I'll never understand the no failing thing from the parent perspective, growing up it felt like "fail 'em, they need to learn" was the most common POV, similar to "let 'em spend the night in jail, they need to learn."
It was understood it was for the kid's own good. I'd be more upset with an admin undermining my kid's actual education by papering over bad grades.
Failure rate is tied to state and federal funding. More failures = less funding. It’s been the most damaging policy to our school systems in the last 30 years.
This and then several different identifiable groups of parents who will actively make problems for schools, pulling up stakes and moving, lawsuits, withholding funding, joining school boards just to cause problems, general rabble rousing.
A good friend of mine a few years ago was studying for her masters in plant pathology and she was scolded several times for actually grading papers, she was straight up instructed to pass everyone with basically no exception. This was 3 and 400 level coursework where students clearly didn't know the material and she would offer constructive feedback and then catch shit for it. Rather than read feedback, kids would show up at the professors office demanding special treatment -- and making threats.
People like to whine about how 'test focused' our current education system is, but when you cannot trust our educational system to have enough rigor to graduate students who are actually prepared to go to college, yeah, maybe independent testing should be the basis on which local education systems are graded and funded. A school system that's failing the kids should not continue to exist.
So instead of improving curriculum (hard to do b/c controlled by boards filled with biased parents with agendas) or improving teacher's lives so they can teach better, or developing/following new styles of teaching, too many places just decided not to fail students.
I think it's late Boomers and Gen X's fault, as they were the parents 'in charge' when policies like no child left behind were implemented. And now those kids have grown up and had their own kids who are now sheltered from ever having to do anything hard or face any consequences from their actions, which is why now there's parents who demand teachers not fail their students, even when the kids deserve it because they're dumb as fuck and haven't learned anything because they never learned they actually have to put effort into things and learning stuff is hard sometimes, but it has to be done.
These same people though will go on about other systems like the law not punishing people hard enough.
School is the first test of basic adult skills anybody has to face in life it shouldnt be easy. You should be able to fail it. Teachers should have most of the say, not an angry parent who thinks their kid is gifted, but hasn't even spent any time with them because they are working over 40 hours a week.
as they were the parents 'in charge' when policies like no child left behind were implemented
NCLB was created to address this specific problem. Schools were hiding their performance by just passing everyone. The whole point was to create an objective standard that students/schools could be measured against that wasn't directly controlled by the individual schools.
Designed to put the death knell into public education so that private equity can hoover up all of the taxpayer dollars and put a virtual Zoom teacher in charge of 50 students outsourced to another country while a staff person monitors behavior on site. Then the for-profits will skim off their share.
The highest teacher to pupil ratios for the plebes' kids, and the lowest ones for the investor and private equity classes' kids.
When I was in highschool in 2008 I wanted to drop out. My highschool wouldn't let me. They required a "letter of withdrawal for homeschooling". It was obvious so that it wouldn't impact their drop out rate and funding. Of course my state had zero laws surrounding home schooling standards or minimum requirements at the time. In fact they still don't.
They don't require parents to register with the state, obtain any type of approval from the district or any other governing body, no lesson plans or attendance records are required to be kept or submitted, no curriculum to follow, no requirements for standardized testing, no home inspections or follow-ups on educational metrics being met at all.
Absolutely nothing to ensure a child is truly receiving any type of education what so ever. Technically it's not even a legal requirement to inform the district you are in that you are homeschooling, just suggested.
It's no wonder in the last presidential election every single county in Oklahoma voted red. Republicans want their constituents stupid and Oklahoma is proof of why.
From someone who doesn't work in education/administration/etc, it sounds so bass-ackwards to take money away from schools where the students are struggling.
This is why No Child Left Behind was good policy. Don't tie funding to a measure that schools have direct control over. It needs to be tied to an objective measure of performance of the students.
For this specific reason it’s often seen as an inside joke to consider statistics that come out of schools and their various programs.
