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That's also why you practically never hear about anyone being left behind a grade. From the start of kindergarten to the end of high school, the everyone I knew

That's also why you practically never hear about anyone being left behind a grade. From the start of kindergarten to the end of high school, the everyone I knew who started in my grade finished in it. I can't remember a single exception. In what other areas do the fastest and slowest do 13 years of work at nearly the exact same pace? The only difference allowed seems to be in AP classes, which are pretty limited in availability. If you imagine AP classes and stuff like that making maybe 2 years of difference in what you're actually taught, that's still putting everyone within 15% of each other.

black_puppydog 6y ago
> everyone I knew who started in my grade finished in it Couldn't be further from the truth in Germany at least. While in my school days (primary, middle, high) this carried a huge stigma, nowadays there are some regions (think "states") that have a system where primary school "takes as long as it takes" for every child. Basically, for i in range(3): school_year(kid) if kid.is_ready(): break
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- adrianN 6y ago
  I went to school in Germany met exactly one person who had to repeat a year. School in Germany is different in every state, you can't really generalize, but I don't think many children have to repeat a year
  - ido 6y ago
    I know several kids of friends of mine in Berlin and Vienna who repeat or have repeated classes. And these were not dumb kids, if anything I'd have guessed they are at or above average intelligence.
qppo 6y ago
It's sort of a "least bad" option. As in harms the least number of people. Schools are already struggling to handle incoming class sizes, they don't have the bandwidth to increase any throughput by holding older students back. To do so would be to the detriment of those incoming students and the teachers. (There's a good short scene in the Wire that sums it up but I can't find it). The problem isn't really that students don't get held back, it's that there is no capacity in the system to handle cases where someone should be held back. Almost across the board. I went to an affluent public school in the suburbs of a major city, and their solution wasn't to hold kids back. It was to differentiate enough between accelerated and decelerated programs to where they could essentially shovel the poor performing kids into a bucket where they wouldn't bother too many teachers or other students. I don't know the ethics of that. A lot of those kids I knew wound up dead from opiates, in jail, or still at home.
Larrikin 6y ago
Never hearing of a single person being let back sounds more like you grew up in a school district where the parents were wealthy or powerful enough to cause a big enough fuss that their kids were never left back. The practice seems less common but even if you're isolated in a gifted track of a school you'll still come across the kids who aren't in most programs.
Xelbair 6y ago
I remember a single exception. My friend was left behind because he literally skipped 400-ish hours in half year... for a 3 semesters in row.

black_puppydog 6y ago

> everyone I knew who started in my grade finished in it Couldn't be further from the truth in Germany at least. While in my school days (primary, middle, high) this carried a huge stigma, nowadays there are some regions (think "states") that have a system where primary school "takes as long as it takes" for every child. Basically, for i in range(3): school_year(kid) if kid.is_ready(): break

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
adrianN 6y ago
I went to school in Germany met exactly one person who had to repeat a year. School in Germany is different in every state, you can't really generalize, but I don't think many children have to repeat a year
- ido 6y ago
  I know several kids of friends of mine in Berlin and Vienna who repeat or have repeated classes. And these were not dumb kids, if anything I'd have guessed they are at or above average intelligence.

qppo 6y ago

It's sort of a "least bad" option. As in harms the least number of people. Schools are already struggling to handle incoming class sizes, they don't have the bandwidth to increase any throughput by holding older students back. To do so would be to the detriment of those incoming students and the teachers. (There's a good short scene in the Wire that sums it up but I can't find it). The problem isn't really that students don't get held back, it's that there is no capacity in the system to handle cases where someone should be held back. Almost across the board. I went to an affluent public school in the suburbs of a major city, and their solution wasn't to hold kids back. It was to differentiate enough between accelerated and decelerated programs to where they could essentially shovel the poor performing kids into a bucket where they wouldn't bother too many teachers or other students. I don't know the ethics of that. A lot of those kids I knew wound up dead from opiates, in jail, or still at home.

Larrikin 6y ago

Never hearing of a single person being let back sounds more like you grew up in a school district where the parents were wealthy or powerful enough to cause a big enough fuss that their kids were never left back. The practice seems less common but even if you're isolated in a gifted track of a school you'll still come across the kids who aren't in most programs.

Xelbair 6y ago

I remember a single exception. My friend was left behind because he literally skipped 400-ish hours in half year... for a 3 semesters in row.