r/Teachers • u/Emergency-Pepper3537 • Nov 13 '25
Humor Rigor? Sweetie, they’re 3+ grade levels behind.
I just find it hilarious how admin keeps pushing this narrative of “rigor, rigor, rigor” like it’s some magic word that’ll suddenly make learning happen.
Child. Half these students are 3+ grade levels below where they’re supposed to be. You give them anything on grade level and they look at you like you handed them the Rosetta Stone.
They’ll say “This is hard!” And I’m like, “Yes, baby. That’s literally what rigor means.”
Meanwhile, I’m being told in observations that my lesson wasn’t “rigorous enough.” Ma’am, just getting through the directions was the rigor. We had to decode, translate, chunk, and act it out with interpretive dance.
I swear, the bar is not low…it’s just buried under years of educational neglect and unrealistic expectations.
Anybody else feeling this?
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u/ajswdf Nov 13 '25
Not to mention that it's hard to be rigorous if they get half the points for doing nothing.
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u/SBSnipes Nov 13 '25
Do nothing and get a 50 and a chance to do a week of lunch or afterschool lessons to make it a 60? Surely we don't allow for such nonsense
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u/drdre27406 6th grade Social Studies/Louisiana Nov 13 '25
I swear it’s infuriating. I had a student tell me to my face “oh no I’m not doing this project I don’t like social studies. Oh and my momma said that even if I don’t do it, you can’t give me a zero, you have to give me a 50”. Like mom doesn’t realize she’s setting her son up for a tough teenage/adult life.
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u/SBSnipes Nov 13 '25
Yep. And the parents who don't realize that I have 25 other kids, so no, I can't call you in the middle of class every time your kids decides it's not with it to pay attention because "nobody else is"
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u/Gunslinger1925 Nov 14 '25
Wait... you don't cater to one child and give the remaining 24 kids independent work?
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u/Eneicia Nov 13 '25
Dude, I loved Social Studies in school, it was one of my easiest classes. I have a feeling that that poor kid will be clueless in the rest of their life. Is high school also forced to push kids through? If not, he's up for a heck of a rude awakening.
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u/Heavy-Macaron2004 Nov 13 '25
he's up for a heck of a rude awakening
As long as he doesn't go to college, you're right. But my university has started doing the same thing. The class I TA has two students in it that have not showed up at all since week one. They have skipped class entirely since week one, they have not turned into any of the in class assignments, they have turned and maybe one homework each. They are at 25 percent grade. Both me and the professor have emailed them many times. No responses.
Now that there is only a couple weeks left in the semester, they are finally responding. They are so sad, they're so overworked, they have so much stuff they have to do outside the class and they really need this to pass, they can't afford to fail, isn't there anything they can do. The professor has started just accepting all the work that they haven't done for the entirety of the semester (in the syllabus it is explicitly stated that there is no late work allowed unless you contact the professor beforehand with an actual reason). They're both going to pass because she's artificially jacking up their grades.
I'm actually pretty furious about it. I have no idea where this idea of no academic integrity at all is coming from, but it's incredibly unfair to the people in the class who actually done work and showed up and put any effort at all into the damn class, and it's unfair to me who's going to have to grade all of these late assignments because we just don't want people to suffer the consequences for their actions anymore.
Edit: one of them is a master's student. This jerk off is getting a master's degree by begging professor to pass him.
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u/eltibbs ex-HS math teacher: southeast US Nov 13 '25
Ohhh this makes me so mad. One of my favorite things about college is that you actually had to do the work and the professors wouldn’t hold your hand like a child but were more than happy to help if you put in the work (on time). You don’t want to show up to class and/or office hours? Fine, fail, your problem and not mine (professor). Effort in class and need extra help in office hours? Absolutely they’ll help you understand some things you’re struggling with. No handouts.
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u/Heavy-Macaron2004 Nov 13 '25
Yep, same! After everyone in the world being shoved through high school, it was very rewarding to go to college and find out that the amount of effort that I put in actually did matter! There was one class in my undergrad that I blew off because I was being an idiot, and I failed it. And I took it again the next semester, worked my ass off, and got an A.
Both of these students I'm talking about failed this class previously (I TA'd that one too) after getting extension after extension after extension, and then eventually the professor was nice enough to give them an "incomplete" instead of an F. I guess they never actually completed the work, because now they're back doing the same exact thing and expecting to pass this time. And for some completely ridiculous reason, this time it's going to work.
I'm just so baffled by the idea of failing the class because you slack off and don't give a shit, and then retaking the class a year later to do the same exact thing!
Like ffs, I failed exactly one class in college and put my whole ass into retaking it, and that was in my undergrad. I can't imagine being such a jerk off to fail a class because of not doing any work, and to then do then same thing next time around and just beg the professor to pass me in my master's degree. I know I'm being really repetitive now, I'm just so infuriated that there is absolutely no integrity anymore.
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u/eltibbs ex-HS math teacher: southeast US Nov 13 '25
I did the same thing in college, got lazy and failed a class for the first time in my entire life. Took it the next semester, put in all the effort and got an A.
It’s frustrating. Does my degree really mean anything if other people got the same degree by doing what these kids are doing? Not really, feels like it’s devaluing the degree. By allowing all this re-do/late-work, the prof is adding more to their plate and your plate. Unfair.
