It’s fairly typical to never go back and address major gaps in learning. Have a couple messed-up years, and you may just never be taught some fundamental things.
Testing regimes focused on current-grade material and tied to funding make it hard to find support to properly address this. A 5th grade student might best be served by ignoring all 5th grade math and learning 2nd and 3rd grade math instead (something like this is actually a pretty common situation) but they’ll do worse on the standardized test than if the same time had been spent teaching them enough of the 5th grade material to pattern-recognize their way to a better-than-chance score. A great teacher who feels like working extra-hard for zero extra pay and no meaningful improvement in test scores can fill in some of the gaps while still doing what admin wants, but even that’s not ideal.
Parents play a huge roll in this... not all can be laid at the feet of the school system.
Our kids strengthened/grew their reading skills in school, but we taught them to read before kindergarten.
Can't agree more. We read so many books to my kid when se was young that she almost taught herself how to write and read at 5. Now she can read a couple of books per day, thanks god the public library is free and has soo many that she'll always have something to read or I could go bankrupt buying them.
But truly it's up to family to a large degree. When I was a child my mother helped a kid of a working woman to learn to read when he was 10.
He was 1 year younger than me, same school and many teachers in common.
Look I don't want to take away any ire pointed at an institution that is paid to educate and fails to do so. However, it is the parents responsibility to educate. It is always the parents responsibility. They can invite outside help so they aren't the sole source of education. Ultimately, though, they are responsible, and any failing rests on them not dealing with it.
The parents have responsibility to assist but it's not sole responsibility unless they are home-schooling. Sounds like the school blew off IEP compliance, and follows social promotion (which has a rationale), also doesn't sound like that good of a school overall. If this is a real/true story, we might hear more over the coming months as it would be sort of scandalous. I predict a very difficult freshman year at UConn.
SPED is difficult and I truly appreciate the places that do a good job for their students.
I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous. Society funds the public school system with tax dollars because, generally speaking, parents can't possibly be expected to provide an adequate general education. They have neither the time, expertise, nor the energy.
Parents should be expected to participate in their children's education, but that's a far cry from saying they're responsible for it.
I know someone who teaches middle-school science not far from Hartford.
His experience has been that, for a large fraction of his students, something has gone seriously off the rails before the 7th grade.
"And though limited, the accommodations helped Ortiz become an honor-roll student and led to her acceptance to several colleges, including the University of Connecticut-Hartford, which she began attending part-time in August."
But can't read or do any math beyond addition? What?
Federal government provides a lot of mandates, but none of the funding. Obviously, this will lead to arbitrage opportunities within the system that result in goals other than fulfilling the mandates for the people participating in the system.
Specifically, passing the buck onto someone else and maintaining plausible deniability.
For example, if the Feds wanted to ensure this student received all the therapy and medicine and one to one education or whatever their legally mandated Individual Education Plan called for, then the Feds should have paid for all of it.
“I was pushed through. I was moved from class to class not being taught anything,” Ortiz told The Connecticut Mirror during a series of interviews. “They stole something from me … I wanted to do more, and I didn’t have the chance to do that.”
Ortiz was diagnosed with a speech impediment and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in early childhood and has been classified as a student with a disability for “as long as I can remember,” she said.
Being in the special ed program is the easiest way to fall through the cracks. Expectations are low and if the kid isn't disruptive then they won't get a lot of attention because they are in class with the kids who are disruptive.
Schools are required to take most kids with disabilities into the special education program, but there appears to be no requirement (that I can find in my state and surrounding) that the child must actually be provided an education. It seems little more than daycare. Out of sight, out of mind.
The tyranny of low-expectations is going to be responsible for a lot of Gen Z falling out of society due to inability to perform all but the most basic tasks.
A tragic, fully avoidable fate. In part due to the victimhood mantra perpetuated by media, that absolves parents of all accountability.
I got to kind of wonder what they are honoring if a student can be on their honor roll without being able to read, or write, or do mathematics beyond arithmetic.
Sometimes schools have an improvement-based honor roll in addition to absolute grades, and it reads like she was completing assignments with speech-to-text and improved her grades. Or got good enough grades for one period in isolation—a quarter or semester—to make the honor roll.
She also got into UConn, it seems, which is generally regarded as quite a good school. Not sure how the SAT could have gone well enough to make that happen, but who knows.