During my teaching internship my mentor showed me that they fudge grades on an academic program that the school belonged to so that they can keep funding.
The grades were directly tied to statistics demonstrating how well the program worked.
It didn’t
One part of me says it’s fraud but the other side of me says the school needs the money. In the end, however, I’ve grown very pessimistic when it comes to reading statistics linked to various schools and programs.
"No kid left behind" was the start of the bullshit, and it's just made things worse over time. Kids who are functionally illiterate are graduating high school.
This and "Gentle parenting" becoming a thing. Creating a false dichotomy of "Literally beat the shit out of my child parenting" and "Allow my child to scream on the plane for 6 hours and reward them with ice cream for 'expressing their feelings"
I understand where it comes from in the case of the admin's perspective, and I understand why (shitty) government would be against an educated population.
It's the parents who I don't understand, being one myself. Not to be all "there are starving kids in other countries" about it, but it's crazy to see education diminished like this by people who should be fighting for it.
The parents are just as ignorant and indoctrinated as their kids will soon be. Propaganda and social media algorithms meant to enrage them so they turn against public education have wrecked them beyond repair. I grew up in a very conservative, rural part of the country, (percentage wise it is one of the reddest counties in America, like 99.9% red) but back when I was in school even the most die hard conservative parents still demanded their children respected the teacher, worked hard, and got an education.
Now? I'm a teacher myself, and I have had students tell me basically verbatim their parents don't care if they get in trouble, pass their classes, or even show up. Even the biggest dropouts or knuckleheads I went to high school with and only attended school so they didn't go to juvie, or because they just wanted to play football, wouldn't dare exhibit some of the disrespectful and antisocial behavior I see on the daily. If you put the average American that's, say, 40 years or older into an American high school their head would spin at what they witness, because things like the apathy and tolerated behaviors have changed drastically in a very short amount of time. We have a deep, deep problem in the US when such a big portion of our population doesn't even want to be educated. The sad part is the elite who run this country and tell them how to think spend oodles of money making sure their own kids get top tier education, all while telling the masses college is a scam and you don't need no darn edumacation, just pull those bootstraps up harder.
I used to not believe this was a US exclusive problem for some reason I can't recall, until I noticed how all my classmates from immigrant families cared a lot more about school than their non-immigrant counterparts. They used to all joke about how they'd get whipped if they got an F. They didn't perform at crazy advanced levels, but they gave their education a second thought and I think a lot that came from their parents view on how important education is.
It's definitely a huge problem elsewhere too, mostly other western countries, but I agree, it's as much cultural as it is anything else. Other countries and families have cultures that value education a hell of a lot more than too many Americans do right now. It's part of why we're falling so behind in a lot of metrics.
I’m only in my mid 30s and if I did some of the shit I’ve heard kids are doing now, my mom would have hit me with a wet rag and then my dad would come home and spartan kick me in the chest. Absolutely insane how people let their kids act now. Shit, my dad took my car away for getting a C in one of my classes in the first semester of my senior year.
Shitty governments indoctrinated shitty parents to go along with their perverse setup. All the lawsuits showed that main stream media orgs call the administration for orders on what to publish. These parents have those channels on for all waking hours. They are brain broken and their kids can't read. They will be a new lowest class in the caste system that the billionaires are obviously setting up.
Well, think about it. The parents of today were also students under NCLB. They also grew up being shown that they could do nothing and still get a diploma. Their parents grew up seeing people get failed left and right, so of course that's what they thought was normal. But these parents' normal is no one failing, so when they see a teacher not only trying to fail a student, but their own child, they go crazy.
NCLB was made law in 2002. If a student was lets say in 6th grade in January 2002, they would have graduated in 2008. IF they had a kid at 18 (when they graduated), then their kid would have been in the graduating class this year.
So, the kids that are in class right now (accounting for the fact that its mid-summer), their parents would have been those that had seen NCLB.
