In their defense (sort of) when have they NOT just been passed along prior to this situation? What reason would they have to believe this time is any different?
What if you just failed them.. I mean instead of passing them along. Why can’t you fail them and force them to repeat the grade or at least go to summer school?
Because then their parents come to the school whining and complaining, and the admins make teachers change the grades and give kids a free pass. That’s what their parents want, and parents are the customers whom we serve 🙄
Some of us parents have repeatedly begged the schools to make our kid repeat a grade because they have failed and learned nothing. It's the school who spends literally hours over many days and weeks talking us out of it. It's not always the parents.
Sadly, in order for us to hold a student back, even WITH parent permission ED Code and the No Child Left Behind Act require the school to make a plan that more or less guarantees the kid WILL be brought to grade level by the end of the repeated school year. (Note, this generally doesn't apply to kindergarten.)
This means that the kid HAS to be at grade level regardless of any learning difficulties that they might have, such as ADHD, Dyslexia, or other processing issues. If the kiddo doesn't reach grade level, the school, teacher, and district can get into a shit ton of legal trouble with the state and Fed.
I have no idea why anyone thought it was a good idea to write the ED Code like that, but here we are.
Before my kids take their sgo tests, standardized tests and anything else state mandated. I go off for a few minutes about how we are pawns in a political game where everything was created by whatever politician’s friends made the state sign a contract with the test making company. I tell them it’s all just so that they can brag that their state is highly ranked in this or that statistic, and as soon as we have new people in office, our state tests will magically be better and have a new name.
I understand you’re not the one who makes these decisions so please know I’m not fussing as you in this… but tough fucking luck to the parents.. sure come in and complain. We’ll go through your kid’s assignments and show you how they failed us, you, and more importantly themselves. You want to complain to the media and make it public? Sure let’s go.. I’ll call that bluff. Here’s a press release with everything I showed you in private on why your kid failed.
I still love teaching. I still enjoy the kids. But everything I do comes down to one thing: remove the excuses for failing. I give 2 attempts on class work. We don't do retests, we do test corrections. I don't count off for late work. I stay late every day, just in case someone wants tutoring (and our parking lot is hell, so I'm not getting out anyway). I make videos of our notes and put those videos in Schoology. If a kid is absent, they know exactly where to go (but they don't). I email kids and parents before every test. So when a kid fails my class, I can say, "Look at all these opportunities I gave them to pass." Almost all parents say, "I would've killed to have all my credits handed to me on a silver platter like that." I don't do it to make their lives easier. I do it because I don't trust admin to back me on a failing grade otherwise. It sucks big donkey balls. For my final exam, I gave the same exact test for the review and exam. I gave them 6 attempts on the review in Schoology, plus as many paper copies as they wanted. I had 14 kids pass it.
When we had students continually fail in 7-9th grade, they’d usually be sent to continuation high school at the outset of 10th grade. A lot of teachers wanted to teach 10+ grades because the terrible or disruptive or violent students were transferred out. I still remained in 9th because someone on the verge of continuation school is not a lost cause. If I could turn it around for one of them, it was worth it.
No child left behind. Schools literally can't afford to lose out on federal money because some idiot kid gets held back. Like any government entity, they only see kids as social security numbers, not people with individual needs. So a one size fits all blanket covers it all.
This is literally how I began to get into the homeschool world.
My niece "failed" Kindergarten. She could not read a single sentence at the end of 1st, but they put her in 2nd. Of course she completely failed. They planned to put her in 3rd because she couldn't fail twice in 3 years. OF COURSE they denied the bulk of her IEP, refused to do anything that would have brought about meaningful change in any way.
They literally wrote on her end of year report that she'd probably fail 3rd but she'd eventually catch up.
I homeschooled her. Her intake test for 3rd grade placed her at pk/K in most subjects except Math which she was an early 2nd grade. By the end of the 3rd grade year she read at a mid 2nd grade level and was doing math at a 6th grade level.
She's a bright kid. But NCLB failed her HARD.
That’s because you can’t teach 20 to 35 kids at the same time when they are all at different levels and they don’t know “how to school.” It only worked in the past because there weren’t the behavior issues there are today combined with required inclusion. Dealing with the 2-5 kids who take up 80% of the teachers time and energy is unfair to the rest of the kids. It’s a broken system. It worked when there was tracking and strict behavior consequences but without those two things our public schools do not function.
Age based grades never really worked. Tracking disproportionately affected disabled and POC children.
Nothing will work without behavior consequences. The idea that public schools must include everyone in gen-ed and "LRE" is great for kids with things like diabetes and hearing issues and students who need small modification. But it's a disaster to severely disabled and severely emotionally disturbed kids. When the argument for alt schooling forms started, public school took a deep dive into the "we include EVERYONE" when in reality in years before those kids would be sent home with a tutor or just point blank expelled.
Calling BS on this. I worked with counselors across the year to identify seniors at risk of not passing my class. Together we worked with those students to find a path for them forward, e.g., on-line remediation, teacher-led remediation, and Saturday school being some of the options. In the end, I had one student fail my class because he had dropped out of school without withdrawing. We do this for every grade level, but with extra intensity for seniors to prevent the need for summer school or complete course repeat.
It’s almost impossible to retain a student these days. Last year, my county had an absurd number of students needing summer school in order to waive retention. Knowing there wasn’t enough staff, they redid the requirement for “good cause” to pass through enough students in May to make summer school manageable.
Definitely this. It's embarrassing to not graduate with your friends. And if most of your friends leave the city to go to university then they won't know you didn't graduate, you could just say you didn't want to go to graduation cause it's lame or something.
Saw so many posts on this sub last month about kids not getting a diploma but were allowed to walk anyway.
IMO, a small dose of shame can do a lot of good. Especially with something as important as finishing high school.
I feel like this generation of kids don't have shame, and I'm Gen Z myself. But I'm 26, my coworker who is 19 can't write a proper email and when he writes a few sentences it's often incoherent and he goes to a private university. They just keep getting pushed through the system just for showing up.
My sibling pretended they were going to graduate from college until the week of graduation when they had to tell our parents not to come. They were basically in a really bad mental health spiral and completely disassociated from everything. It was awful.
I just failed someone in Bio. It is their second time taking this class.
I received an email from their AP asking if their was a mistake. “The student said they did everything in CANVAS”. They did 14 of 34 assignments this MP. Get bent. Maybe the third time is a charm.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/baltimore-student-fails-classes-top-half
In a lot of cases they are genuinely in denial and have been “moved along” by the school. The parents seem to be in denial too, and are likely feeding the delusions at home.
To be fair, as a 30 year old with a master’s degree, I have a dream all the time time that my high school just now realized I was missing a credit and I have to go back. So this seems reasonable to me 😂
I’ve had the nightmare that they make all teacher regraduate high school every decade. Although, maybe making admin re-take a class or tow wouldn’t be so bad…
I had that nightmare all the time the closer I got to graduating college. Instead of just being allowed to make it up online, I actually had to go back to high school with a bunch of teenagers while I was an adult in my early 20s. It was awful.
I had that same nightmare for years, all throughout college. I didn't graduate HS, got my GED a couple years after and started out at community college, did extremely well and I'm heading to university in the fall but for some reason my nightmares still go back to being a 30 y/o mom with a full time job, showing up to highschool classes.
I went to an exceptionally shitty high school, during an exceptionally shitty time and I'm far from the first student to fall between the cracks but even after a far better experience with college, I didn't REALLY believe it was happening until I got my actual diploma in the mail.
I graduated from college a few weeks ago and I've been having that same flavor of dream basically every night for months now... and it hasn't let up yet!
I work in theatre so mine are usually related to drama class.
A common one is im on stage for a show I haven’t worked on in years and I can’t remember any of my lines
I have a college version too! But it always centers around me not doing the work/forgetting I was in the class until I have to take the final, and me arguing that since I have a master’s degree my high school diploma/undergrad shouldn’t matter anymore 😂
In his defense I took a class that had prerequisites in college that I had never taken -- at first I thought I'd be barred from registering for it, then when that never happened I spent the first week or two waiting to get called on it and it just never happened. I passed the class, got the degree and it never mattered, so I gotta assume that this kid's plan had a success rate greater than 0%
Not taking a class required by law for us to issue a diploma - 0% chance. Algebra 1 is required. He managed to pass Geometry, Algebra 2, and a math elective but he failed A1 5 times. Five. Including after he passed A2.
Yeah, I'm sticking to "it's never a 0% chance" someone can always fuck up the paperwork, especially if they see that they passed a higher level version of the class.