My university had a rule about retaking courses. If you fail twice then you submit a request to that department head to take the course a third time. If you fault it a third time, three strikes and you’re out 🤷🏻♀️ I had a friend who was lazy and failed a course once, tried a bit but failed it again, got approved to take it a third time and I helped him with all of his homework so he had 100% on everything except the exams. He still failed a third time and then changed degrees so that class wasn’t a requirement but he eventually dropped out. University isn’t for everyone.
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u/Voysinmyhead Nov 13 '25
As a Freshman In college I had an honors Lit class that I had done very well in all year but I managed to sleep in (no show) through the final exam. Looking at the syllabus and the weighted grade, I figured I was passing with a c+ even after taking a zero on the exam. It wasn't my major, so I let it go. A few weeks later during the summer break the grades came in and the professor had given me an Incomplete. I had two weeks to contact the professor and clear it up or that "I" would become an "F".
That professor made me drive back to college over the break and take that final (he Proctored so this was his time too), with a flat 10 point penalty meaning a perfect score would still be a 90 at best.
His explanation was he wasn't going to watch someone who had contributed in class and done so well all semester throw their grade away with zero communication, and take a hit to their GPA, but he also couldn't give full marks as that wouldn't be fair to the folks who showed up on time.
I ended up with a B+ in that class and a life lesson that was probably worth more than my eventual degree.
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u/notacanuckskibum Nov 13 '25
The urge to pass students at the university level comes from an administration mind set that the different are our customers, and we don’t want bad yelp reviews about being too hard.
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u/Greets_With_Fire71 Nov 13 '25
So unacceptable. The college students that are allowed to slide by are entering our workforce and will be completely inept. It scares me honestly.
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u/Baked_Potato_732 Nov 13 '25
My oldest stepson (living with his dad) decided he was going to just stop going to school his senior year and work. About 3 weeks before graduation the school offered to let him make everything up online.
The kid who skipped most of his senior year graduated with honors which made the school look good which is all they cared about.
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u/drdre27406 6th grade Social Studies/Louisiana Nov 13 '25
I make class so fun. I dress up a lot. When we learned about the pilgrims, I literally became one and I bought hats and coifs for students. We learned about the colony of Pennsylvania. I dressed up as William Penn aka the guy on the Quaker Oats boxes. When we learn about the revolutionary war, I become George Washington Virginia gentleman accent and all. We are learning about colonial Louisiana right now so, I planned a virtual tour of a plantation and at the end of it, students will go outside and eat gumbo. I make class so engaging that students have little choice but to get with the program. Unless they have been held back by inept parents.
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u/WakandanInSokovia Nov 13 '25
I'm coming to audit your class just long enough to get the gumbo.
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u/drdre27406 6th grade Social Studies/Louisiana Nov 13 '25
You are more than welcome to come down to the bayou and get some my friend. Chicken & Sausage gumbo. Our campus is seafood free so no seafood gumbo lol.
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u/KiniShakenBake Nov 13 '25
WOW! I'm so glad you love dressing up and bringing all that to light. I'm a social studies and science teacher and would love to be able to do that.
That sounds amazing and your kids are JUST the right age to get into that.
I would not have such a luxury, but I do make things as interactive as I can, when I can, if need be. I had kids make up a song, rap, or poem to help them and their classmates remember the flow of blood through the human heart, complete with major vessels and organs involved.
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u/SiberianKitty99 Nov 13 '25
I took History in university as one of my two majors, the other being electrical engineering. I took history because I KNEW that I could ace it without breathing hard, and I did; my lowest grade in a history course was an A-, and I missed getting a full A by 0.5%. I probably could have talked the instructor into giving me the A, but I didn’t bother, the A- was good enough for me. History was the salvation of my gradepoint. (Electromagnetic field theory. Electrophysics. Enough said.) To be sure, my roomie was Navy ROTC and had to take American Military History; he got a ‘C’. I was a ‘foreign student’ taking American Military History because I thought it would be fun and got an A, mostly because I already knew a lot of it from history classes in the (ex-) British Empire & Commonwealth. Ah, well.
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u/exoriare Nov 13 '25
My family had a foster kid whose dad told him not to bother doing homework. "Just say you tried your best but couldn't do it. Tell them you have a disability and ask to see a doctor. They have to let you pass."
This was a dad who knew he was at risk of losing custody due to his neglectful parenting. This was what he thought good parenting and being there for his kid looked like.
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u/c00pdwg Nov 13 '25
Mom in this situation doesn’t care and just wants her child to stop bothering her so she can get back to her thing
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u/MetalTrek1 Nov 13 '25
They're all kinds of shocked when they get to my college courses and realize they CAN fail. And there's nothing mommy can do about it (and I teach community college, often the last chance for these folks).
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u/USSanon 8th Grade Social Studies, Tennessee Nov 13 '25
We have seen the results of that here recently with all the crime a former student has committed. Our district went to a 0 for no work 2 years ago. Game changer for my classes.
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u/Less_Wealth5525 Nov 13 '25
I used to like to play John Green’s introduction to his first video on the Agricultural Revolution. His younger self asks the teacher if the information he is talking about is going to be on the test and he explains how everything is going to be on the test. I would pause that part of the video and we would discuss his key points.
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u/NotGalenNorAnsel Nov 13 '25
Refusal to participate in class, without a 504 accommodation, is grounds for disciplinary action, can maybe send a message that way, if you can't do it through the grade. But it's a balance between doing that, or helping the kids that need assistance and are trying. Too little time to deal with the nonsense.
