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We just finished a rough school year. 85% of educators in a recent survey reported that their students learned less than they would have in a normal year.
A study by the Brookings Institute found that students had already fallen 30-50% behind normal last year when schools closed in March, and a mid-year study published by McKinsey and Company projected an average of 5-9 additional months of learning loss by the end of the 20-21 school year.
So most kids will be starting the 21-22 school year behind. As I’ve written in a previous post, large numbers of students falling behind isn’t new; only about ⅓ of US students perform “on grade level” in a normal year. With so many students falling behind what we’ve deemed to be proficient each and every year, one would imagine we know a lot about them, and, in fact, we do. Namely, research offers us one very clear finding: Students who fall behind rarely catch up. A 2012 study by the organization that administers the ACT college entrance test found that only about 20-30% of students who were behind in 8th grade “caught up” by 12th grade, and only 3-10% of students who were “significantly behind” caught up: 
While more students at “top schools” catch up, the numbers are still pretty dismal. 
As it always does in education, poverty makes a difference, but again, you’ll notice that even in low-poverty environments, very few students who fall behind ever catch up. 
Different studies have found similar results. A study of California students who repeat Algebra I - a common practice in many school districts to catch up students struggling in math - found that only 20% of students who tried this method of catching up in 9th grade were proficient by the end of the two-year program, and only 9% of students who repeated the class as 10th graders were.
Findings are equally dim for younger students. A multi-year study of elementary learners found that 88% of students who were “low-performing readers” at the end of 1st grade were still “low performing readers” at the end of fourth grade. “Late bloomers are rare,... and waiting [to do something about it],” they found, “condemn[s] children to falling farther behind.” Students who fall behind rarely catch up. The logical next question, then, is why not? I’m going to share ten reasons that come from both research and my personal experience that explain why students who fall behind stay behind. To be clear, I’m going to limit my reasons to those that are under schools’ and districts’ control rather than students’ personal issues like transience and poverty. More students than ever are going to come to us with catching up to do this fall. I think it is important that we acknowledge issues and practices in our schools that might prevent that. Reason #1 - Our educational system is built for sorting, not for learning All of the other reasons on this list stem from this one. Our current model of schooling - designed during the Industrial Revolution - wasn’t designed to educate all students; it was designed, instead, to sort students into groups and to identify who was well-educated and who was not. The goal of the system was to sort the managers from the laborers, the knowledge workers from the physical workers, and the skilled from the unskilled. Having all students reach their highest possible level of education was never the point. Intervening with children who fell behind was never the point. To accomplish this purpose of sorting, we set up the system like this: classes get taught, some students learn and others don’t, and then everyone is assigned a grade and moves on to the next lesson, the next unit, the grade, and the next course regardless of whether they learned or not. Those who learned had a great foundation for what came next, and those who didn’t fell farther and farther behind. In the end, it was easy to tell who was who. Why do students who fall behind rarely catch up? One reason is that we never intended for them to catch up when we designed the current model of school. That wasn't the point when we built this thing. Reason #2 - We frequently attribute falling behind to students’ behaviors and habits rather than skill gaps. This is the most important and most actionable reason on the list. When it comes to discussing struggling students, we have a tendency to make two assumptions. The first assumption is that their struggles are the result of their behaviors and habits in the classroom. Do they study? Do their work? Pay attention? Complete homework? Take notes? Etc. The second assumption is that if - at any point in time - the student gets his or her habits and behaviors in order, they’ll be successful in the classroom. Both of these assumptions are usually wrong. Regarding the first assumption, it turns out that if a student is struggling to learn something (in a good learning environment), the reason is usually a skill gap - he or she is missing preceding skills that new learning is built upon. A student who gets a C in reading in 2nd grade, say, is passed up to 3rd grade despite missing 25% of the prior year’s reading skills, upon which new learning will build. Learning gaps accumulate, grow, and cause major issues down the road. Regarding the second assumption, getting a student’s work habits in order won’t do anything to fill in skill gaps. It might help to limit the gaps’ growth in the future, but becoming a strong and organized student in 7th grade, say, won’t do anything to fill in the skill gaps that came before. It might prevent them from growing any larger, but they're still there, and they still matter. Reason #3 - We frequently hide struggling students behind inflated grades
Gaps in skills often grow and grow because we hide them behind inflated grades. Many teachers, schools, and districts have mechanisms in place to “get kids grades up” even if they haven’t mastered key skills. High grades make kids, parents, and teachers feel good, but they don’t always mean a student is on track. Only about ⅓ of students, when assessed independently, are proficient learners for their age, but only a small percentage are receiving low or failing grades in those very same classes. Students who get high grades but low test scores are often considered to be “poor test takers,” but the reason usually goes back to #2 - skill gaps developed. They were just hidden behind inflated grades.