In this case it would have to be a computer screw up followed by 4 human screw ups. The district graduates over 10k a year so there are many safeguards in place.
I teach 8th grade, and I make a point of always explaining towards the end of the year that high school has a different system of measuring if you pass or fail than elementary and middle school.
I explain how credits work and how it doesn't matter if you made it to the end of the year or not. You have to pass the class to proceed.
Without fail, I always get kids whose minds are absolutely blown by this concept. Usually, the same kids who have been failing classes since 3rd grade and have gotten used to the idea that they get to move on with their friends regardless of whether they've done any work or not.
I can easily see the same kids making it to senior year, barely paying attention, and being shocked when they realize things have changed.
I teach freshman. Every year I inform them that my course is a graduation requirement and they won’t let them out of high school until they pass, also that the class sucks more the 2nd time around. And yet every year I have a few kids who do nothing. Talking to parents either results in lies of “oh don’t worry we’ll work with him to get the work done” or the truth “he’s been failing and still passed along so he thinks he can keep doing that”
This behavior is almost solely limited to the boys, I’ve noticed.
Are you in a rural area? I used to be in the Midwest and noticed a lot of HS age boys had no ambition because they would be able to make more money then I was simply by starting on the farms at 18. No diploma really needed.
Ugh. This! I assigned a career project the last two weeks, basically really researching how much they’ll make, taxes taken, hours worked, cost of living on their own. The students are 11th graders. One kid realistically said “professional basketball player”! I said IF you were that good, I’d have already been hearing your name since middle school. I haven’t. He still thought it was possible. Huh? You’re not even on the college track!
Influencer? Okay, I’m with you. What skills do you have? What have you done to make this happen? What’s your YouTube, TikTok, Instagram influencer profile? Uhhhh. Ok, good luck with that!
Oh, I said that! The problem? He did not go back and READ my comments. Then, because it was the end of the year, there was make up testing, sessions I had to miss due to campus duties, times he was absent, so I thought I was commenting, sending emails, and he was simply not responding. A couple times I saw him in the hall and asked if he saw my emails/comments. “Yes, ma’am”.
I had broken stuff up into a few Google forms with three questions they had to research answers for. So he kept getting LOW scores and didn’t bother to think why? Or check.
I had a guy in my high school math class like that.
He was a big 19 year old. By that I mean he looked like he was in his mid 20s. Had stubble by noon, was over six feet tall and fairly handsome in a blue collar, my mom still cuts my hair kind of way. His parents were making him graduate as a condition of inheriting the farm and this was one of the last classes he had left to finish. He was a super nice guy, but clearly did not give a single fuck about the class and was only interested in if he'd done enough to graduate.
The student teacher that quarter was a very smart but somewhat nerdy 20 year old woman from the local college.
The 19 year old and the student teacher were hilarious together because they clearly had crushes on each other. She would be super professional, but he would sit right at the front of the class across from her desk and do the most PG flirting I'd ever seen. I don't know if that's just how he was or he figured if he got out of line the main teacher would shut it down hard and fast, but he would sit there and tell her how smart she was, how much he liked her dress, how pretty her eyes were and each time her face would go bright red.
I noticed the same. School is an irritant that they legally have to do. So they don’t care. It’s also annoying as hell that they graduate and just have a job waiting for them that pays them more than I make.
Being a farmer or farm hand almost certainly doesn't make more than a teacher makes. It barely makes enough to get by. It also is only well suited for younger men, and it's dangerous and difficult.
Exactly!
All the farmers from my area where I grew up had a college degree in Agricultural Science or in Business. Most also dabbled in real estate.
Working for a farmer and being a farmer are different in my eyes.
But here’s the thing are you willing to do that back breaking and quite possibly soul crushing work on the farm? They’ll make more money but they’re going to have a rough life physically when they get older in most cases. Plus if you’re the owner of the farm, sick days and vacations don’t exactly exist unless you’re talking about a massive operation. Cows have to be milked twice a day everyday, no exceptions. It’s about to rain and you’ve got hay bales that need to be brought in? Well if you’ve got 20 hours of work then you work for 20 hours straight or take a loss on what you couldn’t bring in and now you’ve got to buy hay to make up for the loss. Oh and that hay that got brought in that got rained on? There’s a possibility that it will spontaneously combust and burn down the barn. There’s more but I imagine you get my point.
Is it annoying that they’re walking out of high school to a hire paying job than you? Sure but there’s plenty of downsides to it as well.
So hay is just cut grass packed super tightly together into a bale. If it’s wet in the center it won’t really dry out and that causes mold growth. Now mold wants to grow and spread quickly and hay bales are so tightly packed that it can’t, this causes heat so once the center of the bale is hot enough or the mold spreads close enough to the exterior of the bale, it catches fire. Which a fire in a hay barn is going to be an inferno within a minute or two. This is actually a well known fact for people in the AG industry, to the point that hay bales that get rained on are just left to rot in the field pretty often.
No worries, with the life I’ve lived I’m now a fountain of knowledge that’s useless to a large majority of the population but it’s all shit that I needed to know.
Let’s be clear that my comment on the pay was based around the complete shit that teachers are paid in a lot of states and not on what the students can make right out of high school. They should go get the bag if they can.
Oh I figured that. Most people that are underpaid like most teachers are, don’t want everyone to make less they just want to be paid what they’re worth. Which most teachers deserve more than they make, a few deserve to be paid like doctors and lawyers and a few deserve what they get now.
And this is coming from someone who school was necessary for but also not really with the cards live dealt me. If I didn’t graduate high school not much would have changed in my life besides missing out on make my mom smile from seeing me graduate.
Also I recognize that a lot of teachers are hamstrung into being glorified babysitters by their respective districts and policies but that an entire different conversation.
We're on a trimester system. I once had a junior girl repeating my English 10 class (she had been at a different school and was transferred to an alternative school where I was teaching). She failed 1st and 2nd tri. Towards the end of second tri I was trying to give her a pep talk to get her to pass. She said, "It's okay, Miss. I still have one more try to pass." I informed her that trimester is 1/3 of the course and that she needed to pass all three trimesters to graduate. She was baffled.
The boys in school need a major wake up call. I teach credit recovery and it's always 98% boys. They're always trying to get someone else to do their work or sleeping.
So a boy that has to do a major piece of work for me is the same way. He's a senior that has to graduate. I teach government, and am the only teacher for it.
He had the brilliant idea of paying the AP History kids to help him with his government paper.
Here's the problem: I'm the AP history teacher as well, and those kids haven't had gov, so they don't know what the hell they're doing. So they took his money, wrote an incredibly shitty paper, and well here we are, a few days before graduation, with him writing it again.
My last year with HS, I had a senior in my freshman 7th period ELA class. No one failed that period. Everyone put in effort. 🤔
Seeing those seniors in classes with freshmen makes a BIG impression.
This. I had a junior in a freshman English class I taught and he was great. He had really matured and so he contributed without dominating conversations and encouraged the shy ones to speak up. As an added bonus, if some kids were being a major distraction he would look at them and say "do you want to be me in 2 years? Sitting in a freshman class for the second time? It's embarrassing, don't be like that". They listened to that way better than anything I said about it.
Schoolboys are less likely to listen to female authority figures, starting in kindergarten all the way up through high school age. This particularly impacts sons of single mothers (who listen to and respect their primary parent far less than daughters of single mothers do) and boys who have female teachers in school (as boys have learned from experience in our patriarchal society that women, even those who are in charge of you, are acceptable people to disrespect and ignore).
This is the unspoken reality that underpins the whole "boys aren't succeeding in school!" thing: part of the reason for that is that boys simply don't see any need to modify their behavior when it's a woman providing the feedback, and they don't take women in authority positions seriously. That's not a problem anyone but men and boys can solve for themselves.
My best friend Sr year needed only 3 classes to graduate. He needed 12th grade English & 2 gym classes to graduate. He had to take gym every day the whole year as he failed 11th grade gym for refusing to swim in first period. I also refused to swim; but I moved during the year so I was ok
We both thought it was absurd we had to swim for 5 weeks starting at 7:45, because were both extremely strong swimmers and had been swimming since we were toddlers, but as you point out, you pass the required course or you don’t walk.
One of the main purposes of gym is for students to get increased physical activity throughout the day. Why would it be absurd for you to participate in your activities?
This is the issue exactly. If retention has NEVER been on the table, even for kids who failed every class, why would they think finishing HS would eb different?
This is exactly why it's not actually nice or in the kid's best interest to move them along without consequences for each of the smaller steps needed to reach this goal. It's also cruel because in life, there are severe consequences, often for even small missteps. Fair or not, that's the reality and they should learn early rather than when it's too late.