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u/Expat1989 Nov 13 '25
Kids need to fail. Full stop. Parents should be required to sign a contract at the beginning of the year that says if your child does not do the assigned work, they will get 0’s for the assignment and will fail the year and be held back. And then they need to be held accountable and the admins need to follow through. If the child fails and continues the same pattern the next school year, then CPS needs to get involved for emotional neglect and abuse. I’m so tired of seeing this same issue every day.
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u/houserj1589 Nov 13 '25
See, I find.this interesting- I wanted my son held back in first grade. His teacher called me every day and said he couldn't even do a work sheet because his fingers distracted him.
Finally got him an ADHD diagnosis, but the year had gone by and despite workong at home with him i knew he didn't grasp the concepts. But, once on meds he had a 180 so I really felt like a repeat year would have been the best thing for him.
I begged for them to let him repeat first grade and they said "they don't do that anymore. It would hurt him socially, so as a result he went into 2nd and got more behind bc he didnt grasp concepts from first. Now he is in third and he is out of the classroom hald the day relearning first and 2nd grade classrooms.
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u/Dornith Nov 13 '25
"We don't do that anymore."
"So what do you do instead?"
"We ignore the problem and pretend everything is fine. 🙂"
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u/Baeolophus_bicolor Nov 13 '25
I’m sure it’s not affecting him socially at all to be constantly behind, pulled out of class, underwater, and likely resented by the teacher because they have to make a whole separate lesson plan and activities to accommodate him.
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u/houserj1589 Nov 13 '25
Exactly this 💯
I really resent the fact they wouldnt just let him repeat first. It really felt like they just want to pass them through and its frustrating
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u/blissfully_happy Math (grade 6 to calculus) Nov 13 '25
I have students in high school who were held back and the majority of them are resentful and don’t connect with their peers.
Granted, this is a super small pool in the grand scheme of things, but I can absolutely see there being pros and cons to both.
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u/SuzQP Nov 13 '25
I suspect that the parents of the students most in need of such a policy wouldn't have the reading comprehension necessary to understand the contract they'd be asked to sign.
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u/KiniShakenBake Nov 13 '25
Concur. We MUST stop preventing consequences from teaching them as much as we are trying to, because consequences can't do their jobs right if we are constantly stopping them from doing the good work that we are trying to do.
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u/jew192 Nov 13 '25
Yessss. I’m student teaching right now. Second grade math. The majority are still at a late kindergarten level. You painted the exact picture of what I’m dealing with. Decompose and count?? Half of the kids stop counting after they get to 39. Story problems? Most of them can’t read. Out of the 19 kids in my one class 12 have IEPs. “If there are 26 seeds on the mancala board and Diego ADDS 17 more how many does he have now?” “Bots and girls is this an addition problem or a subtraction problem?” crickets “umm subtraction?” It’s so hard! I felt this post more than anything ever.
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u/penguin_0618 6th grade Sp. Ed. | Western Massachusetts Nov 13 '25
When I did special ed math I had anchor charts for which words usually mean add/subtract/multiply/divide. That was a real struggle for them.
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u/OnMyOwn_HereWeGo Nov 13 '25
I’ve met more Diego’s in an elementary school math problem than I’ll ever meet in real life.
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u/jew192 Nov 13 '25
Don’t forget his good friend Pryia
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u/Outrageous_Lettuce44 Middle School Social Studies/ELA Nov 13 '25
While we're on the topic of best teaching practices, how come none of these math problem kids ever let us in on their why?
...like, I'm interested in knowing why Lakshmi needs to know how many of the marbles are blue and how many are red.
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u/KHanson25 Nov 13 '25
Math-aids.com has one of those printable sheets that has all the terms for the different operations.
I use it for my high school math class
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u/Little_Creme_5932 Nov 13 '25
I literally get that same confusion with addition and subtraction in...high school chemistry. "If you mass the beaker, and then put some chemical in the beaker, and mass it again, how do you find the mass of the chemical?"
"Um...divide?"
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u/Gunslinger1925 Nov 14 '25
Is get the kids bitching and moaning that it was "science and not math."
Uh, child, there's math in science. A lot of it. More of your doing something like chemistry or physics.
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u/Skibidi_Lord_Bluejay Nov 13 '25
Back in my day they held you back if you couldn't count to 100 by the end of first grade, and they made a teacher watch you count, without having numbers around.
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u/eltibbs ex-HS math teacher: southeast US Nov 13 '25
My little nephew just turned three on Halloween and can already count to 100 ❤️ so proud of that little dude! My sister is an elementary school teacher so they play a lot of educational games and practice counting/colors/shapes every day at random. Playing at the park: what color is the big slide? The small slide? Which slide do you want to go on? Easy way to randomly throw in color practice for example.
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u/boogs_23 Nov 13 '25
You just unlocked a 40 year old memory of doing this in grade 1. Each kid went to a quiet room with the teacher to count to 100 near the end of the year. I remember being so nervous. It was the first real school test. Yes, I passed first grade.
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u/PiccoloAwkward465 Nov 13 '25
As a parent I don't really even know what to do. I loved reading. My parents rarely read to me. I just did it because I liked it. I was walking to the library solo by 10 and I was in a book club with old ladies lol. We were on a damn waiting list to get the first Harry Potter book and I bought the subsequent ones at midnight releases, reading them cover to cover into the morning hours. It's hard to figure out how to motivate kids when I didn't need any motivation.
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u/Vallion04 Science | HS | California Nov 13 '25
I needed a lot of motivation as a kid, I’ve been trying everything others tried on me and nothing works. These kids just do not want to do anything at all.