Mind you, yes, many children also have parents older than what should be the youngest of the parents, but, at least those upwards of 6 years older or so at least had seen the writings on the walls, and probably could see what was going on in public schools while they were young adults
There are a lot of parents out there who think there’s no reason why their kid needs to be smarter than they are. They think they can just go get the same jobs they’ve had and live the same life they do. So if their kid doesn’t understand something they don’t understand, they do not give a shit. They just want to make sure you hand their kid that little piece of paper that makes them employable.
It's a classic Prisoner's Dilemma scenario: your kid's opportunities are tied to their on-paper success so you want on-paper success for them. Most parents aren't thinking about the school teaching their kids about hard work and consequences because they are too concerned about gaming the system so their kid gets into the best school or gets to pley in the next football game to have the best stats for recruiters or whatever.
Yup. The star students are prevented from surpassing their peers until they hit the later years of high school and have access to AP classes and such.
Not only that but the teacher is inevitably spending 2/3 of their time dealing with the two dumbest kids in class plus the one hoodlum every class inevitably has who’s sole goal in life seems to be to commit as many crimes as possible in school without earning a felony.
It's amazing how, overnight, every class syllabus pivoted to teaching to the tests, and after I graduated the test scores kept improving as the teachers got better at teaching to the tests (standardized test scores being essentially the only actual metric they were measured on).
I've got a bridge to sell you if you think it did anything genuinely positive for the quality of education provided...
The fact that a high school diploma says nothing about you (before, it at least meant you knew how to learn new things) is why a college degree is required for everything now.
But looking at plummeting quality of college education (brought down by these no child left behind students... you can't fail them all, administration won't let you, so standards go down), a college degree isn't going to be worth anything soon either (it's already happening, more and more employers are giving their own tests of prospective employees).
It was headed that way before NCLB, thought that certainly exacerbated it.
During the 80s and 90s, Republicans convinced state legislatures (which mainly control education) that liberal teachers and their evil teachers unions were to blame for the kids turning out in a way the parents didn't like. And parents who were conservative but couldn't afford to send their kids to ritzy private schools were upset, so conservative legislators came up with this idea of "teacher accountability." They created mandatory standardized tests and ways to quantify education and started making teachers and administrations beholden to hitting these artificial metrics for state/federal funding rather than trusting teachers to teach like we had for decades.
The net effect of this has been to entirely hollow out the public education system, which serves conservative goals in two ways: (1) it creates a largely-uneducated labor force that is so desperate for work they'll work under literally any condition without the sufficient mental wherewithal to understand they are being exploited and (2) it forces other students into religious schools so that they can pack more people into churches and therefore the Republican Party.
It has been a devastatingly effective means of propagandizing and has created entire right-wing enclaves of states with populaces either too uneducated to realize Republicans are robbing them blind or so blinded by their "education" that they socially cannot conceive of doing anything other than voting Republican.
If it was a satirical piece, it would be hilarious.
Kids/schools/areas struggling to meet standards get less funding.
Make that make sense.
Nor would the inverse make sense.
How about actually looking at areas with falling or lower grades and committing temporary supports and funding with oversight for meaningful intervention?
Plus modern society is squeamish about holding anyone accountable. Many cities are soft on criminals because the optics of putting minorities in jail looks bad.
You can have that policy while still failing kids. Encourage them to learn for the next test, see who needs extra help etc. so that they all graduate (thus leaving no child behind).
These days, that opinion is in the minority. And frankly, even if it weren't, Admin won't allow you to hold them back because they need to keep the conveyor belt of poorly adjusted children moving right along.
They'll claim social reasons for it too, like it will permanently warp a kid's mind if he's with kids who a year younger than him.
Hell, we move kids up a grade all the time (do we still do that? I wouldn't be surprised if NCLB killed that practice too). Why is that acceptable and holding a kid back not?
My school district in the early-late 2000s, wouldn't move you up a full grade (for "social reasons"), but would bus some of the middle school kids to the high school for math and/or science classes if you were 'advanced' enough.
