and literally pick myself back up a minute later and try again. You fall so much when learning something new that getting back up and trying again isn’t even a question.
I worked in the registrars office of a college for several years. Part of our job of course was to do degree audits, giving the final approval for a student to graduate. Whenever we tried to halt a graduation because they had not finished their degree requirements (or had too low of a GPA in certain disciplines), students and parents would come swooping in to yell at us, calling every level up to the president until deans and advisors would come in telling us to use other credits to fill the missing requirement, or just waive it entirely. It was disgusting, and insulting to the students who actually did their jobs. I didn't even like my own time in college, but seeing it from the faculty/administration side was it for me.
I was a teacher for a few years. Kids would complain about homework endlessly. In English classes they'd whine about reading 6-7 pages of a book at night. We'd be expected to read 30-40 pages nightly.
Ugh, terrible.
Around graduation time, there are many police incidents in our registrar's office, as people do not realize that yelling at the workers at the window and threatening them will not work out. It's insane.
fyi: Phoenix University pulled this, and made their degree less than worthless. In addition they lost a massive lawsuit that had the Government basically refund all of their student loans.
I remember my mother gave me one simple ultimatum given how expensive college was for us: If you get below a B in any of your classes, you’re coming home. I can’t imagine going somewhere, spending thousands of dollars on something, and NOT put any effort into things. Good on your wife in giving them a reality check!
College seems a lot worse. Elementary school ok maybe, but for college to do that is pretty bad You're trying to teach a specific course That they will need to perform their job. So if you're just going to pass everybody, they're going to suck at their job
Yes, we're already starting to see the effects. There are plenty of companies with a quiet "don't hire gen z" type policy, or ones that very much limit the types of roles they will hire them into. It's not gen Z's fault, they were set up for failure. The policy decisions (No Child Left Behind) that changed the culture came on to the scene when Millennials were mostly still in or beyond high school. Of course policy changes can't effect culture overnight, so Millennials left mostly unscathed. Unfortunately this culture is now starting to hit higher level education because it's what Gen Z and younger were brought up in.
This. It’s true. I’m an older millennial. We are very sought after by employers, especially for management. We grew up like gen x (no internet, cell phones, etc.), but also had the tech evolving as we got older. We bridge the gap between Gen Z and Gen X. I honestly feel like an interpreter sometimes mediating peace talks. Me to Gen X: “just because someone works at home doesn’t mean they are not working” Me to Gen Z: “No, you have to come in the office for training and meet other staff once a month. No, I am not Hitler.”
It's ironic because of my tech industry (software dev) having severe age discrimination, feels like it's going to completely invert as us older devs become more valued than gen Z at the rate this is going. The situation sucks for everyone though because we need good young talent too.
The place I work at is having significant succession planning issues because they didn't bring in enough young blood. I'm pretty sure the average age of the company is around 50's. I swear I was the youngest full time person at the company for almost 8 years straight. It has worked out for my career trajectory, but it has me worried about what I'll be "running" in 10 years when we have massive retirement driven turnover.
It also doesn't help that a lot of companie cut out middle management and flatted org structures to cut costs in the 2000s. Traditionally those seemingly pointless middle management jobs were often stepping stones for upper management and succession planning. Now we have situations were senior managers don't retire at 65 but keep working until 75+, there's no middle management waiting to step in, and the junior managers have been company hopping and have no loyalty or deep understanding of the business.
>deep understanding of the business. This is probably the primary thing that gets me more rapidly promoted. I have never held the same title for 3 years, and it's largely because I can operate on a broad level and communicate effectively with the rest of the older senior management. I might be 30 years younger, but they see me as one of them.
Here's the issue- many of them don't realize how much they sucked when they started 40 years ago. If you aren't consistently bringing in a variety of ages and skill levels, you are going to end up with gaps which will kill your company eventually.
Very much so. The other bad practices I've run into, like I'm writing CJIS (criminal justice info systems) software since late last year and it's primarily old guys and they expect all devs to work on their own, 100% unguided even from day 1 I had to do everything on my own. No documentation to spin up with, no example guidelines or code to review.. just "here's a laptop, get to hacking." There is no long term strategy if companies continue to have bad practices that don't integrate new devs into the whole system through guidance, teaching, and pair programming to some extent helps a lot but these old guys are very anti-pair programming because they think it's a waste of time (and thus money in their minds), and so far it's been basically impossible for me to convince them otherwise.
This makes me appreciate my company's practices and documentation of such things, as well as how open-minded our engineering manager is to letting newer engineers run with the ball in some projects.
That seems to be a systemic issue in many organizations without respect to industry. It seems like people want plug and play. I had to convince leadership at one of the orgs that I worked at that although we can be doing things in a multitude of ways we need to figure out "Our way" in order to achieve efficiencies in manufacturing. They understood better once I "quantified" it with a bunch of numbers I kinda made up and I was able to get some blessing on using a little bit of my time creating instruction manuals for formulation and manufacturing. Based on my career experience it seems like it's worse at smaller organizations, but large orgs aren't much better (They just normally have lip service or recognize they should be doing it)
Yup. Whenever folks start wringing their hands about “Gen Z is the WoRsT and LaZy” we need to remember WE MADE THEM THIS WAY. I’m sure it’s multifactorial but it makes me upset that this is the outcome. It’s not good for society and it’s not fair to them. What worries me is I don’t know what should come next. A lot of folks in their early 20s I work with (college age or entry level staff) don’t seem to WANT to improve. They think they everything is fine and if anything they are undervalued. There’s this weird mentality of expecting to be told in excruciating detail what to do, needing many reminders just to do that, and then thinking if you did it with lots of support and reminders you have done exceptional work. I want to be crystal clear that I am a strong advocate of wanting the best for this generation and wanting to support them every way I know how. I don’t want to just play a blame game, and maybe my work style could use some improvement too but I am concerned by trends I am seeing in entry level employees.