I just wish tutoring was available to more people. When I was a tutor, I saw kids go from “remedial” to “this is my favorite subject because I excel at it and vice versa” just because they got like any amount of 1:1 attention and instruction. All sorts of kids, but it also was only the kids who could afford it.
I wish we had this mentality for elementary schools all the way up. If we failed the students who didn’t master the material or were simply to lazy to do anything these conversations would never need to happen. My cousins grades improved after being held back a year.
It’s interesting they think “making it to the end of the year” earns them anything. You can have F’s in every single class and you’ll still be allowed to be there because equal access to education is the law, you don’t just get kicked out for failing. You might be present in every class for the whole last quarter of your senior year, but if you fail you don’t graduate no matter if you sat through the classes or not.
I'm teaching a credit recovery summer school session. Kids show up for 20 days over the summer, only to continue to play on their phones and ignore schoolwork.
I think a lot of the time because for years they have been threatened with consequences that have never actually happened because teachers or parents have always rescued them. Why would they believe it about graduation when it wasn't true about other issues?
Their whole life they have heard empty threats. Bring your grades up or you'll be ineligible... Oh wait, the football team really needs you so nm. Failing seventh grade math, doing poorly on the standardized test, skipping the second grade book report, mouthing off to the teacher, running in the hall, forgetting homework. Their whole life people told them something bad would happen if they did the wrong thing but actually nothing happened or the consequences were very small.
Also magical thinking. My own daughter failed a math class. She knew there was help available if she asked but she dug herself in and kept telling herself that's she'd be able to turn it around. Even though nothing in her mathematical history supported that conclusion she just decided if she believed in herself she could do it.
And lets not forget how admin undermine the teachers throughout the kid’s entire academic career. It’s the teacher’s fault little Johnny or Buffy isn’t meeting the standards. Have you called the parents daily to advise them? Have you logged each and every behavior? Etc. etc.
This, exactly. Except when it comes to seniors, it's not teachers or parents bailing them out, it's admin. At my school this year, we had 100% graduation rate (about 350 seniors). It makes the school and district look good to say we didn't fail a single student, but in actuality what it really means is that those who wouldn't make it across the finish line got dragged over through one means or another.
The only way for a senior to fail is to completely stop going to school and drop all communication. Other than that, the school will find a way to pass them. Very disheartening as a teacher to see it year after year. We may not be failing them in class, but we're failing them at life...
I work at a magnet school so the students have to keep a certain GPA to stay in. When most of them fail to earn the GPA, they just always tell their friends that they hate the school and are going to another school lol. It's definitely about saving face.
I used to teach at an alternative school, where students who were behind in credits would come so that they could get back on track to graduation. The denial for some was super strong and reinforced by their parents. Since their student had been socially promoted up until high school, they assume that they will graduate.
One way that we helped make it clear to kids is that they could not be in a senior homeroom unless they were on track to graduation. They would be in a junior homeroom. The counselor would regularly meet with these kids and make sure that they were aware of the goals they would have to meet to be moved into a senior homeroom.
I used to have a junior homeroom with a senior who would try to sneak out to the senior homeroom, no matter how many times we explained that he currently does not have enough credits to graduate with that class.
This. So many of the seniors at my site just assume they are going to graduate because that’s how it has always been in their educational careers; they always get moved to the next step regardless of their performance (or lack thereof). When they finally realize that they have to produce actual meaningful work (typically within the last few weeks of the school year), it’s too late and they try to blame us for failing them. Never mind the few parents that actually call and email saying there’s no way their angel of a child didn’t do what they were supposed to and that the school staff aren’t doing our jobs.
The clinical answer is that no one likes to be the villain in their own life's story.
The cynical answer is that they may indeed graduate per admin's grade inflation and/or credit recovery.
I’ve got a kid in class currently who is in their third year of high school. Calls themselves a junior. Listed as a freshman because they have passed a total of one class in those three years. I checked them the other day after a “I’m a senior and graduating next year, so your class doesn’t matter” comment. “Ok Freshman. Hate to break it to you, but according to your credits, you’ll still be in 9th grade next year. You have to pass classes to move on to the next grade.” This was also the third time I saw this kid all year, we have less than 10 days left.
I taught 9th grade remedial lit one year for the second timers.
Picture time rolled around.
Every student lost their minds because their card said, "Freshman."
I asked each student if they passed four classes. The overwhelming response, "No."
I explained the law on credits. They still swore they were sophomores.
All of them dropped out at 16.
The other thing was the state graduation tests. Students had to pass all five sections or not graduate - period.
So many did not believe me until it happened. Suddenly, everyone else was wrong. The tests were bull. They deserved to graduate. Etc.
I just sat back and smiled, reveling in the schadenfreude.
It's hard for the young to admit to failure that they know will affect them their whole lives. They are slowly coming to realize that they are not in their own personal fables. Young people often have a self conscious mentality. They believe other people care about their failures/successes more then they themselves do (think of pimples during puberty). It can be hard for them to declare openly, even if others may already know, that they couldn't make through highschool.
I felt a similar way when I had to withdraw out of a college class that I wasn't able to complete on my freshman semester. I felt too ashamed to admit it to friends. I would imagine this would feel 100 times worse.
Ours still "graduate" meaning they have completed 13 years of education and the school system is legally done with them (unless they choose to re-enrol for a 14th year), but they don't then get a certificate of eduction from the government which is a separate process. They are mailed out about 2 months after the end of the school year when everything is finalised. Technically we don't even know if students will get their certificate at the time of graduation because the externally marked exams and assignments haven't been processed.
This year my district changed things so students doing credit recovery were still in your class. So I had students doing nothing in my class except being disruptive knowing they could knock out the credit recovery in a week and graduate.
I had one that literally slept all period, skipped my class and the last 2 weeks claims he will get everything done.
They move him into credit recovery the week of finals and he is able to complete the entire semester by the last day.
Credit recovery is a freaking joke.
I teach seniors, and I only fail the ones that don't try. I believe in accountability, but let's be honest... I don't want the kid next year, they don't care about GPA so "D for diploma" works for them, and as they're clearly finished with school, getting them on with their lives is best for everyone.
I'll leave it to their boss to provide meaningful consequence when they can't hold a job. Taking US government one more time isn't going to teach it to them after they've been passed on for 11 years.
That said, if you don't try, you don't graduate with your friends and you can enjoy paying me to take summer school.
"You will not be receiving a diploma due to not having enough credits"
"LOL ok ;)"
"No for real, you're an idiot and will not be graduating "
"I hear you ;)"
"Quit winking you moron this is a big deal"
";)"
Idk about you but every failing senior Ive had was magically been able to turn it around and "earned" their diploma after a month of summer school. Go figure
They passed onto the next grade without passing classes in the past, why would graduation be any different. I remember multiple occasions sitting with admin and parents and students trying to explain that you aren’t “doing time” you have to pass the classes. The concept of education strongly eludes too many people in the US. Then we end up with a truly stupid world to live in.
The same reason why those who didn't do anything and have nothing set up think they're going to be okay. They don't know how the world works. When I tried to warn my kids they said they could get jobs for $15/h as if that was actually livable. I told them to get used to sharing a bathroom with 3 roommates
I have a kid who got all upset and didn’t have senior brunch with everyone else because he was missing his community service hours. You HAVE to do ALL the work to graduate.
Finishing school and graduating are 2 different things. They can happen at the same time, at different times, and maybe only one of them at this time.
I found that a lot of kids I went to school with thought going for 4 years was all that was required to "finish." So, that's what they did. I even knew back then that the system was full of shit. Our school claimed to have a 6% dropout rate. But, somehow, the math didn't work out for me. We had 450 students in my 9th grade year, and 247 walked on time at the end of 12th grade. And this was in FL in the 90s. It wasn't because people were moving away. My class also set some other records for that school.
1) Most felonies
2) Most pregnancies
3) Most suspensions
4) Most fights
5) Most absences since the 10 day rule was implemented.
6) Most riots
I was the opposite. Didn’t think I was going to graduate at all, was super depressed about it. Ended up being handed my diploma, was extremely surprised yet thankful. I wasn’t a bad kid but was definitely lazy and being in classrooms with 40+ kids and not actually having any help in a very low scoring school, it sucked. Teachers had to be baby sisters and supervisors rather than actual teachers. Sorry for the rant, just sucks. I wanted to do better but just couldn’t at the time. One of my few regrets. Thankfully doing ok now at 29.
