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Comment by datadrivenangel | Hacker News Reader

Just gotta do the Mississippi thing and hold kids back unless they meet standards. Don't leave them behind by pretending to leave no one behind.

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School was like that back in Brazil in the 80s. Don’t get the grade, try again. And again. And again. Until you do. That is the real “not left behind”.

A recent Atlantic article [1] by someone involved in the Mississippi reforms gives a good outline of what they did/are doing. It includes science-based reading curriculum and holding kids back (as you mentioned). It also includes other forms of accountability, including parental notification and empowering the state to force recalcitrant districts to improve. One notable quote:

"The law allowed the state to abolish these districts’ local school board and remove the local superintendent in favor of a state appointee who would report directly to the state board of education. A later amendment provided that removed local-school-board members would be barred from serving in that capacity again."

Politically unpopular in some cases (which local jurisdiction wants the state coming in and replacing your local school board?), but seems to be pretty effective.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/mississippi-educat... (gift link)

If kids are held back when they fail standards, shouldn't they also be allowed to race ahead when they exceed them?

Off the top of my head I don't have problem with this, but the topic is about declining scores so I'm not sure how relevant this is.

Absolutely

No, because you’ll end up really dysfunctional if you’re a child in a class with 18 year olds.

Always used to be the case, is that no longer an option?

Not an option in San Francisco.

Back in 2022 I spoke with the principal of a nearby government-run school. She told me:

- under no circumstances would a kindergarten teacher teach any first grade content, and

- grade skip is so rare that she'd seen it only once in her entire career

teachers not being able to teach 'higher level' content seems like a huge issue.

Yes. That's the whole idea of adaptive/personalized learning.

There are some interesting ethical questions about disparity of outcomes, but we should aim to have a system that educates each individual as best we can (without leaving kids behind). The current system of bludgeoning every individual student to be the same is not working well.

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