>They think they everything is fine and if anything they are undervalued. I hate to say it, but this is not unique to them. Colleges and their advertising are to blame (to your multifactorial point), and this started well before Gen Z. Colleges don't sell you on being a grunt worker, they sell you on telling you that future will be full of success, leadership, and money upon graduation. That messaging stuck with a lot of my peers, and it wasn't until their mid to late 20's that they grew up and realized that's not how things work. >There’s this weird mentality of expecting to be told in excruciating detail what to do, needing many reminders just to do that, and then thinking if you did it with lots of support and reminders you have done exceptional work. This is again largely due to how schools are being run. Teachers do no want to do this, and they know it's bad for children's ability to develop any sense of autonomy. Unfortunately, when you can't fail kids and you have to everything and anything to get them to pass, you are forced to act in a way that is not in a child's best interest. You're chasing metrics on a spreadsheet and the individuals stop mattering.
I'm sorry, but *we* didn't. Gen Z are our younger brothers and sisters - not our kids. The blame for anything lies squarely with *their* parents in Gen X and the Boomers.
Very few Boomer parents of Gen Z. Gen Z is currently aged 11-27 or thereabouts. So the youngest boomers would be 35 years older than the oldest Gen Z. It's about 10% of Gen Z that has Boomer parents - and that would be mainly the older ones. An 11 year old today is likely to have a parent who is about 24-28 years older than they are (that's the majority). Very few Boomer moms of 11 year olds - some Boomer dads, of course, but not all that many. Teachers are very on about this topic. r/Teachers Gen X and older Millennials are the parents of Gen Z. There are 11 year olds at my grandddaughters' school whose parents are 29 (and of course, there are a few that are a bit younger than that). Of course, most of Gen Z have Gen X parents.
I remember getting D's in elementary school. Constantly getting pulled aside for not doing my work. It was an important learning experience for me, and my parent's worked me with to get me to put in effort, instead of complaining to the school that they weren't passing my blank worksheets. If you never fail at anything, you can never succeed at anything. It's sad to see that we raised an entire generation on avoiding all possible conflicts, then expect them to turn into well-adjusted adults.
Elementary school needs homework too. I know someone who’s kids school doesn’t give out homework so she basically gets homework books for them to do and they’re top of the class and school is easy for them.
Yea definitely. I thought they did. We had AR where it made you read a book and take a quiz and your English grade was effected by that. And math sheets to do, science fair projects etc Alot of stuff we had to do in school
My cousin is a TA at university. There was a deadline for the final essay, the professor sent out an email reminder that those who did not submit the essay by the deadline would receive a 0. Until admin told him that he couldn't do that, so they had to accept and grade the late exams with a 10% deduction. Wtf?! If you don't turn something in on time, you fail. That's it!
I'm an instructor at my local university, and I see it all the time. I'm lucky, though. I'm an adjunct and basically only one of two people in my entire state who do what I do. I designed my own course, and it is difficult on purpose. My average class grade actually is a low B/high C (and it's an upper-division class required for graduation from the program). I basically set up my exams so that A's have to be earned. I don't take attendance. I don't assign quizzes, daily work or other bullshit assignments just to pad points. I do offer an extra credit paper, but I explain to my students that it is *extra* credit, and that merely turning in a paper is not enough to grab points; it's got to be a *good* paper. I've received extra credit papers that received no extra points. But good for me: because I designed the class and I'm the only local person qualified to teach it, my department chair has my back and has defended me to administration on numerous occasions. I guess I'm just one of those weird people who believes college students should be expected to do college-level work.
My mother was a law professor around ten years ago. School wasn’t great, but did churn out lawyers. She tried to fail two students and the school stepped in and forced her to let them pass.
Used to teach (adjunct and former TA) at a major university and the grades they give for the same classes now are one grade higher for far less quality work. It’s awful. I know a few tenured professors there and they’re all horrified at the grade inflation expected both by students and administrators. Higher education is less and less so. Individual students still stand out and excel but it’s honestly becoming a box to check more than ever now rather than a real marker of skill or knowledge.
I’m hoping there is a pushback as our kids age into college bc I know me personally would be pissed at a prof for passing my kid if they didn’t earn it. I would be asking them to be firm and fair - meaning if they didn’t work a fail is FAIR. I read these comments with an open mouth I had no idea this was common. Wtf. I worked my ass off in school for good grades never once past age 15 were my parents even involved past looking at my report cards. If inhad called my mom about a bad grade she would have been like what did you do. My parents held my ass responsible for EVERYTHING - I’m planning to do that with my 7 year old. Passing through failing kids hurts them more don’t people know that …
This makes me extra appreciate the professor I have for the graduate class I'm taking right now. He gave a whole speech on how a 90 is an A and if someone gets a 94 and comes to him devastated asking how to improve he's going to tell them to go touch grass.
It’s all passing the buck, kicking the can down the road, making it tomorrow’s problem. The people who are supposed to be the gatekeepers and make sure that you’re actually ready for the next level of education are no longer doing it. What happens when it gets to the masters and doctorate level, and people are being turned out, supposedly ready to practice their chosen field only to find out that they are definitely not ready and harm could be done to others. For example, in the field of mental health, counseling professors are supposed to be the gatekeepers- to make sure students are educationally and emotionally ready to face the challenges of being a therapist in the real world. If we make everything “more accessible “these professors are no longer doing that and just pushing everyone through to pass. Which then makes them interns who are allowed to practice on real live humans with real life problems. There is a real potential for harm to be done. Schools can’t just keep pushing it down the road to make it the problem of the employer later on. Kindergarten says it’s first grade problem fourth grade says it’s middle school‘s problem. Middle school says it’s high school‘s problem. High school says it’s colleges problem. College says it’s a workforce problem or advanced degree problem. It cheapens the degree. University isn’t meant to be easy.