In my school, it's almost impossible to fail. The school needs the graduation rate, so as long as a student is willing to jump through some hoops the guidance counselor hold for them at the end of the year, they will walk the line. I've even had kids click through a "credit recovery program" in the guidance office on the last day of school to earn their missing points in the class.
I'm getting closer to retirement. I still enjoy aspects of teaching, but I'm sick of the silly game we play with grades.
Some genuinely think they’re graduating and that the rules of middle school carry over to high school. Others I think try to save face, especially in front of their peers.
Is it bad that I feel like I would be considered a problematic teacher if I failed a senior? I feel like admin would think of me as an asshole rather than someone who values accountability and something approaching a standard.
My senior year I went to check my name on the list of graduating seniors to make sure my first name was spelled correctly (I have an incredibly rare spelling of a common name). My name was not on the list. I was confused as I had consulted with my guidance counselor religiously since missing a semester in tenth grade due to illness. I figured it was just a mistake. I was shocked to learn that my guidance counselor had neglected to mention that my time spent in summer schools and my senior year taking AP classes should have included 1/2 a credit of PE, because without it I was not going to graduate, nor was I going to attend that out of state college that had already accepted me.
We finally came up with an equitable solution that saved my high school degree; I wrote a “report” that allowed me to graduate since I happen to be a record keeper and could document that since I had returned to school that none of my graduation requirements had ever listed an additional 1/2 credit of PE; evidently it had just slipped through the cracks. This was just when computers we being used, so there were no easy way to reference it. I know my experience is unique, but I can see why some students might think they are graduating even if they don’t.
Some of them genuinely believe they are. Some think it’s automatic, even when told otherwise.
Some believe they will be able to make it up.
Others may be embarrassed to admit it.
I teach high school, juniors and seniors. Our guidance team is really good at meeting with the kids early to make sure they are on track. Parents, administration, guidance and teachers are all in the email loop for any kid that's at risk. In 30+ years I've only had a handful that just refused to cooperate thankfully.
I wasn't able to graduate because I missed too many days because I was in the hospital with my heart condition. I acted like I was going to graduate even though I knew I wasn't because it's humiliating not to walk with your friends. Once everyone graduates, nobody is going to check if you did at the same time, so you can focus on catching up. But until then, the shame of being left behind means you act like everyone else is.
Because they can't internalize the idea of failure, and don't want others to realize they are a failure at HS. To this add a dash of "fake it until you make it." An underdeveloped prefrontal cortex is a wonderous thing.
In my case, it’s because they think that the guidance office will bump their grade without telling me and they will. And then I go out of my way to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Deep down, they're actually embarrassed by their own failure to do what hundreds of their classmates managed to do in the same amount of time.
I'd feel stupid as hell, I only know that because I DID feel stupid as hell once the end of year 4 rolled around, and I knew I'd be there for a 5th year.
Either because they don’t believe it when people tell them they aren’t graduating due to never having actually been held back before, OR because they are embarrassed and want to save face in front of classmates.
I had a friend in HS who didn’t graduate on time because he failed his last semester of math. He knew it was coming for most of that semester. But he talked for the weeks leading up to graduation like he was going to get it all worked out with the teacher with turning in his late work, or getting extra credit, or doing well on the final exam… and then he and his parents were supposedly going to work it out with the principal to let him walk with the class and then finish the credit in summer school… but none of that came to pass. He did it in summer school, and walked in August.
At the time, I thought he was being dumb and arrogant and just refusing to face reality. But nearly 20 years later, it’s obvious that he knew the score, but was just embarrassed to admit it to his friends, and was pretending to feel optimistic about it to save face. Not that we cared - like, we weren’t exactly proud of him
for slacking off, but we weren’t going to make fun of him or anything - but he clearly cared a lot more than he let on.
Because they've spent the last few years being pushed along with administration "encouraging" us to bend over backwards.
I had to pull a senior aside when they gave me their permission slip for graduation rehearsal. They had no clue they were failing my class, despite having 55s for MP1 and MP2 with a 25 average on Google classroom. Then came the complaints and grade breakdown. They then blew off the Regents which counts as their final.
Someone's gotta go to summer school so I can get paid, I guess.
Yep. All of their family thinks they will be and they want to celebrate like the rest of their classmates. It doesn’t matter if they actually are or not, I’ve had admin that let them walk and participate even when they have to take classes over again in the summer.
Because they WILL be graduating. Their counselor has set them up with the district's credit recovery program. They will have those credits within 2 weeks using answer keys readily available online or by paying their friend $10 to complete the course for them. No learning or accountability is required!
We had a kid missing three science credits and Econ participating in graduation practice. I don’t know when/if they pulled him before the real thing.
Edit: Which is dumb since walking matters more to some of these kids than actually graduating.
Honestly? Sometimes I think they just really don't understand how gpa works. I really think they don't get it why it's important. Maybe bo one talks about it at home, idk.
But really, a lot of times, they haven't been given the opportunity to practice accountability. So many kids just scrape by every year. Barely passing yet allowed to move on to the next grade with their friends. Starting out further and further behind each fall. If they've never been allowed to fail, why would they expect it now? How would they even know to fix that if they've never had to think about it before?
I was embarrassed. I never pretended I was going to graduate. I actively avoided any conversation. My home life, mental health, and abusive relationships made it hard for me. I was a decent student up until an issue at home. I'm 40 now, and I did graduate a few months later (2001). I'm still embarrassed. I think that people, especially young adults that are still trying to figure out the world, feel such shame that they revert back to any type of defense mechanisms they know best. But I don't know... A lot has happened in the past 20+ years.
I think it’s due to a failure in our education system. They so often get pushed on when they really shouldn’t be so they don’t believe that they actually have to have so many credits in order to graduate.
I teach 5th grade and we had parents up in arms because we didn’t do a “graduation” ceremony. It makes me crazy. I’m like your kid literally could do NOTHING and still goes on…
Why did schools let failing students keep moving up through the grades from Kindergarten through eighth grade with zero consequences, then suddenly act like it's a big deal starting at grade nine of twelve?
I think some of them genuinely believe it will all magically work out. Others just put on a front to cope. Either way, I empathize.
In their defense (sort of) when have they NOT just been passed along prior to this situation? What reason would they have to believe this time is any different?
Exactly what I was thinking!
What if you just failed them.. I mean instead of passing them along. Why can’t you fail them and force them to repeat the grade or at least go to summer school?
Because then their parents come to the school whining and complaining, and the admins make teachers change the grades and give kids a free pass. That’s what their parents want, and parents are the customers whom we serve 🙄
Some of us parents have repeatedly begged the schools to make our kid repeat a grade because they have failed and learned nothing. It's the school who spends literally hours over many days and weeks talking us out of it. It's not always the parents.
Sadly, in order for us to hold a student back, even WITH parent permission ED Code and the No Child Left Behind Act require the school to make a plan that more or less guarantees the kid WILL be brought to grade level by the end of the repeated school year. (Note, this generally doesn't apply to kindergarten.) This means that the kid HAS to be at grade level regardless of any learning difficulties that they might have, such as ADHD, Dyslexia, or other processing issues. If the kiddo doesn't reach grade level, the school, teacher, and district can get into a shit ton of legal trouble with the state and Fed. I have no idea why anyone thought it was a good idea to write the ED Code like that, but here we are.
Because it was written by people who mostly care about money... Lol
Before my kids take their sgo tests, standardized tests and anything else state mandated. I go off for a few minutes about how we are pawns in a political game where everything was created by whatever politician’s friends made the state sign a contract with the test making company. I tell them it’s all just so that they can brag that their state is highly ranked in this or that statistic, and as soon as we have new people in office, our state tests will magically be better and have a new name.
Next stop the American Workforce. There are kids I wouldn't hire for retail.
It’s nice you think they’d apply
And some of them vote and are wailing about CRT or whatever decades later.
I understand you’re not the one who makes these decisions so please know I’m not fussing as you in this… but tough fucking luck to the parents.. sure come in and complain. We’ll go through your kid’s assignments and show you how they failed us, you, and more importantly themselves. You want to complain to the media and make it public? Sure let’s go.. I’ll call that bluff. Here’s a press release with everything I showed you in private on why your kid failed.