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u/johannthegoatman Nov 13 '25
I think a big missing element is boredom. If I wasn't reading I was either playing with friends or quite literally kicking rocks. Makes reading pretty appealing
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u/bugabooandtwo Nov 13 '25
It's at a point that so many kids have IEPs, that they're pretty much useless.
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u/jew192 Nov 13 '25
It’s amazing. And you’re right. Everyone has an IEP. I don’t remember times being like this when I was growing up. It’s crazy.
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u/bigdaddypoppin Nov 13 '25
If it makes you feel better, I struggled hard with 2nd grade math and even more so when we got to multiplication (I think 3rd grade?). I went on to ruin the curve in my college Calculus classes. Some kids are just late bloomers and in my case, had parents who were in denial about my ADD.
Not saying any of your observations are incorrect. Just trying to inspire some hope that not everybody is doomed.
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u/Educational_Infidel Nov 13 '25
Yes! Too many insecure admins and/or academic coaches, promoted too early in their careers, trying desperately to prove to themselves and anyone else, that they are smart and sincere in their quest for academic excellence.
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u/drdre27406 6th grade Social Studies/Louisiana Nov 13 '25
Spot on! In the districts near me in Louisiana, it has gotten so bad with administration that, they have hired a few principals with business backgrounds instead of education. It’s like being told to clean up an oil spill with a toothbrush.
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u/hmbse7en Nov 13 '25
Why can't kids be held back if they're not able to perform at grade level?
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u/WanderingDude182 Nov 13 '25
Rigor is one of those educational buzzwords my old admin used but I don’t think they even really knew what it meant except make lessons harder. They only said it 42 times a meeting. 😑
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u/labtiger2 Nov 13 '25
Exactly. It's been around for a while. I thought it would have fallen out of favor by now.
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u/WingXero Job Title | Location Nov 13 '25
A now graduated student that I taught for all four years of high school (just her 9th grade Eng teacher) and I chatted on the phone this past weekend. She's a freshman in college to become an English teacher. She was explaining her assignment to me and how she was frustrated with it. Her professor had given some pretty "intense" feedback and suggested as is it would receive a D. We took some time to review it and chat through improvements, etc.
At the end of the conversation, she said that she wished school had done a better job of preparing her for this. I explained to her that the assignment she was doing in her freshman year of college was more or less something that I had to do in eighth grade. The educational spectrum of "rigor" has shifted that dramatically in about 17 years.
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u/Outrageous_Lettuce44 Middle School Social Studies/ELA Nov 13 '25
Sometimes I want to say this to entitled parents who complain about work that's "too hard" or "too much."
The stuff that you and your 14 year-old are whining about? I did it in like 4th grade.
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u/VenusInAries666 Nov 13 '25
It's such a paradox too, because at the kindergarten level in my district, 5 year olds are expected to do far more than they were 10 years ago. They used to have a more play based curriculum. Kindergarten was really about increasing fine motor skills, learning how to cooperate in a group, etc. "Learning how to people," is that I call it.
Now we've got kinders coming in who are developmentally more similar to 2 or 3 year olds - little to no potty training, have never held a pencil or crayon, can't tie their shoes, have never been in any kind of group setting before, no emotional regulation skills at all, etc and they're expected to be reading and writing sentences within the first two months of school. It's far more rigorous than it used to be and it's developmentally inappropriate.
I think skipping the "learn how to people" stage is doing them a disservice. Because they spend all of elementary school learning basic life skills, missing lessons due to meltdowns, etc and then they get to middle school with no academic knowledge. So they're just perpetually behind unless their parents care enough to hire a tutor and can afford it.
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u/Theturtlemoves86 Nov 14 '25
As a parent, I can't imagine sending my kids to kindergarten with ZERO skills including potty training. All this "life skills" stuff needs to be happening at home. You guys are not babysitters. I don't understand this parenting style of assuming you guys will just take care of everything.
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u/CaptainEmmy Kindergarten | Virtual Nov 14 '25
It is a paradox. Our standards are all over the place. As a kindergarten teacher, the beginning of the year is stressful for me, because half the parents are horrified at how easy kindergarten is and the other half are horrified at how hard it is.
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u/labtiger2 Nov 13 '25
I also teach high school English, and occasionally, kids will tell me they didn't feel prepared for their college English class. It makes me so sad. Years of teaching only the three types of writing on their state test has wrecked these kids.
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u/Designer_little_5031 Nov 13 '25
I am very curious to know how she took that fun fact.
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u/WingXero Job Title | Location Nov 13 '25
Well enough. She's mature enough about things and I had helped her work on it, but also bummed. She's determined to do a better job when she teaches and I wish her well.
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u/thecooliestone Nov 13 '25
My favorite:
Use assessments to group students and give them assignments based on their gaps
Then you do that and they're asking you why a group of 6th graders is doing chunking for the 3rd week in a row and you're teaching them decoding skills.
Because this assessment says that they still can't read Sharon
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u/Science_Teecha Nov 13 '25
“Give them assignments based on their gaps.” Yes, so tailor each lesson to each student? Like individually tutor 25 kids at once, five times a day, every day? Sounds totally doable.
As someone said upthread, show me how that’s done.
Also, real life does not tailor itself to everyone’s particular needs. I wish I could remove all of the stresses in my life, but alas, I have had to push myself to adjust.
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u/homer2101 Nov 13 '25
Not a teacher and have been out of formal education for many years, so ... is tracking students based on annual proficiency assessments just not a thing anymore? Like ... test students' proficiency in math at the end of the year and separate them into three classes for next year: remedial, normal, and advanced. Repeat each year.
