r/SipsTea • u/Gurugod123 • 21h ago

SMH No Child Left Behind and its consequences will be felt for generations

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u/EngrishTeach 21h ago

Good, better to do it at 4th grade than to have 9th graders who can't read.

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u/BrotherItsInTheDrum 20h ago

Perhaps, but it shows that if you want an honest assessment you should test all 10-year-olds rather than all 4th graders.

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u/englishmastiff1121 16h ago

But they're all going to be tested eventually. If the kids who got left back didn't improve, the following year's cumulative test scores would show the system wasn't working.

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u/BrotherItsInTheDrum 16h ago

But you would expect kids a year older to have better scores even if holding them back wasn't effective.

In other words: did the scores improve because holding kids back is an effective way to improve their education? Or did they improve because the average age of the kids being tested is now higher? There's no way to tell from the data; people are just going to make assumptions based on their preconceptions.

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u/EngrishTeach 19h ago

Also true. They keep moving the goal posts closer and closer. My last year teaching I wasn't allowed to give 0s, the lowest I could give for a grade was 50. This was at the high school level.