Too Old to Fail Part 1: Why do schools promote students who shouldn’t be promoted?

This is part one in a two-part series about social promotion in American schools. The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated a fundamental flaw in the American educational system. Every year, many students are moved on to the next grade through a system of formal policies and informal pressures. In the context of the Coronavirus pandemic, when many school districts have formally banned failing grades, students will enter into the next school year at drastically different levels. Part one will discuss the origins and causes of this system. The second part will consider more recent history and alternatives.

In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, students, teachers, and families have gone through one of the toughest academic years ever. Many students struggled to keep up with course loads, while families struggled to keep their kids focused on Zoom-school while managing their own jobs and dealing with changing expectations about when and how schools would reopen. As a result, many schools and districts formally banned holding students back to repeat a grade. While promoting all students to the next grade has been an explicit expectation for many students and teachers this year, it has actually been the de facto norm in many American schools for decades. Every year, students are moved on to the next grade not because their work has merited progress but simply because they have aged another year. And the Covid-19 pandemic has only exacerbated this problem.