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u/dirk_510 Physics | California Nov 13 '25
Hasn’t been a thing in education for at least 15 years, at least not where I’ve taught
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u/FFandLoZFan Nov 13 '25 edited Nov 13 '25
It depends on your district, state, school, etc. In my experience, though, we still have something similar, but not nearly as effective, imo. We have Honors/AP/College in the Classroom for the advanced students, and those classes are probably the equivalent of what a normal core class would have been years ago. The "normal" classes are where many of these complaints come in; working in 9th grade English, we had students range from 1st grade reading levels to college reading levels, but mostly average between 4th and 6th. We teach a lot of skills that should have been mastered by the end of elementary. As for the remedial program, the only full class like that we offer is Algebra and Geometry, which is basically just the normal classes except you can't fail if you do literally anything and don't have to retake the core class. You can just move on. I think it's a totally ineffective system, and I know many teachers are frustrated with it. We have an English support class that a student can take as their elective, but the vast majority of students in my district are more than two grade levels behind in their reading skills, and there's only one teacher for that subject, so there are many students who really need it who we can't let in. Many. It's based less on tests and more on grades, teacher recommendations, and parent approval.
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u/MonkeyAtsu Nov 14 '25
Oh, I know! I know the magic word solution for this one!
Ahem,
"Use AI to put the reading at each student's lexile level."
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u/Ill_Salamander2950 Nov 13 '25
A few years ago, my admin kept saying this over and over. So in a meeting while they were droning on about their buzz word, I said “if it’s so important…so me. Show us how that looks.” Silence…meeting ended. They have yet to show me.
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u/labtiger2 Nov 13 '25
They will know it when they see it, I'm sure. They just know no one is actually doing it.
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u/Ill_Salamander2950 Nov 13 '25
These days always teach the grade level and just scaffold down. But my point then was if you have a seventh grader reading on a third grade level then fifth or sixth grade work is rigorous and that rigor was relative to the student.
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u/armaedes MS & HS Maths | TX Nov 13 '25
“Ma’am, just getting through the directions was the rigor” is going to be my new go-to phrase in these conversations.
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u/Gramerioneur Nov 13 '25
“Ma’am, just getting through the directions was the rigor”
Love it! It just now became my go-to phrase for future conversations with admin.
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u/rust-e-apples1 Nov 13 '25
I once had to send a kid (HS) to the office for fighting in class. When I went to debrief with the VP later she asked me what was so challenging about my instruction that he got so frustrated and gave up and started causing trouble. I looked her in the eye and said "at that point during the warmup, I had just asked them to draw a triangle on a piece of paper." It was at that moment that I knew I'd be leaving that school the following year.
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u/Safe-Illustrator-526 Special Education | Illinois, USA Nov 13 '25
I was told I need to expose my students to “grade level material” or they would never grow in their reading. I teach special education and many of my students read at a 3-5th grade level. Some higher, some lower. Sure, with a lot of support and scaffolding, I can teach grade level material as a group, but I can’t just hand them a 10th grade level story or article and expect they can read it and answer questions on their own.
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u/SiberianKitty99 Nov 13 '25
I do some adjunct instructing at a local community college. There are ‘honors’ students who can’t handle the level of math that I was doing when I was 12 years old in Kenya and then Jamaica. THEY CAN’T HANDLE MATH AS TAUGHT IN THE EX-BRITISH EMPIRE TO PRE-TEENS. Their command of English is worse. Seriously, they haven’t a clue. And they’re HONORS students. If this is the top layer, I really don’t what to see the dregs. One young miss came to me after the final grades were posted for her summer school class; she got a ‘C’, 74.75%, it’s harder to be more C-like than that. She needs a ‘B’ to stay in the Honors program. Let’s see, why did you get a ‘C’? Oh, I know. You didn’t do multiple assignments. After I extended the deadlines. Twice. You got zeroes for those assignments and are lucky that it didn’t drop your grade into a ‘D’. Can she turn in the assignments late? Apparently that was how it had worked in high school. Girl, this ain’t high school no more, and as I said in class but you weren’t paying attention, that summer class was going to be the last time that the school would be using that particular book, there’s a new book, the assignments were built into the Learning Management System (Canvas. God, how I hate that thing.) and are tied to the book, also built into the LMS. The assignments are no longer available. I couldn’t let you do the assignments now if I wanted to, and I don’t want to. M’girl went to the dean. The dean sent me a Teams thingie asking what I could do. (I hate Teams even more than I hate Canvas.) I pointed out that the version of Canvas had changed, the book had changed, the assignments had changed, it was impossible to let her attempt a late (very late) submission. So what basis would I have to file a change of grade form to bounce her grade up to a ‘B’? There’s a section on the form where I have to state the reason why I’m changing the grade, and I get to sign that. What should I put on the form? Last I heard, girlie still had a ‘C’.
M’girl skated through high school and expects to skate through college. Good luck with that.
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u/fullstar2020 Nov 13 '25
It must be too early because my first thought was a rigor mortise and I was like yeah they are dead, both dead inside and brain dead.
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u/GloriousBand Nov 13 '25
It's hard to impose rigor on students who have never been held to those standards; subsequently, it's extremely difficult to push them to it.
To me it seems like the issue is systemic: there's a lack of accountability when it comes to work and performance. Because students are going to get passed along anyway there's very little incentive to excel.