Reason #4 - We frequently limit instruction for students who fall behind to “just the basics”
This is a major finding of a recent study. Students who fall behind - and even students who simply get placed in classes where many other students have fallen behind - are typically subjected to “just the basics” type, low level instruction. According to the study, students who have fallen behind spent the vast majority of their school days missing out on four crucial resources: grade-appropriate assignments, strong instruction, deep engagement, and teachers with high expectations. Students spent more than 500 hours per school year on assignments that weren’t appropriate for their grade and with instruction that didn’t ask enough of them--the equivalent of six months of wasted class time in each core subject. And middle and high school students reported that their school experiences were engaging less than half the time.
Sometimes, students don't catch up because they aren’t given the chance. Reason #5 - We frequently use language that makes learning gaps sound like personality traits Unfortunately, if you spent some time behind the curtain in most schools, you would hear staff members discussing students using language that makes learning gaps sound like inherent personality traits. Students are frequently referred to as being “low,” “unmotivated,” “special”, and so on, as though their learning gaps are simply part of who they are and always will be. Reason #6 - We frequently assume students will respond to struggle with heroic effort In books and in movies, we encounter characters who are undeterred in the face of failure. Struggle after struggle, failure after failure, they never give up. They pick themselves up, dust themselves off, try harder, push farther, and refuse to surrender to any setback. Real people rarely actually work this way. I’m the most inflexible person you’ll ever meet. Three separate times, I’ve gotten into a routine of doing yoga to increase my flexibility. All three times, after weeks without so much as a millimeter of improvement, I just stopped.
Reason #7 - We use a grading system that offers little to no information about students’ learning When I receive my class rosters this year, and I want to see where they may have fallen behind last year in math, here’s what I’m likely to see:
Our system of grading doesn’t offer any information about what students know and don’t know. All I get is a number or a letter intended to sort them into groups (reason #1). Reason #8 - We frequently put lagging students and their teachers in impossible situations Students who fall behind (or struggle otherwise) have a tendency to end up grouped together (see reason #1). That way, the logic goes, we know where they all are and can give them extra so they can catch up. Sounds like a reasonable plan. Except that we rarely give them extra. We often give them less. Classes full of students who are behind are very, very difficult to teach and manage. As a result, these classes are often assigned to new teachers or teachers without any other options. With so many issues in so many places, the situation gets impossible, needs don’t get met, and the kids fall even farther behind. Even when these classes get assigned two teachers, the results usually aren’t good. Worse yet, teachers, parents, and other students know which classes these are. The behind classes. The slow classes. The bless-their-hearts classes. (see reason #5) So what happens next? Now that they’ve been sorted this way (reason #1), we focus on their behavior (reason #2), restrict their learning to “just the basics” (reason #4), refer to them as “the low class” (reason #5), and pass them on to the same sort of program the next year (reason #4). Reason #9 - Intervention programs have two common problems We have a host of well-intentioned programs that are literally designed to catch up students who have fallen behind - remediation, intervention, acceleration, credit recovery, etc. This, of all possibilities, should be the most solid, right? Sometimes. Even these programs - designed specifically for catching up - come with two common problems. First, some of these programs are intended more to prove that a student is behind than to help. In intervention programs where “collecting data” is a primary component, that typically means the main role of the teacher or software used in the program is to gather proof that the student is behind rather than to actually help fix it. I’ve seen students use their intervention time sitting at a computer for 10 weeks answering question after question just so that adequate data existed to verify that the student did, in fact, need help. Nothing in that time actually helped the student. Now he or she is just 10 more weeks behind. Second, many of these programs are designed to raise a student’s grade rather than filling in learning gaps. These programs can easily become a matter of compliance rather than learning. “Do these things and we’ll raise your grade to a 70 and you’ll pass” (see reasons #3 and #7). Sometimes actual learning has to happen, sometimes not. Getting a 70 and passing is great, but if no learning gaps were filled in along the way, guess what happens in the next class? Reason #10 - We frequently employ hope as a strategy “He’ll get a fresh start next year. That’ll help.” “It was the pandemic. It was hard on everybody. She’ll be ok.” “Next year’s teacher will know what to do.” “I’ve heard Einstein and Bill Gates weren’t good students, and look how they turned out.” “I’m sure he’s just a late bloomer.” “The next school has really good programs for kids like her.” Conclusion Kids who fall behind rarely catch up. Many of these students have issues in their personal lives that already make catching up difficult, and these ten things that happen in schools and classrooms make catching up an even more unlikely occurrence. This year, more kids than ever are going to start the year behind. More than anything, we need to adhere to the advice in reason #2 - students who are behind need us to help fill specific skill gaps. We can’t blame the pandemic. We can’t simply sort them into groups. We can’t expect them to do it all themselves. We can’t limit their classroom experience to “just the basics.” We have to help them fill the gaps. If you enjoyed this post, please share it! Want to make sure you never miss a new post? Subscribe below for email notifications of new content.
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1 Comment
Susanne Cooper
7/2/2022 11:39:44 am
Excellent, Doug. Certainly explains and confirms my observations of two family members’ school experiences, and my own experiences in the past as a teacher in middle school and high school. Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
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About MeI'm an award-winning teacher in the Atlanta area with experience teaching at every level from elementary school to college. Categories
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