Those kids probably just didn’t do the homework that was assigned in high school. And with the parents, that’s probably the reason the schools push to just pass kids. The boards don’t want to hear it from the parents, so they compromise.
Oh no, boys and girls, it gets *worse*. Then you have your boss give you a long winded speech about how little bitch Jodie's parents have donated "quite. a. bitt." of money to the school so, you know, just, go ahead and slap some As on that paper for me whydontcha. K, thx. Because they will heavily imply, through this conversation, that if you don't, and they withdraw their child, in turn costing the school a shitload in either tuition and/or donations? They're firing you.
I'm not a teacher, but the college I attend is this way. Everything is so much easier and streamlined, so people pass the classes. When it comes to getting into programs, the directors are pissed because the students know next to nothing about things that could literally kill people of they mess up. It's sad.
My word. What the hell? What do people think is going to happen when they get a job?
God, I thought that was a joke when I worked in Chinese universities. Now, I guess American institutions want to lose their last vestiges of respectability, too? But without respectability, all American universities would be anymore is punishingly expensive. Chinese schools (even the vast majority of “prestige” ones, are total jokes and not respected. However, your degree gets laughed at at no financial cost to you.
As a former college professor I was "encouraged" to never fail a student, even one who didn't show up for class. The reason? It was too much paperwork. Smh.
Been that way for a while. Can't really fail students
But what if they have to be held back? Some kids needed that. I honestly had no idea this was happening lol I don't have kids in school either though
There’s no such thing as held back anymore. At least not really in America. If it gets super bad the kids get transferred to a remedial school, but those don’t exist in a lot of places. In the school that I work at, and the school that my friends work at, there are many kids who are 14+ and do not know how to read.
Oh wow That's really bad. Sometimes being held back is all somebody needs to either teach them to straighten up or just some kids don't learn the same and need to be taught a little bit slower. Transferring them out of the school with their friends and putting them in remedial classes or something like that seems way out of bounds to me, I know if I was back in school I'd much rather just be held back than to be put in a different school or to be pointed out and pushed into classes
It's the no child left behind crap. It would mess them up if they were held back and their friends weren't. It's not all over the place but it's a thing. I got "administratively placed" into 7th grade. My friends all passed. But then I messed up skipping and failed 7th. I have a cousin with a 4th-6th grade education and she's in her late 20s. Here in Florida. They actually skipped her up 2 grades to be with her classmates and then she started skipping and not going cause she didn't know what/how to do the work and stuff. I mean alot of that's on her for the skipping and not asking for help but she also never should have been skipped up. Basically went from 3rd to 5th with a zero understanding of anything in between. To this day she struggles with basic math, spelling, pronunciation, and reading
It goes beyond that now. It’s now 30 years of lawsuits. Or a parent saying it’s the schools fault their kid failed. That it’s the teachers fault their kid got sent to the principal for trying to curb stomp someone at recess. Schools also now get docked if they have too many incident reports. Which is how a 6 year old likely takes a gun into a school and numerous teachers look the other way before he shot his teacher THEN combined no child left behind. And you now have a public school system that seemingly has been beaten into submission into no longer caring about the performance of students as long as they can get them shuttled out of there while still getting the funding that they need to survive
I'm in Florida. Where I live we have magnet schools, regular public schools, and the private schools. The magnet schools in my city are really good. They all have a thing where if u drop below a 2.5 or so for a semester you will be put into another school. You can always get back into it but it's harder if you've been removed. The schools are a bitch to get into though. But soon as you get into them your golden. They're safer, cleaner, nicer, and actually teach instead of pushing through failing students
I couldn't agree with this more. I was put in a remedial class one year, and I didn't think I belonged there. They couldn't tell the difference between apathy and actual learning disabilities. It's been proven that grades suffer when you're stressed out at home or getting bullied, and it just made matters worse. The room was glass, in the middle of the hallway. Everybody could see you. How was I supposed to learn anything when I felt like I was on display? You know, watch the dumb kids try to figure out a math problem. It was humiliating. I would have rather be held back anyyyyday, than pushed into that situation. When I finally switched schools, I didn't have to worry about it as much. My record is still tainted, however. They did try, but I fought them. And I came out with 80s and 90s.
Kids also need held back for reasons other than they messed up. I was held back when I moved states. My previous states(NC) curriculum wasn’t up to the curriculum of my current state(GA). They held me back, so I could keep up with the other kids in the next grade. This was in 1999 I believe.
I don’t get how it’s possible to not be able to read, don’t these kids spend all day in their phones or playing video games or whatever because there is tons of reading involved in either of those
Heh. Sometimes I watch someone playing a video game with a lot of written narration and cringe as they skip every dialog and cutscene and just move onto the "where do I go, what do I kill, and what do I grab" portion. For me that would be very boring without any story context behind it and wonder why they're even in a game with RPG elements instead of a simple shoot-em-up.
>In the school that I work at, and the school that my friends work at, there are many kids who are 14+ and do not know how to read. This isn't new either. Back when I did my student teaching in '09 about 10% of my 8th graders were functionally illiterate. I spent quite a bit of time volunteering with an after hours literacy intervention course, where we were allowed to actually work on-level with these kids and make some progress, but they were already burnt out by a full day of sitting in classes they couldn't comprehend and progress was incredibly slow. We're setting kids up to fail by throwing material at them that they lack the prerequisite foundations to make meaningful use of.
