On Monday, I was talking with one of the middle school teachers in the city where I teach. I happened to mention one of my pet peeves—the fact that kids in middle school appear to get promoted to the next grade every year, regardless of whether or not they’ve actually mastered the skills for their grade level. The teacher’s response surprised me.
She said that teachers at the middle school regularly recommend that some students be retained (“held back”) if they haven’t mastered the concepts and skills for their grade level. However, most of these parents refuse to have their children held back. This procedure starts in kindergarten—teachers can recommend that a child be held back, but parents make the ultimate decision. Courts have decided that this is a civil right that belongs to the parents, and it continues to be the case through the end of middle school.
The teacher I was talking with mentioned a particular student who had done absolutely nothing in sixth grade, and was incapable of doing work at the sixth grade level by the end of the school year. Of course she recommended that he be retained, and of course the parents vetoed and the child was promoted to seventh grade. Because he can’t even do sixth grade work, he will understand far less of what is going on in seventh grade, and even less than that in eighth grade. In two years, when we get this student at the high school, he will probably still be working at a fourth or fifth grade level. He will probably fail all of his classes in high school, and will probably spend three years being a freshman and drop out as soon as he turns sixteen. However, on the plus side, he won’t have the stigma of having been held back in middle school.
