In the bad old days you were supposed to master the subject matter of your grade. If you didn’t master it you were given another chance, by repeating the grade. This way teachers didn’t have to worry about the students being ready to learn at the higher grade, and the students who were ready didn’t have to be bored stiff bu being required to sit through the same material again. The alternative was the multiple track system. Either way was preferable to what we have now.
I love my students, I really do. They are the sweetest little bunch of goofballs, tasmanian devils, and stilt-legged colts (7th grade). But the sad truth is, if we gave them the grades that would have been appropriate in the midwest even 20 years ago, we’d have whole 4th grade classrooms full of teenagers. I do what I can. We all do what we can. But increasingly, we have a batch of kids who know full well that nothing is going to happen to them via society. Neighborhood maybe; society at large? No.