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Making grades meaningless so that everyone advances is doing a disservice to kids' education. (media.piefed.world)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/whitepeopletwitter@sh.itjust.works
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[–] 93 points 8 months ago* (28 children)

Speaking of disservice to kids in school, I recently learned about the "Three-Cuing" system and how it is basically making kids less literate by having them simply guess the meaning of things they don't understand instead of teaching how to read context, subtext, and use critical thinking skills or basic phonics.. It kinda pissed me off. Especislly since I had already been noticing a trend of young people online putting words into others' mouths or defining words wildly differently than the norm and misunderstanding the entire thing they just read.

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  • [–] [S] 41 points 8 months ago (16 children)

    I heard about this too, and it's so insane.

    I saw an article recently about Mississippi (and/or Alabama?) 4th graders beating out California and New York on reading, and many were crediting that the state mandated phonics over this "take a guess" nonsense.

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  • [–] 37 points 8 months ago* (8 children)

    Am I reading this correctly? MS (and/or AL) having a better reading education system than CA & NY with this?? Wow.

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  • [–] [S] 40 points 7 months ago* (7 children)

    Yes! MS went from 49th to 9th in like 10 years. Most people are crediting it to phonics and their willingness to hold students back if they don't learn the material.

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  • [–] 12 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    Something about holding students back seems like it might artificially inflate numbers. Like, if they administer a test in 4th grade while keeping the kids who are struggling in 3rd grade, well only the kids who made it to 4th grade are taking the test.

    I'm likely wrong.

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  • [–] 34 points 7 months ago* (2 children)

    I mean, thats the point. If the student is not smart enough for the 4th grade, they get held back to try again. They are not 4th graders even if their age suggests they are.

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago

    I'm likely wrong.

    I dont think you are. Having higher requirements for 4th grade definitely bumps the results up, question is by how much? Not that many students are held back, no idea how much they would contribute to the statistic

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    I thought about that too, but I would imagine a LOT of students would've had to be held back to make this kind of impact on the state average. I would bet that the pressure it applied to students, schools, and parents did most of the heavy lifting.

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago

    I used to be a teacher. In my state, before COVID, 3rd grade is the grade that you don't pass if you don't hit certain criteria for literacy. After COVID, they didn't hold anyone back due to an emergency executive order from the Guvnah. Pretty much all the teachers I worked with hated it and believed that holding kids back was beneficial to all.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    Where? This isn't something I've seen in CA schoolwork. My teacher friends have a lot of problems with matriculation right now but guessing at definitions isn't one of them.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 7 months ago* (5 children)

    There were a bunch of articles when the data came out from the NAEP report card. Most I saw were mentioning phonics as the biggest factor.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/us/mississippi-schools-transformation

    https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/09/mississippi-not-california-is-the-education-future/

    It's often being referred to as the "Mississippi Miracle" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Miracle

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    I mean, both of those are right wing sources though.

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  • [–] [S] -1 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    I thought the second one might be (unfamiliar with it, it was just in the search results), but NYT is definitely not right wing, and the NAEP and Wikipedia are fairly neutral.

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  • [–] 10 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    NYT has proven in the past few years its a trash rag propping up shitty right wing policies. See also the Washington Post.

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  • [–] 16 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    ... Suddenly I think I understand why a some things with very specific meanings are getting redefined by younger folks who call you names if you don't accept their new definition.

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago

    I have a theory that the people who think having Ai make a summary of books were taught ‘three-cuing’ and thus, cannot actually read.

    Incidentally there’s a really interesting podcast about teaching reading in the US, called ‘Sold a Story’. It’s wild how kids were supposed to somehow magic up the meaning of words.

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