Replies

He was willing to continue with teaching, but teaching in a really bad school was too much for him. He did not like following orders to socially promote functionally illiterate kids.

That is an important point you mention. I was thinking more about E Comp today, and I realized: maybe it is the flip side of what we will have to do if we really want to eliminate social promotion. (BTW, in FL, it is now illegal to socially promote in 3rd grade.)

However, if kids do not improve in every grade, and we eliminate social promotion (which I think should be eliminated in every grade), then, we are stuck with kids graduating high school at the age of 21-25 in some cases. Believe it or not, some students now have already been left back 2 or 3 times by the time they get to 4th grade. So, kids have to improve, and maybe E Comp or a plan like it really is necessary to ensure that we finlly get rid of social promotion, which I think is a terrible thing. Yet, there is nothing so great about having students in high school in their 20's either. So, something's got to give.

I don't know if the result will be HS graduates in their mid 20s, but social promotion is an admission of failure. Kids need to learn the basics and if they are promoted to higher grades when they don't have the skills, they will not learn or will drop out of school.