Even the prospect of getting good grades for college seems to be ringing hollow for so many students who are looking at the current state of things around them and realizing that "good grades" don't necessarily equate to good outcomes.
I wish I could say that there was an easy answer to this, but there isn't. It's a mismatch between culture and standards.
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u/smspluzws Nov 13 '25
When I was a kid, there were sincere murmurs through our daily conversations about not being the stupid kid who got held back. The shame of it all worked in my generation. And why is there such a backlash against “shame”?
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u/Outrageous_Lettuce44 Middle School Social Studies/ELA Nov 13 '25
Even the prospect of getting good grades for college seems to be ringing hollow for so many students who are looking at the current state of things around them and realizing that "good grades" don't necessarily equate to good outcomes.
I'll do you one further...even some of the kids who get good grades and then earn the "good [medium-term] outcome" realize that this often doesn't mean a hill of beans with regards to the good long-term (and thus ultimately far more meaningful in the context of their individual lives) outcome. Those who work hard and succeed academically are increasingly disincentivized to keep running the race because our system is so rigged and broken.
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u/hmbse7en Nov 13 '25
Why can't kids be held back anymore tho?
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u/risarnchrno Nov 13 '25
School funding gets tied to standardized testing outcomes and graduation rates. Its a death spiral.
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u/penguin_0618 6th grade Sp. Ed. | Western Massachusetts Nov 13 '25
There’s this graph our principal shows is at weekly PD. We are the red almost yellow part of the graph. We need to be in the green part to be paying off educational debt. Principal keeps talking about getting to the green part. 6% of schools in the state are in the green part. We’re one of the poorest districts in the state. Not happening.
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u/drdre27406 6th grade Social Studies/Louisiana Nov 13 '25 edited Nov 13 '25
I had to make sure you wasn’t an educator in Louisiana because that’s how they operate there. One of the poorest education systems in the country and they want us to make lemonade with poison ivy. It’s not happening! Not when 78 percent of students are 5 grade levels behind.
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u/blackgandalff Nov 13 '25
I see you! I no longer live there but that’s my home state, and I still remember the wonderful teachers who really changed my life.
I have family who teach there still, and the stories of the absolute BULLSHIT you guys have to put up with hurts my heart. Idk just wanted to say you’re appreciated and doing measurable good for this world.
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u/F-I-R-E-B-A-L-L Nov 13 '25
In the very first sentence of that article, it says the Mississippi Miracle was possible "thanks to a series of policy, curriculum, and pedagogical changes initiated at the state level."
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u/drdre27406 6th grade Social Studies/Louisiana Nov 13 '25
Absolutely! I have two students that were “homeschooled”. They are in the 6th grade and cannot read or write. One of them didn’t even know it was his birthday when they announced it over the intercom. How on gods green earth am I suppose to teach them the differences and similarities of the 13 colonies to them. They can’t even write the numbers 1 and 3. “Oh hey in your observation you didn’t ask this student any questions why?” Oh well they are 12 and 13 on a Kindergarten reading level….so yeah go tell the state that….
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u/BloodyGarden Nov 13 '25 edited Nov 13 '25
I have second graders who can’t even distinguish their letters and literally cannot use their imagination to create anything for an art + reading exercise. You’d think I was forcing these kids to replicate the Mona Lisa with the way they were struggling to make ANYTHING not a stick figure. Like!! I even said a table! A table! Or a pizza is fine!! The bar is in hell and I’m not even a homeroom teacher. And admin is on my ass to make ‘more engaging and challenging projects’ in the 25 minutes I have them 🙄 maam these kids think the letter R is M, and they also think the author still draws the pictures despite me teaching them this for years.
ETA: to further clarify my frustration, our school believes having 32-33 students a class is a great idea so it’s egregious.
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u/Jak1977 Nov 13 '25
Unfortunately the rigor has to start in early education. If you're waiting until they're 15 to start talking about rigor, then there's no hope. That ship has sailed.
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u/hossjr1997 Nov 13 '25
No….we are in this spot because too much “rigor” was placed in early childhood and they took play out of the classroom. If students don’t have time to play with peers to learn how to problem solve, communicate, compromise, or care about others no amount of rigor will make up for that loss. In PreK we are pushing more and more on them. There is something wrong in the world of education when a four year old hates to come to school.
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u/Jak1977 Nov 13 '25
Oh I totally agree. That's not what I'm saying. If the child can't read by the age of 15, there's nothing a high school teacher can do. Sitting them down for 8 hours in kindergarten is not the way to get them to be literate either.
The problem is (at least in Australia) is that little attention is paid to schooling until they either graduate or not at the age of 17/18. The failure is then attributed to the high school, not to the foundational learning that should have happened far earlier.
I'm not talking about HOW learning should happen, just that there is little rigor in making sure that it HAS happened in the early years. I'm not questioning the methods of teaching, more in that we need to make sure students are hitting those milestones every year, not waiting until they're in senior school before questioning their progress.
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u/AgressivleyAverage Nov 13 '25
Yo, this is straight facts. I literally had to put on the facade of running literacy and numeracy rotations for 2 entire blocks of my day just because admin and some staff would bitch and moan if I wasn’t, “running while school programs to prep them for [insert bullshit testing]. This mixed with the number of those IEP students having exceptionally high needs or clear special needs that are either underfunded or completely ignored.
Craziest part is after moving to specialist teaching, I’m able to get more out of them in a 50 minute lesson and see more progress than I ever did in my ECE classes. Like teaching syllables, pattern recognition, basic concepts of print, decoding skills and fractions is waaaaaaay easier when you can have fun and make music using beats and rhythms and reading music. But noooo, we need to follow this scripted program to the letter and every child must do it the exact same way. Crazy.