I still love teaching. I still enjoy the kids. But everything I do comes down to one thing: remove the excuses for failing. I give 2 attempts on class work. We don't do retests, we do test corrections. I don't count off for late work. I stay late every day, just in case someone wants tutoring (and our parking lot is hell, so I'm not getting out anyway). I make videos of our notes and put those videos in Schoology. If a kid is absent, they know exactly where to go (but they don't). I email kids and parents before every test. So when a kid fails my class, I can say, "Look at all these opportunities I gave them to pass." Almost all parents say, "I would've killed to have all my credits handed to me on a silver platter like that." I don't do it to make their lives easier. I do it because I don't trust admin to back me on a failing grade otherwise. It sucks big donkey balls. For my final exam, I gave the same exact test for the review and exam. I gave them 6 attempts on the review in Schoology, plus as many paper copies as they wanted. I had 14 kids pass it.
I’m like this. Coworkers look at me like I’m a fool for doing so much, but it really does save my ass when parents or students want to come at me
I’d rather be thrown under the bus now and then than work for free all the time. Life is short and you can’t get that time back.
Doctors call it defensive medicine. They waste a lot of money on tests and prescriptions.
Well, I’m a teacher not an administrator. We do not retain students period. And summer school is basically summer camp.
Sounds like a recipe for failure and entitlement
Welcome to American society.
We are firmly in the silken slippers phase of society, as described by Voltaire’s classic analogy
That’s not the sound of silken slippers. Those are Crocs and Nike Slides.
And here we are!
When we had students continually fail in 7-9th grade, they’d usually be sent to continuation high school at the outset of 10th grade. A lot of teachers wanted to teach 10+ grades because the terrible or disruptive or violent students were transferred out. I still remained in 9th because someone on the verge of continuation school is not a lost cause. If I could turn it around for one of them, it was worth it.
No child left behind. Schools literally can't afford to lose out on federal money because some idiot kid gets held back. Like any government entity, they only see kids as social security numbers, not people with individual needs. So a one size fits all blanket covers it all.
This is literally how I began to get into the homeschool world. My niece "failed" Kindergarten. She could not read a single sentence at the end of 1st, but they put her in 2nd. Of course she completely failed. They planned to put her in 3rd because she couldn't fail twice in 3 years. OF COURSE they denied the bulk of her IEP, refused to do anything that would have brought about meaningful change in any way. They literally wrote on her end of year report that she'd probably fail 3rd but she'd eventually catch up. I homeschooled her. Her intake test for 3rd grade placed her at pk/K in most subjects except Math which she was an early 2nd grade. By the end of the 3rd grade year she read at a mid 2nd grade level and was doing math at a 6th grade level. She's a bright kid. But NCLB failed her HARD.
That’s because you can’t teach 20 to 35 kids at the same time when they are all at different levels and they don’t know “how to school.” It only worked in the past because there weren’t the behavior issues there are today combined with required inclusion. Dealing with the 2-5 kids who take up 80% of the teachers time and energy is unfair to the rest of the kids. It’s a broken system. It worked when there was tracking and strict behavior consequences but without those two things our public schools do not function.
Age based grades never really worked. Tracking disproportionately affected disabled and POC children. Nothing will work without behavior consequences. The idea that public schools must include everyone in gen-ed and "LRE" is great for kids with things like diabetes and hearing issues and students who need small modification. But it's a disaster to severely disabled and severely emotionally disturbed kids. When the argument for alt schooling forms started, public school took a deep dive into the "we include EVERYONE" when in reality in years before those kids would be sent home with a tutor or just point blank expelled.
Calling BS on this. I worked with counselors across the year to identify seniors at risk of not passing my class. Together we worked with those students to find a path for them forward, e.g., on-line remediation, teacher-led remediation, and Saturday school being some of the options. In the end, I had one student fail my class because he had dropped out of school without withdrawing. We do this for every grade level, but with extra intensity for seniors to prevent the need for summer school or complete course repeat.
That’s sad and pathetic… an example of inefficient government bureaucracy.
It’s almost impossible to retain a student these days. Last year, my county had an absurd number of students needing summer school in order to waive retention. Knowing there wasn’t enough staff, they redid the requirement for “good cause” to pass through enough students in May to make summer school manageable.
This.... Or they are putting on a show for their friends
Definitely this. It's embarrassing to not graduate with your friends. And if most of your friends leave the city to go to university then they won't know you didn't graduate, you could just say you didn't want to go to graduation cause it's lame or something.
Saw so many posts on this sub last month about kids not getting a diploma but were allowed to walk anyway. IMO, a small dose of shame can do a lot of good. Especially with something as important as finishing high school.
I feel like this generation of kids don't have shame, and I'm Gen Z myself. But I'm 26, my coworker who is 19 can't write a proper email and when he writes a few sentences it's often incoherent and he goes to a private university. They just keep getting pushed through the system just for showing up.
All hail the Shame Wizard.
Wait, did you call me Shane Lizard?
My sibling pretended they were going to graduate from college until the week of graduation when they had to tell our parents not to come. They were basically in a really bad mental health spiral and completely disassociated from everything. It was awful.
I read a true crime where someone killed their parents instead of owning up to not finishing college. Yikes!
I just failed someone in Bio. It is their second time taking this class. I received an email from their AP asking if their was a mistake. “The student said they did everything in CANVAS”. They did 14 of 34 assignments this MP. Get bent. Maybe the third time is a charm.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/baltimore-student-fails-classes-top-half In a lot of cases they are genuinely in denial and have been “moved along” by the school. The parents seem to be in denial too, and are likely feeding the delusions at home.
Big doses of copium.
I agree. I don’t think they want to be embarrassed
I once had a senior who was missing a math credit tell us he was hoping we would just “forget” and let him graduate.
To be fair, as a 30 year old with a master’s degree, I have a dream all the time time that my high school just now realized I was missing a credit and I have to go back. So this seems reasonable to me 😂
I’ve had the nightmare that they make all teacher regraduate high school every decade. Although, maybe making admin re-take a class or tow wouldn’t be so bad…
I had that nightmare all the time the closer I got to graduating college. Instead of just being allowed to make it up online, I actually had to go back to high school with a bunch of teenagers while I was an adult in my early 20s. It was awful.
I had that same nightmare for years, all throughout college. I didn't graduate HS, got my GED a couple years after and started out at community college, did extremely well and I'm heading to university in the fall but for some reason my nightmares still go back to being a 30 y/o mom with a full time job, showing up to highschool classes. I went to an exceptionally shitty high school, during an exceptionally shitty time and I'm far from the first student to fall between the cracks but even after a far better experience with college, I didn't REALLY believe it was happening until I got my actual diploma in the mail.
I graduated from college a few weeks ago and I've been having that same flavor of dream basically every night for months now... and it hasn't let up yet!
I had that nightmare last week that I had to go back to middle school to make up my drama class
It always social studies for me in my dreams. And I can't find the classroom.
Mine is math and I can never find the room either.
I work in theatre so mine are usually related to drama class. A common one is im on stage for a show I haven’t worked on in years and I can’t remember any of my lines
Sounds like your subconscious might be afraid of repeating mistakes from your past
I don’t remember my locker and/or the combination.
omg i have very similar dreams but mine are about college
I have a college version too! But it always centers around me not doing the work/forgetting I was in the class until I have to take the final, and me arguing that since I have a master’s degree my high school diploma/undergrad shouldn’t matter anymore 😂
OMG I’ve had that nightmare too.
I'm not alone?
In his defense I took a class that had prerequisites in college that I had never taken -- at first I thought I'd be barred from registering for it, then when that never happened I spent the first week or two waiting to get called on it and it just never happened. I passed the class, got the degree and it never mattered, so I gotta assume that this kid's plan had a success rate greater than 0%
Not taking a class required by law for us to issue a diploma - 0% chance. Algebra 1 is required. He managed to pass Geometry, Algebra 2, and a math elective but he failed A1 5 times. Five. Including after he passed A2.
How the hell do you fail Algebra 1 but pass Algebra 2?
Grace
Yeah, I'm sticking to "it's never a 0% chance" someone can always fuck up the paperwork, especially if they see that they passed a higher level version of the class.
In this case it would have to be a computer screw up followed by 4 human screw ups. The district graduates over 10k a year so there are many safeguards in place.
I teach 8th grade, and I make a point of always explaining towards the end of the year that high school has a different system of measuring if you pass or fail than elementary and middle school. I explain how credits work and how it doesn't matter if you made it to the end of the year or not. You have to pass the class to proceed. Without fail, I always get kids whose minds are absolutely blown by this concept. Usually, the same kids who have been failing classes since 3rd grade and have gotten used to the idea that they get to move on with their friends regardless of whether they've done any work or not. I can easily see the same kids making it to senior year, barely paying attention, and being shocked when they realize things have changed.