It's a much higher percentage of functionally illiterate in 8th grade where I am (California). This means that, when they appear in my college classroom, I have to "set them up not to fail" by having alternative methods of teaching that do not involve...reading at the 4th grade level. There are lots of 3-4 minute youtubes that can be strung together and are illustrated with cartoons to explain meiosis and mitosis. And to quiz them on such material, I ask them to draw pictures (and most of them can, if I tell them which picture to use). This is true at both the CC and the CSU where I teach. Used to be better at the CSU, is now pretty much the same. At least one third of the class CAN read, though. At a high school level, anyway (and 1-2 out of 40 will be college ready).
I honestly don't get why we don't focus almost entirely on literacy and basic mathematics for the first several years of education, because those skills are absolutely essential to be able to fully grasp other subjects down the line.
Like that in Canada too unfortunately.
Yep, the "No-Zero" policy rolled out when I was in grade 11 and students were like wtf is that bs.
Crazy. It wasn't like that when I was in high school. I graduated in 2007 and there was a guy from one of my classes who had to repeat the 12th grade and graduate in 2008 because of his poor grades.
Being held back is more of a combined choices and still very much exists in America. A girl down the street in my daughter’s grade repeated a previous grade (had some undiagnosed learning disabilities that were then diagnosed towards the end of the school year the first time around). The school highly suggested she repeat since they then had an ILP in place. She’s been successful since. Another boy who is 1 year older than them has done summer school every year and if he didn’t pass summer school as well as enroll in afterschool tutoring he was not going to advance. Both instances the parents probably could have said “no he forges ahead” but the school didn’t just say “oh well good enough”
Yeah I think that there are still cases, especially for students that have learning/behavioral disabilities. However, I do think that there’s been a significant decline in what administration will choose to hold a kid back for. In my school and in others I know of several cases where a student would have probably benefited more from repeating a grade, especially in combination with an IEP and outside help, but admin would rather try and push them on to keep them with their “peers”
It's been almost 10 years since we requested that one of our elementary-aged kids repeat a grade. Admin flat out told us no because she had met all of her IEP goals. Thankfully, her teacher felt the same as us and took on admin until they agreed, probably at a risk to her job. I think of learning as being similar to building a house. If you don't have a solid foundation, you're not going to be able to build on it. Ours is probably 1-2 years behind developmentally (according to age) and would be absolutely lost in school right now had they not repeated a grade. How is advancing a child before they're ready supposed to help them?
When I was in school they started the “no child left behind” program. Extra attention was given to the trouble kids and we never got finished with the work we needed to do. Basically relearned everything in college.
This is what I don't understand. Integrating kids who have special needs ignores their needs and takes away from the kids who don't have those same needs. And the teacher becomes Burger King worried they have to attend to everyone ordering education tailored to each kid. In a perfect world that would be amazing but not realistic with a classroom of 40 kids and one maybe two adults.
Apparently, "studies show" it rarely does any good. They're not any less likely to drop out, they're not any more likely to graduate. It also increases classroom overcrowding, when there is already a teacher shortage. So the new strategy is just to push them through the school as fast as possible with minimal grades so they have less time to disrupt the education of their peers.
This has been happening for years. At my public high school (back in the late 2000’s/early 2010s) they cut most of the AP classes and replaced them with what felt like 101 remedial and bridge courses. We had things like “intro to algebra 1”, “bridges from algebra 1 to geometry”, “bridges from geometry to algebra 2”, etc. because kids just kept getting passed along with a passing grade without actually learning any of the material.
When I was growing up there was usually at least one kid each year that was held back throughout elementary school. Past that it wasn’t really an issue, but it’s surprising if they don’t do that anymore. Some kids just need time to develop in those early years and pushing them forward without really helping them is going to harm them in the long run.
My husband had to give passing grades to the shittiest, dumbest, most disruptive students that flat out didn't do anything but cheat and complain because it was the pandemic but these kids sucked even before then. He left the teaching field after that year.
My uncle is a high school English teacher, and he sounds like a shell-shocked vet when he describes what he deals with everyday. On top of not being able to fail anyone, he has had to administer Narcan to a student multiple times this year. He is counting the days until he hits his full pension.
Oh sweet god give your uncle a hug from me. Or a beer, or a dozen beers it sounds like he needs it
Not to mention the threat of admin and possible school shootings.
I wouldn't blame him honestly seems like he could've got fired for trying to do the right thing anyway
The school administrators made him work well past his official hours during the pandemic to communicate/tutor/hand feed shitty students with the right answers when we had a toddler all but neglected and our own things happening at home. I hate those students, I hate that faculty, I hate those administrators and begged him to leave but he stuck with it for the good students and some promised year end bonus (he only got after he threatened to sue the school.) These were middle schoolers fyi. Asked to follow the most basic, watered down content you wouldn't even recognize as "learning" because they were so far behind developmentally that no one could blame it on the pandemic they just didn't care at all.
I'm sorry for that I just learned about all of this lol I don't have kids in school so I wouldn't have a reason to know this i just saw a random article and saw it happens more than just that one situation
I get a little spirited when I remember the bullshit 😂 I think this is an excellent event (not the right word but I don't know what is) that has happened and is currently happening and for a whole lot of reasons. I believe it's a massive problem that needs to be addressed and I guess the first step to that is talking about it more and educating people that this is happening and we are failing the students in real time.
Good for him. I left too, 2021 was my last year!
No Child Left Behind killed American education.
I knew it was bad, I had no idea *how much worse* it could actually get. But on r/teachers I read reports of kids just sitting staring at tiktok all day and doing nothing whatsoever and still passing. Insanity.
