It’s fairly typical to never go back and address major gaps in learning. Have a couple messed-up years, and you may just never be taught some fundamental things

It’s fairly typical to never go back and address major gaps in learning. Have a couple messed-up years, and you may just never be taught some fundamental things. Testing regimes focused on current-grade material and tied to funding make it hard to find support to properly address this. A 5th grade student might best be served by ignoring all 5th grade math and learning 2nd and 3rd grade math instead (something like this is actually a pretty common situation) but they’ll do worse on the standardized test than if the same time had been spent teaching them enough of the 5th grade material to pattern-recognize their way to a better-than-chance score. A great teacher who feels like working extra-hard for zero extra pay and no meaningful improvement in test scores can fill in some of the gaps while still doing what admin wants, but even that’s not ideal.