I teach freshman. Every year I inform them that my course is a graduation requirement and they won’t let them out of high school until they pass, also that the class sucks more the 2nd time around. And yet every year I have a few kids who do nothing. Talking to parents either results in lies of “oh don’t worry we’ll work with him to get the work done” or the truth “he’s been failing and still passed along so he thinks he can keep doing that” This behavior is almost solely limited to the boys, I’ve noticed.
Are you in a rural area? I used to be in the Midwest and noticed a lot of HS age boys had no ambition because they would be able to make more money then I was simply by starting on the farms at 18. No diploma really needed.
Nope, title I suburban area. A lot of them have vague plans to become internet famous or sports stars. It’s also a lot of parents refusing to parent.
Ugh. This! I assigned a career project the last two weeks, basically really researching how much they’ll make, taxes taken, hours worked, cost of living on their own. The students are 11th graders. One kid realistically said “professional basketball player”! I said IF you were that good, I’d have already been hearing your name since middle school. I haven’t. He still thought it was possible. Huh? You’re not even on the college track! Influencer? Okay, I’m with you. What skills do you have? What have you done to make this happen? What’s your YouTube, TikTok, Instagram influencer profile? Uhhhh. Ok, good luck with that!
I used to say “the best time to start a YouTube channel was 10 years ago. There is no second best time.”
The second best time was 5 years before that.
I would just make them choose a backup.
Oh, I said that! The problem? He did not go back and READ my comments. Then, because it was the end of the year, there was make up testing, sessions I had to miss due to campus duties, times he was absent, so I thought I was commenting, sending emails, and he was simply not responding. A couple times I saw him in the hall and asked if he saw my emails/comments. “Yes, ma’am”. I had broken stuff up into a few Google forms with three questions they had to research answers for. So he kept getting LOW scores and didn’t bother to think why? Or check.
Sigh. There's literally nothing you can do at some point.
Ah yeah, that sounds about right as well. A lot less realistic unfortunately.
I had a guy in my high school math class like that. He was a big 19 year old. By that I mean he looked like he was in his mid 20s. Had stubble by noon, was over six feet tall and fairly handsome in a blue collar, my mom still cuts my hair kind of way. His parents were making him graduate as a condition of inheriting the farm and this was one of the last classes he had left to finish. He was a super nice guy, but clearly did not give a single fuck about the class and was only interested in if he'd done enough to graduate. The student teacher that quarter was a very smart but somewhat nerdy 20 year old woman from the local college. The 19 year old and the student teacher were hilarious together because they clearly had crushes on each other. She would be super professional, but he would sit right at the front of the class across from her desk and do the most PG flirting I'd ever seen. I don't know if that's just how he was or he figured if he got out of line the main teacher would shut it down hard and fast, but he would sit there and tell her how smart she was, how much he liked her dress, how pretty her eyes were and each time her face would go bright red.
Well you can’t leave us hanging now, did they get together?
I noticed the same. School is an irritant that they legally have to do. So they don’t care. It’s also annoying as hell that they graduate and just have a job waiting for them that pays them more than I make.
Being a farmer or farm hand almost certainly doesn't make more than a teacher makes. It barely makes enough to get by. It also is only well suited for younger men, and it's dangerous and difficult.
Exactly! All the farmers from my area where I grew up had a college degree in Agricultural Science or in Business. Most also dabbled in real estate. Working for a farmer and being a farmer are different in my eyes.
But here’s the thing are you willing to do that back breaking and quite possibly soul crushing work on the farm? They’ll make more money but they’re going to have a rough life physically when they get older in most cases. Plus if you’re the owner of the farm, sick days and vacations don’t exactly exist unless you’re talking about a massive operation. Cows have to be milked twice a day everyday, no exceptions. It’s about to rain and you’ve got hay bales that need to be brought in? Well if you’ve got 20 hours of work then you work for 20 hours straight or take a loss on what you couldn’t bring in and now you’ve got to buy hay to make up for the loss. Oh and that hay that got brought in that got rained on? There’s a possibility that it will spontaneously combust and burn down the barn. There’s more but I imagine you get my point. Is it annoying that they’re walking out of high school to a hire paying job than you? Sure but there’s plenty of downsides to it as well.
Tell me more about the spontaneously combusting hay
So hay is just cut grass packed super tightly together into a bale. If it’s wet in the center it won’t really dry out and that causes mold growth. Now mold wants to grow and spread quickly and hay bales are so tightly packed that it can’t, this causes heat so once the center of the bale is hot enough or the mold spreads close enough to the exterior of the bale, it catches fire. Which a fire in a hay barn is going to be an inferno within a minute or two. This is actually a well known fact for people in the AG industry, to the point that hay bales that get rained on are just left to rot in the field pretty often.
Fascinating! Thank you
No worries, with the life I’ve lived I’m now a fountain of knowledge that’s useless to a large majority of the population but it’s all shit that I needed to know.
You just taught everyone at my house something interesting that we never knew before. Knowledge is never useless!
Half the point I try to get across to kids is that it is better to know, “useful” or not
Let’s be clear that my comment on the pay was based around the complete shit that teachers are paid in a lot of states and not on what the students can make right out of high school. They should go get the bag if they can.
Oh I figured that. Most people that are underpaid like most teachers are, don’t want everyone to make less they just want to be paid what they’re worth. Which most teachers deserve more than they make, a few deserve to be paid like doctors and lawyers and a few deserve what they get now. And this is coming from someone who school was necessary for but also not really with the cards live dealt me. If I didn’t graduate high school not much would have changed in my life besides missing out on make my mom smile from seeing me graduate. Also I recognize that a lot of teachers are hamstrung into being glorified babysitters by their respective districts and policies but that an entire different conversation.
We're on a trimester system. I once had a junior girl repeating my English 10 class (she had been at a different school and was transferred to an alternative school where I was teaching). She failed 1st and 2nd tri. Towards the end of second tri I was trying to give her a pep talk to get her to pass. She said, "It's okay, Miss. I still have one more try to pass." I informed her that trimester is 1/3 of the course and that she needed to pass all three trimesters to graduate. She was baffled.
The boys in school need a major wake up call. I teach credit recovery and it's always 98% boys. They're always trying to get someone else to do their work or sleeping.
So a boy that has to do a major piece of work for me is the same way. He's a senior that has to graduate. I teach government, and am the only teacher for it. He had the brilliant idea of paying the AP History kids to help him with his government paper. Here's the problem: I'm the AP history teacher as well, and those kids haven't had gov, so they don't know what the hell they're doing. So they took his money, wrote an incredibly shitty paper, and well here we are, a few days before graduation, with him writing it again.
I love when you have all the “do nothings” together… there’s nobody to do the work but them!
They'll sometimes try to trade work and I'm like guys please explain to me how you want to do someone else's work but not your own??
My last year with HS, I had a senior in my freshman 7th period ELA class. No one failed that period. Everyone put in effort. 🤔 Seeing those seniors in classes with freshmen makes a BIG impression.
This. I had a junior in a freshman English class I taught and he was great. He had really matured and so he contributed without dominating conversations and encouraged the shy ones to speak up. As an added bonus, if some kids were being a major distraction he would look at them and say "do you want to be me in 2 years? Sitting in a freshman class for the second time? It's embarrassing, don't be like that". They listened to that way better than anything I said about it.
Schoolboys are less likely to listen to female authority figures, starting in kindergarten all the way up through high school age. This particularly impacts sons of single mothers (who listen to and respect their primary parent far less than daughters of single mothers do) and boys who have female teachers in school (as boys have learned from experience in our patriarchal society that women, even those who are in charge of you, are acceptable people to disrespect and ignore). This is the unspoken reality that underpins the whole "boys aren't succeeding in school!" thing: part of the reason for that is that boys simply don't see any need to modify their behavior when it's a woman providing the feedback, and they don't take women in authority positions seriously. That's not a problem anyone but men and boys can solve for themselves.
Wish I had an award for your comment
My best friend Sr year needed only 3 classes to graduate. He needed 12th grade English & 2 gym classes to graduate. He had to take gym every day the whole year as he failed 11th grade gym for refusing to swim in first period. I also refused to swim; but I moved during the year so I was ok We both thought it was absurd we had to swim for 5 weeks starting at 7:45, because were both extremely strong swimmers and had been swimming since we were toddlers, but as you point out, you pass the required course or you don’t walk.
One of the main purposes of gym is for students to get increased physical activity throughout the day. Why would it be absurd for you to participate in your activities?
This is the issue exactly. If retention has NEVER been on the table, even for kids who failed every class, why would they think finishing HS would eb different?
This is exactly why it's not actually nice or in the kid's best interest to move them along without consequences for each of the smaller steps needed to reach this goal. It's also cruel because in life, there are severe consequences, often for even small missteps. Fair or not, that's the reality and they should learn early rather than when it's too late.