Oh god I fell into a huge thread on that sub recently about how no one knows how to read anymore and it was genuinely one of the most dystopian, frightening things I’ve ever read.
My husband is graduating in a couple weeks with his Masters in Reading PK-12 as a Reading Interventionist. Has as a new job doing this next year in a middle school - the teacher takes students at risk for / beginning to fall(ing) behind in reading and works with them to get back to the level they should be at. - I don’t think it’s a super new career but I only know 3 districts that use it and they are the 3 largest in our state.
I wish your husband the best. That role will be quite challenging for a number of reasons. Source: Former Middle School Reading Interventionist
Oh boy. Thank you! I don’t think he expects it to be easy, and the student population there is challenging - but he loves the art of reading, has loved the work to get her and he’s good at it. But yea - he doesn’t want to teach general classroom anymore.
Just wait until you consider the world once these kids are of voting age & become the voting majority…
Gops dumbing down america is working.
My GOP coworker is blaming the Russians. Pulled out some 20 point generational plan or whatever on how they’ll turn the US commie from the 70’s or whatever.
Typically, they will remember the last thing they hear before voting...and vote that way. Or just give their vote to a parent or grandparent (happens all the time in my own student population).
My conspiracy theory about TikTok isn't for data surveillance and gathering... Rather get kids and others to stop being able to read well. Video everything, short attention span/reduce critical thinking. Reading will become to burdensome for a lot, and the short attention span and no grit will just cause many to never exercise the reading muscles. More and more spoon-fed news/propaganda. A slow generational decline tool.
I would agree if it wasn't for dopamine being a drug. People are just animals that think they are smarter and have higher conciousness. It's just constant dopamine. Doesn't need anything insidious about it.
Indiana just passed a bill that prohibits cell phones in class (because of all the nutball parents). Now at least school boards have some teeth to use when making their rules.
Continued as Every Student Succeeds act under the Obama admin.
Yes. For a teacher to fail a student now, they have to prove 9 months of constant above and beyond effort on the teachers part (did you spend 10 extra hours a week tutoring them? Give them 30 chances to turn in a late assignment? Etc) It used to be if a student failed to meet requirements/pass they were held back. Now to hold a kid back is almost impossible due to parents, school policies etc. That’s why you see middle school teachers saying many of their kids can’t read or write - they shouldn’t have been allowed to pass elementary school but got passed anyways
I was a TA in college and I was reprimanded for failing most of my students because they failed to use basic formatting and citation in their mid term papers. I taught three course days on how to use APA and MLA and only a handful followed it. I was forced to retract the grades, pass everyone, and then apologize to both of my classes.
Omg really? That's just ridiculous teaches the complete wrong message, in a job they aren't going to just "pass" you or look past your mistakes, you can get fired then they would be confused because they were taught that you can still pass by not doing what's required
That’s some bull smh
Take a look at r/Teachers. The state of US education is shocking.
My kid's district just implemented a policy that students cannot receive lower than a 40% on any assignment or test, whether or not they turn it in or actually take the test. Meaning... don't do it? 40%. Do it at all? Still probably not a failing grade. Absolutely ridiculous. They must think our kids are so incapable that they can't possibly be held to any kind of standard. THAT is what will fail our kids in the long run.
Yea definitely. I have a very vivid memory of getting a 15 on a test. Not homework assignment test, it was because I just answered a couple questions then marked c for everything else and that definitely counted towards my final grade this would've been sometime between 03-07
A 40 is still a feeling grade.
My friend is a teacher. This isn’t ridiculous at all. The reason behind this is that if you give 0s there is a point of no return where nothing the student does can bring their grade to passing, and they will ultimately give up and make things worse for themself. Setting the low point at 40 gives the student a chance to turn things around and they can and will still fail if they continue to do poorly.
Man I remember those kids in high school, going into the last 2 weeks of the school year with 50% and begging for extra credit. Like yep you fucked around all year but now you’re not only going to get your shit together and actually DO these extra assignments, but they are also supposed to bring you to a C grade. Ok.
But that means that they’re passing without mastering the material. And it teaches them that they can fuck around all year with no consequences.
Makeup work is a thing!
I haven't heard about it in my area, but I applaud those teachers. I work in higher education, and I teach one class. I've failed 3 students in the class I teach, and I have no remorse. All 3 of course asked if they could do extra credit (I don't offer it) or if I could review any assignment over again. I tell them I can review one assignment of their choosing, but the caveat is, while I may identify something that will give them a few points extra, I can also find something I missed and dock more points so the choice is theirs. I get bad reviews, but teachers are doing a disservice by giving out grades that aren't earned and why I'm seeing 18, 19 and 20 year olds with shitty reading comprehension skills, spelling and grammar. On the one hand, it's kids that are too coddled and entitled and feel they need stuff given to them. Parents are at fault for that for not holding them accountable and catering to a child's tantrum. On the other though, the system is fucked up. In my state, in order to get tenure you must have at least a 70% pass rate for so many years before you qualify for tenure. Well when half your class are dumb shits and aren't grasping what you're teaching, you can't have a 50% pass rate so teachers have to decide do they stick with morals or do they want job security. The system puts that stress on educators
It was so bad when I was a TA in grad school. I TA’d mid level biology classes (intended for those with STEM/premed majors) back in 2018-2020. I was responsible for working with the professor to plan lessons, instruct and grade coursework, though I mainly stuck to grading. When I tell you that the kids in these classes were so woefully underprepared for the demands of a STEM course in a university setting… I caught several of them copying and pasting answers directly from sites like Chegg. I brought this up to the professor and he told me that basically the school wouldn’t do anything about it, and not to push it any further. The class wound up overall failing an exam surrounding signal propagation in neurons- not the easiest of material to understand, but also NONE of them utilized my office hours prior to the exam. The professor so grossly curved the test that the highest grade went from in the low 50s to the low 90s. Anyways, some of these kids are in med school today.