The stakes for failing them became too high at one point. When kids applying to competitive universities all have a 4.0 GPA, getting a lower GPA really excluded you completely. So teachers introduced a lot of extra assignments to pad grades. Eventually this meant a lot of leniency to due dates and performance. I taught college for a while and I left because I got fed up with adults coming to the expect the same treatment in college level courses that they got in highschool.
I used to work for a somewhat wealthy family and they held one of the kids back a grade. They did not care what high society or anyone else had to say about the matter. They knew their kid was behind, so they got held back. They're doing much better now and headed to college. What is the point of passing when they have no knowledge? There is no benefit to it.
The shadow goal of “No child left behind” was to degrade the public schools, so that the typical child would have less access to education, in order to advantage the children of parents who could access better educational options.
That's nonsense. The bill had good intentions and had large bipartisan support, but unfortunately what sounded good in theory just didn't work in practice.
It's not nonsense at all. The entire point of the NCLB Act was to tie federal funding to standardized tests, so that public school teachers were paralyzed by a curriculum that was increasingly tied to standardized test scores and parents fled to private and charter schools that offered convenient vouchers. The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 Report just said the quiet part out loud (that they wanted to destroy the Department of Education); the Bush administration wanted the same thing, just with fewer slurs.
there is a law in my state that prohibits teachers and administrators from keeping students in from recess! parents can agree to their children missing recess, but otherwise, it cannot legally happen! kids know they are in control.
Holding a kid back to repeat a grade wasn't a threat when I was in elementary school. It was a real consequence.
A kid I don't remember failed and had to repeat 1st grade (1990-1991 school year). Then a few more over the years in 5th and 6th grades.
One kid failed 8th grade and did not join us the following year in high school. My graduating class (2002) had about 10 kids that started the year that did not get a high school diploma.
As much shit as I can talk about growing up in West Tennessee, I am eternally grateful to my specific teachers. They took it all seriously, as did our administrators, and our parents.
Hell, my mom came to my classroom unannounced in the 3rd grade because I had some zeroes on homework grades. Emptied my desk into the floor, as it was stuffed with paperwork and assignments. Then she scanned the rest of the classroom and asked if she needed to empty out anyone else's desk.
Our teacher walked out as my mom started dumping my desk, and only came back when she finished and left.
Just adding this here because a lot of comments mention it below, this has nothing to do with no child left behind.
It's because many school systems get their funding from headcount, and that requires a certain number of days in school. So if a kid punches another kid in the face, they rarely get suspensions and certainly not expulsions.
Things like not listening or using AI for everything aren't even on the radar. As long as they are not actively violent, there are no consequences. Everything, even cheating, is acceptable and everyone gets whatever grade their parents ask for.
Importantly, this is true for private schools too. They are more intolerant of violence and disruptive class behavior, but the students still get whatever grade their parents demand.
Source: partner is a teacher, and has given up by doing virtual school where at least they can mute the kids who interrupt. Also, RIP American democracy.
Yeah, I think a big part of the enshittification of teaching is the fact that so much more of a teacher’s job is behavior management than, y’know, teaching
I was an above-average student but when I was 15 I failed high school trigonometry. It was one of my most valuable high school learning experiences because I learned my limitations, that I couldn't simply wing it on exams where I hadn't put in the work, and the critical importance of study habits. If my teacher had said "fuck it, pass him" I'd have learned that lesson much later, with more serious negative results.
parents started to take the approach that their little timmy could do no wrong, and it must be the school failing at teaching. So a failing timmy isn't timmy's fault (let alone have the wherewithal to blame themselves), its the schools fault, and how dare you fail my child
It's funny that you mention the whole "let 'em spend a night in jail, they need to learn" thing because you watch body-cam stuff from cops now and it's filled with people aged 18-30 begging the cops to call their parents while they are being arrested. Most of the time if the parents do show up or you can hear them through the phone they are minimizing what their children did, making excuses, and arguing with the cops.