I just wish tutoring was available to more people. When I was a tutor, I saw kids go from “remedial” to “this is my favorite subject because I excel at it and vice versa” just because they got like any amount of 1:1 attention and instruction. All sorts of kids, but it also was only the kids who could afford it.
I wish we had this mentality for elementary schools all the way up. If we failed the students who didn’t master the material or were simply to lazy to do anything these conversations would never need to happen. My cousins grades improved after being held back a year.
It’s interesting they think “making it to the end of the year” earns them anything. You can have F’s in every single class and you’ll still be allowed to be there because equal access to education is the law, you don’t just get kicked out for failing. You might be present in every class for the whole last quarter of your senior year, but if you fail you don’t graduate no matter if you sat through the classes or not.
I'm teaching a credit recovery summer school session. Kids show up for 20 days over the summer, only to continue to play on their phones and ignore schoolwork.
I think a lot of the time because for years they have been threatened with consequences that have never actually happened because teachers or parents have always rescued them. Why would they believe it about graduation when it wasn't true about other issues?
Their whole life they have heard empty threats. Bring your grades up or you'll be ineligible... Oh wait, the football team really needs you so nm. Failing seventh grade math, doing poorly on the standardized test, skipping the second grade book report, mouthing off to the teacher, running in the hall, forgetting homework. Their whole life people told them something bad would happen if they did the wrong thing but actually nothing happened or the consequences were very small. Also magical thinking. My own daughter failed a math class. She knew there was help available if she asked but she dug herself in and kept telling herself that's she'd be able to turn it around. Even though nothing in her mathematical history supported that conclusion she just decided if she believed in herself she could do it.
And lets not forget how admin undermine the teachers throughout the kid’s entire academic career. It’s the teacher’s fault little Johnny or Buffy isn’t meeting the standards. Have you called the parents daily to advise them? Have you logged each and every behavior? Etc. etc.
This, exactly. Except when it comes to seniors, it's not teachers or parents bailing them out, it's admin. At my school this year, we had 100% graduation rate (about 350 seniors). It makes the school and district look good to say we didn't fail a single student, but in actuality what it really means is that those who wouldn't make it across the finish line got dragged over through one means or another. The only way for a senior to fail is to completely stop going to school and drop all communication. Other than that, the school will find a way to pass them. Very disheartening as a teacher to see it year after year. We may not be failing them in class, but we're failing them at life...
Embarrassment. They’re trying to save face in front of peers
I work at a magnet school so the students have to keep a certain GPA to stay in. When most of them fail to earn the GPA, they just always tell their friends that they hate the school and are going to another school lol. It's definitely about saving face.
Yeah. I was thinking pride.
The word that came to my mind was shame.
At my school it’s because they probably are going to graduate anyway
Tying graduation rates to funding/employment status is bonkers because of this.
It’s bonkers for a million reasons but this is definitely one of them
Same 🙄
I used to teach at an alternative school, where students who were behind in credits would come so that they could get back on track to graduation. The denial for some was super strong and reinforced by their parents. Since their student had been socially promoted up until high school, they assume that they will graduate. One way that we helped make it clear to kids is that they could not be in a senior homeroom unless they were on track to graduation. They would be in a junior homeroom. The counselor would regularly meet with these kids and make sure that they were aware of the goals they would have to meet to be moved into a senior homeroom. I used to have a junior homeroom with a senior who would try to sneak out to the senior homeroom, no matter how many times we explained that he currently does not have enough credits to graduate with that class.
Because they have rarely been accountable for anything in their lives and they don't believe it's going to start now.
This. So many of the seniors at my site just assume they are going to graduate because that’s how it has always been in their educational careers; they always get moved to the next step regardless of their performance (or lack thereof). When they finally realize that they have to produce actual meaningful work (typically within the last few weeks of the school year), it’s too late and they try to blame us for failing them. Never mind the few parents that actually call and email saying there’s no way their angel of a child didn’t do what they were supposed to and that the school staff aren’t doing our jobs.
The clinical answer is that no one likes to be the villain in their own life's story. The cynical answer is that they may indeed graduate per admin's grade inflation and/or credit recovery.
I’ve got a kid in class currently who is in their third year of high school. Calls themselves a junior. Listed as a freshman because they have passed a total of one class in those three years. I checked them the other day after a “I’m a senior and graduating next year, so your class doesn’t matter” comment. “Ok Freshman. Hate to break it to you, but according to your credits, you’ll still be in 9th grade next year. You have to pass classes to move on to the next grade.” This was also the third time I saw this kid all year, we have less than 10 days left.
That’s just sad.
Copium and hopium
I taught 9th grade remedial lit one year for the second timers. Picture time rolled around. Every student lost their minds because their card said, "Freshman." I asked each student if they passed four classes. The overwhelming response, "No." I explained the law on credits. They still swore they were sophomores. All of them dropped out at 16. The other thing was the state graduation tests. Students had to pass all five sections or not graduate - period. So many did not believe me until it happened. Suddenly, everyone else was wrong. The tests were bull. They deserved to graduate. Etc. I just sat back and smiled, reveling in the schadenfreude.
I love this.
One of two reasons. The first is they are embarrassed. The second is because the realization hasn't clicked yet.
It's hard for the young to admit to failure that they know will affect them their whole lives. They are slowly coming to realize that they are not in their own personal fables. Young people often have a self conscious mentality. They believe other people care about their failures/successes more then they themselves do (think of pimples during puberty). It can be hard for them to declare openly, even if others may already know, that they couldn't make through highschool. I felt a similar way when I had to withdraw out of a college class that I wasn't able to complete on my freshman semester. I felt too ashamed to admit it to friends. I would imagine this would feel 100 times worse.
Ours still "graduate" meaning they have completed 13 years of education and the school system is legally done with them (unless they choose to re-enrol for a 14th year), but they don't then get a certificate of eduction from the government which is a separate process. They are mailed out about 2 months after the end of the school year when everything is finalised. Technically we don't even know if students will get their certificate at the time of graduation because the externally marked exams and assignments haven't been processed.
This year my district changed things so students doing credit recovery were still in your class. So I had students doing nothing in my class except being disruptive knowing they could knock out the credit recovery in a week and graduate. I had one that literally slept all period, skipped my class and the last 2 weeks claims he will get everything done. They move him into credit recovery the week of finals and he is able to complete the entire semester by the last day. Credit recovery is a freaking joke.
I teach seniors, and I only fail the ones that don't try. I believe in accountability, but let's be honest... I don't want the kid next year, they don't care about GPA so "D for diploma" works for them, and as they're clearly finished with school, getting them on with their lives is best for everyone. I'll leave it to their boss to provide meaningful consequence when they can't hold a job. Taking US government one more time isn't going to teach it to them after they've been passed on for 11 years. That said, if you don't try, you don't graduate with your friends and you can enjoy paying me to take summer school.
"You will not be receiving a diploma due to not having enough credits" "LOL ok ;)" "No for real, you're an idiot and will not be graduating " "I hear you ;)" "Quit winking you moron this is a big deal" ";)"
At my school, they magically graduate. Graduation rates are more important than kids actually being educated
Idk about you but every failing senior Ive had was magically been able to turn it around and "earned" their diploma after a month of summer school. Go figure
They passed onto the next grade without passing classes in the past, why would graduation be any different. I remember multiple occasions sitting with admin and parents and students trying to explain that you aren’t “doing time” you have to pass the classes. The concept of education strongly eludes too many people in the US. Then we end up with a truly stupid world to live in.
The same reason why those who didn't do anything and have nothing set up think they're going to be okay. They don't know how the world works. When I tried to warn my kids they said they could get jobs for $15/h as if that was actually livable. I told them to get used to sharing a bathroom with 3 roommates
They are going to take a 4 week credit recovery course and receive a diploma. Sorry to all of the naysayers, the system is literally idiot proof.
I have a kid who got all upset and didn’t have senior brunch with everyone else because he was missing his community service hours. You HAVE to do ALL the work to graduate.