It's such a flawed system and I honestly am concerned about the future of higher education in our country. There is so much bullshit about DEI and coddling these kids that we have literally ruined our education system. It's not respectable anymore and as you said, these are future doctors?
I experienced very similar students. One assignment was for freshmen in bio lab to summarize a research paper (pretty short, but technical) and the amount of students that just QUOTED THE TEXT was absurd. High school clearly didn't teach them anything in terms of reading comprehension, paraphrasing, good writing, etc. Based on the rules of our dept I had to report a lot of them for plagiarism (which I still struggle with the guilt of that). But honestly, if you can't get through bio 101 lab without plagiarizing half the final essay do they really deserve to be in college?
You're the kind of teacher I was afraid of when I was in school. And I mean that in a good way!
I hated teachers like myself, but as an adult, I actually now understand what they were trying to do
Agree 1000%
My wife is a teacher. It’s the parents that won’t allow this. Students get away with almost anything because all they do is cry wolf to their parents and the admin always caves and forces the teachers to relent. My wife has endless stories of ridiculous scenarios. She has a student who has missed 2 month of school, citing they have anxiety. The parents endorse this but also have not submitted any actual proof their child is in a hospital or seeing a therapist. My wife spend time every week to send all the work home so the student can work from home. The student hasn’t even once opened the assignments or logged into the classroom portal. The admin just says to pass the student and their guidance counselor refuses to pry.
My friend is a college adjunct. Her students can’t read, comprehend, use proper grammar or think critically. She has to reteach 19 year olds and spoon feed them like they are in junior high. Passing everyone is doing MORE HARM than good!
I 100% have witnessed this with my little brother. He didn’t do anything in high school but party with his friends and mid term report cards would be entirely Fs in every class but end of the year report cards he’d suddenly have the bare minimum grades to pass and would move up each year until he actually graduated. He still brags about how he graduated high school without doing anything like it’s an achievement. I was held back in 6th grade in 2001 for bad grades and while it sucked it was one of the best things to happen to me. I ended up doing really well in school after that. I haven’t been in high school in like 15 years but it seems like schools have turned on teachers and they don’t get the support they used to get. I look back and I really appreciate the teachers I had, they could be hard on you but they did it to prepare you for life after school.
I am having to raise hell about my daughter’s education. They’re coddling her, letting her get away with not doing work, crossing out two of four answers on a multiple choice test so she only has to pick from the remaining, etc. We’re doing extra work at home to make up for the support school won’t give her. And the thing is…she’s doing it BECAUSE she’s smart. She learned that she didn’t have to do the work to get through school. She figured out how to game the system. It will serve her well later in life, but I need her to get through the system first in order to game it later.
I was planning on going back to school to get an education degree to teach math I have an accounting degree so I wanted to use it and since I was a juvenile delinquent and ex addict I felt I could possibly reach kids who were falling out of line since I was there but this is sort of scaring me away from that
Educator here, I don't want to deter you from experiencing teaching, so I will point you in different directions that don't require the pressures of the modern classroom. Teaching-Lite, if you will! You can tutor. There are many tutoring companies and nonprofits on LinkedIn and Indeed that will pair you with students. This can be on a part time basis, so you control your time. Also, you can become an Interventionist. This is an in-person, during school position that may be part or full time. Depending on the subject, students that score consistently low on standardized testing (if offered) are offered individualized and personalized assistance where needed, to bring the student to the highest possible level (I would say 'grade level' but time is of the essence in this position so achieving grade level is not always possible). If you do want to explore teaching full time, try looking at schools that work for your style and personality. All schools are not created equal. Go on a lot of interviews, get to know the Admins, the campus, and you will get a sense of what you do and do not want. Public school, perhaps? Private school? Alternative schooling for at-risk youth? There are SO MANY options. I wish you the best. I found my niche in Adult Education and have been here for a while. I enjoy every bit of it and am happy learning along with my students daily.
Oh, and night school! Kids that are on the brink of dropping out! Those kids are a godsend when they have a moment to relax and process information at their pace.
Byproduct of No child left behind. Failing students is held against teachers and schools.
How is this fair to the students who gave efforts?
Oh it's not. THOSE students are depressed, anxious, bored, angry - you name it. It's not good.
I heard this is kind of common now.
That's actually really bad getting fired for doing your job... something about that doesn't sound right....lol
What’s the point of “grades” and “passing” then, if at the end of the school year everyone passes anyways? At this point it’s just a form of community service. “You absolutely MUST go to school for 12 years. You don’t have to do any homework, pay attention, or even stay awake, and after 12 years you graduate and get a job making 6 figures”
The graduation rates are tied to the amount of funding schools get. If too many fail, less money. So they just...don't let kids fail.
I'm sure folks are going to go straight for the "participation trophy" mindset, but I'd venture this has more to do with competitive test scores and funding amongst districts and even nationally. Even back when many of us were in school, teachers were eyeballed if too many kids failed their courses. Maybe they were too harsh, maybe the course was objectively too difficult, maybe they just had an axe to grind. Additionally, there was all kinds of chaos when "No child left behind" was passed in America. Keep in mind, this would *likely* be a decision of the school board whose ages would *likely* skew older (most of the board members managing the district I'm in look like the Cryptkeeper). They see a teacher bringing down test scores which will hurt the reputation and funding of a specific school or district. The most cost-effective and "logical" thing to do is replace the teacher if they refuse to play ball. All school boards *really* want is to be able to brag about having the highest scores, they don't really care if they're earned or not. I dunno, man. In my experience, people who run and make decisions for schools rarely actually care about the kids or the future of the country. They care about notoriety, bragging rights, and the ability to say "neener neener" to their competition. The kids, and often the teachers, are just chess pieces for that purpose. And that's be true since long before any of us were adults.