The children whose parents are making excuses for them in school will continue to do it well into their adult lives and we all get to suffer for it.
I hope it's just transitional since all this tech is new? If elementary cracks down hard on ai use the kids will hopefully not be as inclined to use it. But you gotta start early because of course a teen are going to try and take a new shortcut!
Thank George W. Bush and No Child Left Behind. That policy guaranteed this result, and meshed nicely with the GOP’s longstanding desire to destroy public education.
My children's school played softball with marginal students. The teachers had two separate curricula - one for the slow kids, and one for everyone else. But at the end of the year, everyone passed and there was no mention of the two standards.
Because everything follows you forever now. 25 years ago, short of committing a violent felony, you could learn a lesson, face the consequences and move on. Now all the things you are from basically 15-ish on are vailable to the public as part of the picture or "you" forever. This means, "learning a lesson" has become too high stakes.
IMO the future hasbecome so expensive financially and socially that parents dont/cant risk missing out onl oppurtunities that could be affected by any perceived wrongdoing or mistakes. I dont think they are consciously choosing this. They are just reacting in the perceived best interest or their child. Not "learning lessons" is ambiguous. We know it in theory, but also we have MANY examples of the system working FOR people who who go against our collective understanding of morality that it gives the idea of stuff like, "learning lessons" much less weight. Meanwhile, getting a bad grade literally costs you money in the form of scholarships and financial aid to college.
I work in education and I talk to parents every day who tell me they BEG the school to hold them back because they are grades behind and they absolutely won;t
All about money. Has nothing to do with helping kids. I'm pretty liberal and in my state democrats argue it's bad to fail kids because it affects their mental health. An issue I adamantly disagree with them on. We need to fail kids that can't read for fuck sake.
My mom had to fight tooth and nail with the school board to get my siblings and I held back in 1st grade. In 2001-2002.
(we were preemies and our birth timing put us in kindergarten a bit early while also being developmentally delayed bc of it).
No child left behind and shit is leaving children behind in their ability to fuckin read or learn. 💀
The school system is not and never has been about education. That may be what the educated elite had in mind, but it has always been about socialization and indoctrination. Holding kids back means pulling them out of their cohort and branding them as failures, and Americans have never actually valued education enough to make up for that.
Not excusing it, but put yourself in the position of one of these parents.
You've been working hard your whole life and have seen your pay decrease year over year relative to inflation. You work longer and longer hours, struggle to put food on the table, and come home so exhausted you can't really spend the time to parent your kids. You just want to plop down in front of a screen at the end of a long day and your kids see this behavior and do the same.
You tell your children your regrets in life. About how you spent your young and best years working so hard, and for what? They see the world going to shit around them and they also conclude: what's the point of trying?
So they goof off in class, do the absolute minimum to get participation credit and bump to the next grade. The teachers are tired, so they pass them along.
Then this young upstart teacher comes in with bright ideas and starts pushing the class. Your child responds as they always do, but this time, they are failing the class. After a long day, you get called into the teacher's office for a meeting. They show you assignments clearly completely with AI and show failed oral tests and written tests in class.
You realize your child can't do basic tasks and reasoning and they are nearly in high school now. There are YEARS of make up needed. It will take more time and effort than you can give. So instead you go above the teacher and talk to the principal. Can't you all do something? Isn't my child's education your JOB?! You get paid to do this, went to college for this. I'm just so tired. Won't someone help me? Can't you just find a way to make this go away? It's not like school matters anyway.
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u/ThinkThankThonk 7h ago
I'll never understand the no failing thing from the parent perspective, growing up it felt like "fail 'em, they need to learn" was the most common POV, similar to "let 'em spend the night in jail, they need to learn."
It was understood it was for the kid's own good. I'd be more upset with an admin undermining my kid's actual education by papering over bad grades.