Grade Recovery Packet: Fill & Download for Free

Social promotion is a poor model for success, but so is its alternative. The US needs massive educational reform on a scale we’ve never seen before, but it likely won’t happen. Americans are too invested in the idea of being able to change our own stars at any time.The Argument in Favor of Social PromotionBefore I explain what is wrong with social promotion, let’s explore what’s right with it. Social promotion has waxed and waned in popularity since the 1930s. When I was in middle school in the late 1980s, it wasn’t as common. We had kids in my PE class who weren’t terribly smart but were as many as three or even years older.Imagine that for a moment. We had a bully in my 7th grade PE class who should have been a sophomore. He was an eighth grader by that point. Dealing with a kid a year older is one thing. Dealing with a kid who could have been out getting his learner’s permit is another. Imagine his frustration. I have no idea what his prospects for graduation would be. He probably didn’t either. What would he do at a school dance? What are his dating prospects? How is holding him back for yet another year going to make a difference? Is it any wonder that he became a bully? I’m just glad he never set his sights on me. Mike was a gorilla.We don’t want more Mikes out there. He was evidence that something was majorly wrong with the system. At what point do we decide that he just isn’t going to get it? Once we figure that out, we can look at doing something else to either get him there or maybe re-examine what we are doing.The Argument Against Social PromotionGetting rid of social promotion was coupled with a few other poor choices. Again, these were well-intentioned, but they aren’t really helping.Social promotion taught students that they didn’t really have to do anything and they’d still be promoted. In California, the rumor is that they had to pass PE in order to promote into 9th, but I’m not sure that’s true. I have students who report to me that they failed every class in 8th grade, and they’re still here in my 9th grade English class. They didn’t bother to learn the requisite skills and can read at the 4th grade level, but I’m still going to do my best by them now.In addition, we did away with “tracking” at some point. For those who don’t remember, tracking was where you place students in classes by ability level. At my school, we called them A, B, and C. Sometime during the 1990s, it disappeared. Thus, unless you chose to take an honors class, you’ve got kids who are anywhere from reading at the 4th grade level all the way up to college level. Our counselors don’t always do a great job of placing students, so even in the honors class we find students who have really low skills in with students who don’t need to be told anything twice.Finally, you have “credit recovery.” When you get to ninth grade and fail all of your classes, you still come into 10th grade. We’ll say you’re a “freshmen by credits.” Even at this point, when graduation and college is on the line, we have students who choose to fail every single class they have. Now they are “out of alignment” for graduation. That’s okay. We’ll either put them in an online high school or send them to continuation.Where does this all lead? Your child starts in elementary learning that you don’t have to do anything to get promoted to the next grade. They often don’t even wind up being sorted into other classes. In ninth grade, they still haven’t figured it out. They then go into a credit recovery system. They start midway through their sophomore year and come back at the beginning of their senior year with a ton of credits. Why are they back? They want to graduate from a “real” high school. Cool.Now they run into me at full tilt. Unfortunately, credit recovery programs are mostly about worksheets and homework packets. I’m sure there are some teachers at continuation schools who are awesome, but they aren’t the majority. I get lots of these kids who don’t know how to write. They fail the first semester because they have incredibly deficient skills and head back to continuation school. Now they get a diploma from there. They haven’t done what my general ed students have done, but they get a diploma all the same. By law, that diploma cannot say that it is from a continuation school, so unless you are a local employer or care to do some research, you can’t tell someone who has standards for themselves from someone who has failed every real class he or she has ever taken.It Doesn’t Have to Be This WayThere are other ways. The problem is that the US has decided that vocational school students are failures. We push college to the exclusion of vocational education. Lots of factors have contributed to it, but when I ask a class of general education 9th graders, almost every single one of them says that they’re planning on going to college. What other choice is there?Many European countries do it differently. They offer more than a one-size-fits-all when it comes to education. There are vocational and technical schools a student can choose. This allows students to seek whatever they’re passionate about doing. Would Mike have been as uninterested in trying if there had been a clear path towards something he was interested in doing? Would he still have been attending his first day of the eight grade for the fourth time? I tend to doubt it.We won’t do it, though. We believe too much in the idea of college for everyone. We can call it the Larry Crowne syndrome, named after the movie in which Tom Hanks’ titular character loses his job at a big box store because he doesn’t have a college degree that wouldn’t help him do the job anyway.Instead, we have a system that perpetually believes that people are capable of flipping a switch and figuring out their lives. They’ll figure it out at any point in public school. If not, they’ll figure it out in community college and transfer to a university.Oddly enough, that isn’t going to be so easy in the future. Colleges of all kinds are dropping remedial courses. If you can’t do it, you run into a brick wall.Now What?Now we decide whether social promotion should be banned, right? My answer is yes, but I also think that we should ban the system we’ll inevitably turn to as an alternative. If we could stop pushing everyone towards college and just send those who are interested and capable, I think everyone would be happier and more successful.(Thanks to Elina Keränen for her insights into Europe’s program. They are worth reading in the comments and helped inform some edits to my answer.)