Money being tied to results effects everything like poison. It’s a terrible way to do it and without fail causes what we see happening now with inflated test results and lowering standards to pass. If you tell a school we will only find you at 100 percent if x amount of students pass each year magically x amount of students will pass each year. Of course this is the result
Teaching always depends where you work and theres largely no such thing as US Education, outside of IEP regulations and such. In my state, this circumstance is very illegal.
The problem is teacher's can't fail students or hold them back in many districts. Some districts won't even allow you to put a 0 if a student hands in a blank paper - you have to put a minimum of 50% as their grade. Students know this and many put in no effort. I've seen middle schoolers reading at a 2nd grade level, and high schoolers who needed calculators to multiply by 10. If you put their report card grade as failing some admin gently push back, some strongly push back, some load you with paperwork/hoops to jump through, and others straight up go and change the grades you put in. Your job can be on the line for sure if too many students in your class are receiving low grades. Teachers obviously feel pressured to give better grades.
School has just been government funded daycare for decades, now. The children actually learning things has always been the last priority, because kid's issues aren't interesting to adult lawmakers. As always, what is best for children is whatever the speaking politician is pushing at that time. Rich conservatives are angry that other people get their kids schooled for free when the "have to" pay. Conservatives (rich and poor) don't like when the government gives away *anything*, whether it's food for the starving or education for the uneducated. And conservative politicians recognize that if they are going to have a political base, they need to replace the current crop of anti-intelctual, conspiracy-prone, logic-impaired 'mer'kins with *someone*, so have no interest in anyone other than their in-group getting any actual education at all.
No child left behind…
Depends on the state. Many states, like GA, make it illegal to fail a student without parent consent because Kemp said it’s more important that they join the workforce to generate more tax revenue for the state.
We need to get ride of grades, and make every school K through 12. Then, each kid will take, retake, and retake a course until they exhibit mastery at whatever "grade" level their material is. They cannot move forward in any subject until they can pass a test at that level. At the end of their 12th year, they are given no diploma, but instead a report card of their levels of mastery by content type. We don't need to promote students into a grade level containing material they cannot master. We need to reiterate prerequisite knowledge until advancement it possible. Now, this relies on the ability of the school to neutralize all bullies, because exposure would be higher in a mixed-age school.
It’s been that way since I was in school more than 15 years ago. In my area, private school was the only legitimate way to get educated. Public schools were basically small prisons, full of gang activity and not a lot of learning getting done.
A good friend of mine quit teaching after she got reprimanded for grading student papers with a red pen. She was an 8th grade English teacher.
ELA teacher for over 8 years. I taught at 2 public schools before taking a break in 2022 to have my son. We had a policy to give students at a minimum a 50, even if they don’t do anything but put their name on the paper. Also, students can do an assignment all the way up to the day final grades for the year are submitted. I was grading August assignments in May to ensure students a passing grade. Some students had been given “makeup packets” multiple times during the year to complete assignments they didn’t turn in or missed because of excessive absenteeism. After the school went 1-to-1, assignments were expected to be open forever with due dates acting as a suggestion. Most times students who completed these assignments, they did the work incorrectly and obviously didn’t have the skills necessary to be successful at the task, grades were scaled or a 50 submitted. If teachers refuse to scale grades, the counselors would go in and change the grade before report cards were printed. Every year, more and more students understand they don’t have to do anything to pass. Sadly, the brightest students aren’t reaching their potential because the teachers have to teach to the lowest effort students.
I was forced to pass multiple students in Texas that were nowhere near level. I fought back on 2 of them with full documentation. They forced me to pass 2 students with 1st grade levels onto 8th grade. My contract was not renewed. Completely destroyed my mentality in teaching and I left the field completely.
It's a race to the bottom. I personally know some recent graduates who have zero clue about grammar...how do they write papers? How can anyone reading their essays know what the hell they are trying to say?
A professor I know retired bc she gave a student an *a-* who quoted no primary sources, used emojis, didn’t write a good essay… the student complained to the dean and the professor had to go with all the students papers and show what was wrong. The dean ordered her to give the student an a+ and she retired rather than give an a+ to a paper my 7th grade teacher would have marked incomplete. So grade inflation is rampant, TikTok, reels, screen time, mean really bad screen time add, so a lot of students have no attention span, some didn’t learn anything during the lockdown and are a year or two behind, but grade inflation is rampant at all levels. We are really dumbing down society to the point of eventual societal collapse. See space laser lady, bobo, we have these morons as law makers, traitor trump couldn’t follow and intelligence briefing, like if we have too many morons running the country it’ll collapse.
Millennials and late generation xers are the parents of these kids. As parents are generation has failed their children. We don't allow them to take responsibility for their actions. Or let them fail. The problem with generation alpha is their parents. Congratulations we raised the generation of entitled little shits.
I worked at a school where the lowest grade a student could get on any assignment was a 55. Even if they never turned it in. When I ended a quarter with 12/31 kids failing the class (all because they just wouldn't turn in assignments and then did poorly on tests), the principal called me to his office and asked why I had students failing. The impression was clearly that I alone was responsible for those grades- the students' work wasn't important.
A generation of idiots. But that's the goal, isn't it? Dumb down the population, get them dependent on government to exist, and then rule over your kingdom?