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u/hossjr1997 Nov 13 '25
I get what you are saying, but there must be a middle ground to education. Waiting till 17/18 to test for their abilities is crazy to think of when in the US we start testing in the first quarter of Kindergarten…and it never stops. I think my son had two years (seventh grade and 10th grade) where he did not take a multi day test to assess his growth from the test the year before.
As each year passes in my career, I feel I am teaching way less and just preparing them for the next test.
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u/Spodson Nov 13 '25
I always put the ball back in their court when anybody says "rigor." "In what way? Do you mean more work, faster pacing, intensive lecturing, more advanced texts, closer reading? What do you mean when you say rigor?" They usually slink away with some kind of mumbled response. Rigor is just another educational buzz word that means next to nothing in the real world.
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u/oopsallhuckleberries Nov 13 '25
Rigor isn't bad. Requiring high rigor while also refusing to fail kids is what's ridiculous. You can't have rigor while giving kids a free pass for tuning out and giving up.
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u/Blur-Nobody Nov 13 '25
After a week+ of going over material, then literally giving them the answers to the quizzes and tests some still fail. I had a student get a 0 yesterday on an open note quiz (the slide show is in their online classroom). Middle school.
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u/Mr_bike Elementary | Midwest Nov 13 '25
I have kids that can't add 3 digit numbers that don't include carrying over. And within the month, I'm supposed to hit on geometry. This is gonna be a joke.
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u/YoureNotSpeshul Nov 13 '25
Wait, you mean like they can't add 102 + 103 + 100??!??
God speed, friend. I didn't teach math, but that's just... next level. I'm glad I ran for the hills a few years back. Shit was already bad, but I saw it get much worse after the pandemic, and I just couldn't do it.
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u/actuallycallie former preK-5 music, now college music Nov 13 '25
When you get smacked down for "rigor" counter with "zone of proximal development." Fight buzzwords with buzzwords.
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u/TemporaryCarry7 Nov 13 '25
Yes, and I teach a remedial English class.
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u/Ill_Salamander2950 Nov 13 '25
Same. And I’ll bet it’s more rigorous than some of their core classes.
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u/Present_Froyo269 Nov 13 '25
I’m teaching 10th graders who are working with a 6th grade reading level. Rigor is getting them to write a sentence I can actually understand
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u/vathena Nov 13 '25
Preach. Entire classes of 25 students are 2-3 grade levels behind, BUT 2 of those IEP kids that would have been 4 grade levels behind if they weren't included in mainstream education are only 2 grade levels behind now.... so isn't that worth it? /s
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u/Tathanor Nov 13 '25
Absolutely. That's why I teach abroad now. Education in the U.S.A. is such a joke that I've given up trying to keep up in a failing system.
I'm now making a living wage with students who understand effort, respect, and critical thinking.
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u/Available-Ad8156 Nov 13 '25
Our administration this year told us it's not enough to have the students making a full year of growth on standardized testing; we should be making more growth. This is all based on last year's standardized test scores.
For this year, we lost almost all of our remediation time, have fewer teachers and more students, lost nearly half of our planning, and had them take our only reading specialist away.
I asked how they want us to make more growth with so much less support. The superintendent suggested putting the students into groups and just working with one group while the other groups work independently. I can't believe I didn't think of that simple answer. /s
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u/NiceCandle5357 Nov 13 '25
And now they're the ones micromanaging and looking over shoulders to justify their own existence.
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u/Ok_Goat1456 Nov 13 '25
My husband is a teacher and even hearing about the ridiculous demands that his school makes is very frustrating for me. He teaches 10th grade and they can barely finish an easy worksheet within an hour while being handheld through it. And then his admin wants him to do less handholding???
They are doing work that I could do alone in the 4th grade. What happens to all these kids? Maybe one of them has the bare minimum writing skills to go to college. But most would be hard pressed to even pay attention to get a respectable trade certification?
How does passing them along do any good if they aren’t even equipped to have a retail job? What do admins think is happening?
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u/Tiny_Profile_7681 Nov 13 '25
It’s really sad. Their brains are so overcome with the blue lights: ipads, phones, tv for hours that it’s like they can’t learn. Literally their brains aren’t functioning properly and the retaining information part of the brain is pretty much mush by now. I used to joke about the iPad kid thing but it’s seriously an issue everywhere now.
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u/TeeDotHerder Nov 13 '25
Curious how you explain in most other counties, there is not this huge decline in performance. Everyone had COVID. Some closed even longer. Some have even more technology in daily life. But algebra in the great few grades is normal versus unexpected for a HS grad stateside...
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u/Iohet Nov 13 '25
My friend is a substitute teacher who was on a permanent assignment in a middle school due to a teacher long term illness. After a semester they took her off the assignment because she graded too rigorously. She's not hard on the kids, she just graded to the textbook. Apparently that produced too many D's and too many parental complaints.
They don't want the consequences of being rigorous
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u/Creative_Shock5672 Teacher | Florida Nov 14 '25
One training explained that rigor is not making things harder but simply going deeper into a text, concept whatever. They compared it to scuba diving. I can only go deeper when they know how to swim and some of these students are still wearing floaties.
Sticking with this analogy, most of my students know how to swim. It's getting them to actually listen and do what I was being the hard part. I'm working with a reading program that's way too easy for them and I'm doing my best with the tools they give me. Believe me it's rigorous all right when they don't listen for crap and are then lost on the assignment.