Letters of Recommendation(LOR) are assumed to be positive, but how well the writer knows the student matters more than simply a good grade in their class.It is better to be involved in a few extracurriculars than to amass a number of one time events.Leadership roles matter more than membership in organizations. How good a leader should be detailed in a LOR.Give recommenders a resume and time to write your letter. Ask at the end of junior year, bring the resume at the start of senior year.Develop a relationship with your guidance counselor. This person is more important than you think in assembling your application packets. He/She is also a standard source for LOR.Academic profile (unweighted GPA and standardized test scores) start the admission conversation. It will eliminate your application from consideration or advance it to the next round of elimination.Do not waste your time applying to all of the Ivies unless you are truly undecided about a major. There is enough to distinguish each school to prevent overlap of major, preference of urban/suburban/rural and enrollment size to help you narrow the list.Have an adult conversation with your family in junior year about finances, preferences and career choices. Everyone says we'll find a way to pay for it if you get in until the acceptance letter arrives.Every major at the University has an enrollment goal. Sometimes lower candidates get into better schools because of the major/school need. Make sure your strengths and the major align.Your life is not over if you are rejected from your top choices. Better students know that every application should be to an institution that he/she is willing to attend. It may very well be your best option.Prepare oneself mentally for the academic requirements of the career. Becoming a physician means college and medical school. A pre-med major should mean graduate or an alternative Health professional program if the track is not the best use of one's talents. Put a plan in place for the next 8-10 years of education.Life is not about everything going according to plan. There will be mistakes, hiccups, and detours. The better one gets at recovery from the deviations, the better prepared one will be for things to go as planned.I hope this helps. Good luck!

Ok class, page 125 has the answers. Pages 12–19 in the packet due tomorrow.*Sits down at desk to look at computer. Nobody knows what they’re doing, assumes grading papers.*This is a bad teacher. Other things include, but are not limited to:Ignoring questionsCallus, dismissive attitudeNot making any attempt to keep organization in the classroom. There is a difference between giving freedoms and no longer maintaining a stable environment. Believe me, I love getting to talk to my friends. But we shouldn’t have to listen to the latest Blackalicious album from two tables over.NOT TEACHING. Remember the example? Yeah, kind of like that. Forget discussions, creative learning methods, hands-on or even lectures. I learn from the book, but I shouldn’t be tutoring my friends who don’t because the teacher did not do their job.Not accepting your humanity. I think everyone has had that one teacher whose response to things was all too often “I don’t tolerate excuses.” Well excuse me, my grandma having a second heart attack and being in recovery in the hospital I think is a good reason to have messy handwriting on the paper! Waiting rooms don’t usually come with desks for time-crunched students.Please accept that some of these are not personal anecdotes, but those of friends. Some are mine, but not all.