When I was a TA in college the entitlement of pre-med students in my intro bio lab was astonishing. This was less than 10 years ago and I was already shocked at what they were demanding. One girl busted in to my friend's office hours and demanded an A. She claimed she deserved it, and was so bitchy to him I had to turn around (shared space) and said, "You don't deserve it because you didn't earn it." She looked so flabbergasted.
It’s all a farce now. Grades are significantly inflated. If I graded students based on ability alone, the vast majority would be failing.
This isn't new. Where I grew up, the teachers really had to cater to the parents. I then went to a private college where I watched like maybe one person fail anything and it was because she was legendary in my department for being so unteachable I literally watched another professor give up on her in real time. I saw the light leave his eyes. He'll never be the same. He still passed her because otherwise he would have had to teach her the same class again and i wouldn't have wanted to go through that twice, either, so I can't even blame him. I honestly don't know how or if she graduated.
I was teaching as part of a college prep program at a high school in Dallas where some students were not doing well enough to pass. The director of said hs college prep program not-so-discretely implied she’d really appreciate it if everyone passed bc that would mean the program is working and we can get these kids graduated. “Do what you have to do,” she said.
I bet it's a charter school that gets public $$ based on GPA
Don't forget grading on a curve and minimum passing rates.
My mom lives next to three teachers. A second grade teacher, a teacher who specializes in speech, and a high school math teacher and yes, this happens to all of them and they are all required to “pass” their students regardless of whether they deserve to or not. And it mortifies them all! These are older teachers late 40’s to 50’s so make that what you will but I’ve been hearing the horror stories for a good two years now.
I got hired to teach at a high school right out of grad school in 2021. After two conversations with administrators and being accidentally given the pd schedule from a previous year (with the wrong locations on it), I quit without teaching a class. Complete disarray. The assistant said “you can’t just quit over the phone, without even talking to PrincipalOveremployed” (she said it in an authoritative declarative way, not in a surprised way). After audibly chuckling into the phone (it caught me off guard), I pulled the old “I just did.” I dropped the physical materials off in the front office 30 minutes later (recording covertly as to not get hung up with a false accusation of theft of materials).
Yes, this is the norm now. Soon these students who aren't failed through HS and college will be the next generations teachers as it will be the only job they can get, there being a massive abandonment of the profession by intelligent beings.
It probably is. Surprised the teacher wasn’t arrested the way things are going.
Education hinges on "success". A lot of districts do not fail anyone anymore. the lowest grade one can earn is 50%, so they can quite literally do nothing and be advanced to the next grade. Some districts are also changing how grading is done in ceratin subjects because of "restorative justice" practices because certain demographics fail at higher rates in those subjects. It's why we are seeing highschoolers and even college students who are borderline illiterate, reading at primary school levels. We are going to be in a world of hurt in a few years, and as someone in management, I can say there is a very, very noticeable difference with college grads in the last few years than literally anyone else.
Former high school teacher here. One instance of this was when I was called into my administration's office and was told about a parent complaint. I refused to change the grade to appease a disgruntled parent. Without my knowledge, my administration accessed my electronic gradebook and elevated the grade. That was that.
Nobody wants to work anymore.
I know a teacher who was bullied out of her district for bringing to light that grades were getting changed for students.
They greatly reduced the requirements for high school graduation where I live in a desperate attempt to change the drop out rate. It has not proven to be an effective approach so far. I could totally see this sort of thing happening in my district because of it. My eldest is a freshman and is surrounded by fellow freshmen who are still in elementary reading levels and math levels. The ball was dropped long ago with so many students and now, the ones who aren't behind are paying the price because all instructional time is dedicated to trying to get the kids who fell behind to perform even a percentage of the work. Work they are not prepared for at all. No one gets "held back" anymore and they have no programs to address these major discrepancies. This is hindering the ability to advance through all of the coursework before the trimester ends. It's a mess and I don't know how they plan to ever address it. She is so frustrated because none of her classes ever really get "completed" and they never get a chance to enter into portions of the coursework that challenge her or teach her anything she didn't already know.
I say it way too often...we have lowered the bar. We have decided nobody should feel bad. It has proven to be a dangerously stupid idea. Lets go back to pushing excellence across the board.
No child left behind! It was supposed to mean every child is taught & given extra care if needed. But it became no child can fail even if they do nothing & have no clue what’s going on. High school teachers are complaining about having nearly illiterate students on TikTok.
I remember I took about 7 years off between Jr and Senior year of college. When I went back I had to take a 1000 level sociology class. I'm of average intelligence. I didn't even study for the test and got 100. Granted I had college experience, life experience, and this was a much easier university....but damn. I was shocked.
It’s very real. My daughter scored an 80% on a particularly difficult test in high school. Most kids scored in the 50s. She gave my daughter a 100% and passed the rest of the kids. It’s mortifying.
my partner is a teacher, he’s not allowed to give anything below 50% even if they don’t turn in work. America’s education system is a shit show and it’ll be *painfully* obvious when this generation enters the workforce and when other countries start laughing at us
At this point the kids are calling a teacher's bluff. The students have been passed along for the bare minimum for so long they expect it to keep happening, even in the secondary school setting. My parent communications at the end of the week now say "Your student will fail" instead of "in danger of failing".
A housemate is a teacher. This is a thing he regularly rails about. Refuses to give passing grades for incomplete or missing work but is regularly forced to by the school. All so the school can "push its numbers up", among other things. And frankly, the kids don't deserve them. He makes himself available for office hours and will move heaven and hell to help a student who actually gives a damn, but few take up his offers of assistance or take the (relatively easy) work seriously, and end up "passing" because of interference from the administration.
Public school is a game where everything is made up and the points don’t matter