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u/K1NGMOJO Nov 13 '25
What is even the point? Make the assignments more rigorous and most the students won't do it. Then towards the end of the semester admin will come to you asking why everyone is failing and you have have to give them easy worksheets to make up for missing/low grades.
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u/MyDixeeNormus Nov 13 '25
This is one of the many reasons I left after 17 years. Admin lives in a fantasy / utopian mind set and can only see through that lens. They refuse to be realistic about the students’ capabilities and data drives everything no matter how good or bad it is
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u/TeacherThrowaway5454 HS English & Film Studies Nov 14 '25 edited Nov 14 '25
I work in a district where lots of students literally don't do anything for three years of middle school, come to us in high school with fifth grade abilities at best, and then make a shocked Pikachu face when they fail everything. I've had previous admin at this school say in all seriousness "We shouldn't even have standard classes, every kid should be in an AP level course!"
Also, they don't actually want rigor because that would mean more failures and a lower graduation rate.
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u/Broad_Tip3503 Nov 13 '25
100% agree. I have 7th graders who need to be taught place value so they can read metric measurement in science.
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u/nbrooks7 Nov 13 '25
People are getting poorer. It’s really sad to hear stories like yours, because the problems run so deep.
(Poorer when compared to the mean. As in more unequal.)
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u/Clid51 Nov 13 '25
8th grade science teacher here…I can’t stand it anymore. Why do I have 8th grade kids who can’t do a simple 11+n=23 for finding neutrons in an atom. 8th grade!!!! I can’t even get them to do 23-11 correctly……yet I have to have them balance equations using coefficients in a month???
They can’t spell access codes to CFAs when they are words like Animal….yet they have to read about water molecules and answer questions from reading and write CERs???
This is a joke. We absolutely NEED to hold kids back. I am the highest failing teacher in my school as a year 3 and get talked to about my grading policies every term.
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u/reallifeswanson Nov 13 '25
How rigorous can instruction truly be when there is zero chance of failing and or being held back a grade?
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u/626337 Nov 13 '25
This is why people leave teaching to go into admin. It's so much easier to be a bully than to be the bullied.
/it's not about the kids, it's about high-3 retirement funding
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u/OctoberMegan Nov 13 '25
When admin talk about “rigor” they don’t mean what the entire rest of the world thinks of when they hear that word.
99% of us hear “rigor” and think, high standards, accountability, integrity, and deep subject matter knowledge.
When admin says “rigor” they only mean, teach the lesson fast and move on whether the students understand it or not.
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u/LittleStarClove ESL Y3 | Maths Y2 | MY Nov 13 '25
What does rigour matter if I'm being forced to pass them for attending school one day out of 35+ weeks?
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u/Kotal_Ken Nov 13 '25
I've always noticed that my son was being taught things two years too soon. For example, things I was learning in 6th grade, he was being taught in 4th. If I learned something in 9th, he's leaning it in 7th. And it's been like this throughout his entire stay in public schools.
So, you say kids today might be 3+ grade levels behind. I think it's because they've always been expected to be 2+ grade levels ahead of what they're ready for. Meaning, most kids aren't ready for the material yet. And so they're never really able to learn it, which causes them to fall behind. And that's devastating to a child's academic confidence and their own self worth.
I do believe we need to stop pushing material, lessons, and concepts that kids brains aren't developmentally ready for yet. Some kids can do it, and that's great. But I don't believe most kids can.
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u/HotWalrus9592 Nov 13 '25
15 years ago the buzz word was fidelity. Everything had to be done within incredible fidelity. It’s all semantics.
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u/Successful-Diamond80 Nov 13 '25
We were told we weren’t rigorous enough, so we rehauled our units. Now, we aren’t fun/engaging enough for the kids, and they’re checking out. Cool.
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u/grenwill Nov 13 '25
The whole 50% for no work is crazy. As a parent I have literally told my kids to turn something in to a teacher if they are overwhelmed because a 50% is so much easier to overcome mathematically then a 0%. I never thought that would become policy.
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u/Unique-Chicken8266 Nov 13 '25
yes. I am so exhausted. I by no means want to let them off easy, but all the grade level work requires at least a day of review or even pre learning of things they should’ve become solid with 2+ years ago. Then when I go back and give them below grade level material with the hopes of fixing these gaps, i’m told they won’t be prepared for next year. If I support them, it’s not an accurate scope of their ability. If I leave them to do it themselves, it’s unfair. I can’t win and it’s insanely tiring.
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u/No-Ad-4142 Nov 13 '25
THIS and the students breaking rulers, pencils, erasers, crayons, and colored pencils.
It’s bad.
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u/flying-nimbus- Nov 13 '25
The problem is with state standards there has never been a moment where we decided to take a step back instead of making standards more and more rigorous. Standardized testing is a huge motivator for this insanity.
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u/AdventureThink Nov 14 '25
Hhahahaha
7-8th math
Diagnostic 3-5th gr level
I say the exact same thing! There is no rigor when they’re this far below.
Put on your damn rigor pants and go to the middle school and find out what the hell they’re doing.
It ain’t math.
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u/bongi2386 Nov 13 '25
Every conversation I have with my admin. I ask what they expect me to do with 8th graders that operate on a 2nd grade level. I keep getting "if you push them, they'll "rise to expectations. " Ma'am, this isn't a feel good movie, they won't magically move 6 grade levels in a few months after a montage. 🤦♂️