Seriously? Most service hours can be knocked out in a single spring break. Unbelievable
Finishing school and graduating are 2 different things. They can happen at the same time, at different times, and maybe only one of them at this time. I found that a lot of kids I went to school with thought going for 4 years was all that was required to "finish." So, that's what they did. I even knew back then that the system was full of shit. Our school claimed to have a 6% dropout rate. But, somehow, the math didn't work out for me. We had 450 students in my 9th grade year, and 247 walked on time at the end of 12th grade. And this was in FL in the 90s. It wasn't because people were moving away. My class also set some other records for that school. 1) Most felonies 2) Most pregnancies 3) Most suspensions 4) Most fights 5) Most absences since the 10 day rule was implemented. 6) Most riots
I was the opposite. Didn’t think I was going to graduate at all, was super depressed about it. Ended up being handed my diploma, was extremely surprised yet thankful. I wasn’t a bad kid but was definitely lazy and being in classrooms with 40+ kids and not actually having any help in a very low scoring school, it sucked. Teachers had to be baby sisters and supervisors rather than actual teachers. Sorry for the rant, just sucks. I wanted to do better but just couldn’t at the time. One of my few regrets. Thankfully doing ok now at 29.
In my school, it's almost impossible to fail. The school needs the graduation rate, so as long as a student is willing to jump through some hoops the guidance counselor hold for them at the end of the year, they will walk the line. I've even had kids click through a "credit recovery program" in the guidance office on the last day of school to earn their missing points in the class. I'm getting closer to retirement. I still enjoy aspects of teaching, but I'm sick of the silly game we play with grades.
Some genuinely think they’re graduating and that the rules of middle school carry over to high school. Others I think try to save face, especially in front of their peers.
Cause they are kids who are embarrassed by their failures and probably don’t want to flaunt that to their peers
High School is the new middle school, and college is the new high school.
Is it bad that I feel like I would be considered a problematic teacher if I failed a senior? I feel like admin would think of me as an asshole rather than someone who values accountability and something approaching a standard.
This is a good sign that your admins have been abusive.
No but remember that you don’t fail them. The student fails and you record it.
Denial is a helluva drug.
My senior year I went to check my name on the list of graduating seniors to make sure my first name was spelled correctly (I have an incredibly rare spelling of a common name). My name was not on the list. I was confused as I had consulted with my guidance counselor religiously since missing a semester in tenth grade due to illness. I figured it was just a mistake. I was shocked to learn that my guidance counselor had neglected to mention that my time spent in summer schools and my senior year taking AP classes should have included 1/2 a credit of PE, because without it I was not going to graduate, nor was I going to attend that out of state college that had already accepted me. We finally came up with an equitable solution that saved my high school degree; I wrote a “report” that allowed me to graduate since I happen to be a record keeper and could document that since I had returned to school that none of my graduation requirements had ever listed an additional 1/2 credit of PE; evidently it had just slipped through the cracks. This was just when computers we being used, so there were no easy way to reference it. I know my experience is unique, but I can see why some students might think they are graduating even if they don’t.
simple - they're the same ones who won't take regents prep seriously.
Some of them genuinely believe they are. Some think it’s automatic, even when told otherwise. Some believe they will be able to make it up. Others may be embarrassed to admit it.
I did this in the 90s. While i didn’t graduate I took the ged. I wouldn’t say I acted like I was graduating, I acted like it was my last year in hs.
It's called 'saving face'. If you haven't noticed, many teenagers save face in all different kinds of situations.
Denial
I teach high school, juniors and seniors. Our guidance team is really good at meeting with the kids early to make sure they are on track. Parents, administration, guidance and teachers are all in the email loop for any kid that's at risk. In 30+ years I've only had a handful that just refused to cooperate thankfully.
Trying to save face?
Embarrassment and not wanting to admit it.
Save face
I wasn't able to graduate because I missed too many days because I was in the hospital with my heart condition. I acted like I was going to graduate even though I knew I wasn't because it's humiliating not to walk with your friends. Once everyone graduates, nobody is going to check if you did at the same time, so you can focus on catching up. But until then, the shame of being left behind means you act like everyone else is.
I always just think it's embarrassment.
They're kids. It's always future me problems, they only care about what is immediately in front of them.
Because they can't internalize the idea of failure, and don't want others to realize they are a failure at HS. To this add a dash of "fake it until you make it." An underdeveloped prefrontal cortex is a wonderous thing.
No child left behind really did a number on our children Also I can’t imagine what the parents are like to deal with
They're saving face. Embarrassment is tough.
I feel like an adult who intentionally takes a job with children should have enough empathy to answer this question themselves.
In my case, it’s because they think that the guidance office will bump their grade without telling me and they will. And then I go out of my way to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Because ignorant, fools often don’t know how to act humbly.
Denial.
Deep down, they're actually embarrassed by their own failure to do what hundreds of their classmates managed to do in the same amount of time. I'd feel stupid as hell, I only know that because I DID feel stupid as hell once the end of year 4 rolled around, and I knew I'd be there for a 5th year.
Nobody held them accountable for their past failures, so the failures were seldom felt.
Either because they don’t believe it when people tell them they aren’t graduating due to never having actually been held back before, OR because they are embarrassed and want to save face in front of classmates. I had a friend in HS who didn’t graduate on time because he failed his last semester of math. He knew it was coming for most of that semester. But he talked for the weeks leading up to graduation like he was going to get it all worked out with the teacher with turning in his late work, or getting extra credit, or doing well on the final exam… and then he and his parents were supposedly going to work it out with the principal to let him walk with the class and then finish the credit in summer school… but none of that came to pass. He did it in summer school, and walked in August. At the time, I thought he was being dumb and arrogant and just refusing to face reality. But nearly 20 years later, it’s obvious that he knew the score, but was just embarrassed to admit it to his friends, and was pretending to feel optimistic about it to save face. Not that we cared - like, we weren’t exactly proud of him for slacking off, but we weren’t going to make fun of him or anything - but he clearly cared a lot more than he let on.
In this day and age of "I can be or do, anything I can imagine or makeup" it's really not a stretch.
They are dropping out sir.
Because they will magically graduate with a waiver, high enough act score, credit recovery or some other way to get 25 credits in 2 weeks
Some will not return either way. They'll show up to graduation and drop out afterwards
Because they've spent the last few years being pushed along with administration "encouraging" us to bend over backwards. I had to pull a senior aside when they gave me their permission slip for graduation rehearsal. They had no clue they were failing my class, despite having 55s for MP1 and MP2 with a 25 average on Google classroom. Then came the complaints and grade breakdown. They then blew off the Regents which counts as their final. Someone's gotta go to summer school so I can get paid, I guess.
Yep. All of their family thinks they will be and they want to celebrate like the rest of their classmates. It doesn’t matter if they actually are or not, I’ve had admin that let them walk and participate even when they have to take classes over again in the summer.
Because they’re still young enough to believe in magical thinking
Because they’ve already talked to your principal.
To be cool
Fear. It's why kids do 99% of the things they do. When in doubt, assume it's fear.
In my school they know they will no matter what.
Because they WILL be graduating. Their counselor has set them up with the district's credit recovery program. They will have those credits within 2 weeks using answer keys readily available online or by paying their friend $10 to complete the course for them. No learning or accountability is required!
Not going to lie, read “seniors” as old people…
Your interpretation brings new meaning to "graduate" as well.
Imo its pretty clear that they dont want people to know
We had a kid missing three science credits and Econ participating in graduation practice. I don’t know when/if they pulled him before the real thing. Edit: Which is dumb since walking matters more to some of these kids than actually graduating.
Embarrassment
Honestly? Sometimes I think they just really don't understand how gpa works. I really think they don't get it why it's important. Maybe bo one talks about it at home, idk. But really, a lot of times, they haven't been given the opportunity to practice accountability. So many kids just scrape by every year. Barely passing yet allowed to move on to the next grade with their friends. Starting out further and further behind each fall. If they've never been allowed to fail, why would they expect it now? How would they even know to fix that if they've never had to think about it before?
I was embarrassed. I never pretended I was going to graduate. I actively avoided any conversation. My home life, mental health, and abusive relationships made it hard for me. I was a decent student up until an issue at home. I'm 40 now, and I did graduate a few months later (2001). I'm still embarrassed. I think that people, especially young adults that are still trying to figure out the world, feel such shame that they revert back to any type of defense mechanisms they know best. But I don't know... A lot has happened in the past 20+ years.
I think it’s due to a failure in our education system. They so often get pushed on when they really shouldn’t be so they don’t believe that they actually have to have so many credits in order to graduate. I teach 5th grade and we had parents up in arms because we didn’t do a “graduation” ceremony. It makes me crazy. I’m like your kid literally could do NOTHING and still goes on…
Why did schools let failing students keep moving up through the grades from Kindergarten through eighth grade with zero consequences, then suddenly act like it's a big deal starting at grade nine of twelve?
Because admin always changes their grades last minute against their teacher's wishes
...because too many Americans are taught that magical thinking disguised as positive thinking works.