Remedial instruction conveys low expectations for some students.
In an earlier post, I urged my fellow educators to provide acceleration, not remediation to their students who are performing below grade level. Providing remedial instruction to students behind in school has long been the default mode for our schools. This practice only widens the achievement gap for so many of our students.
Think about it in relation to your own child. If your child were struggling to master grade level standards, what type of support would you want for them? Would you want them to be held back and receive remedial instruction while their peers move ahead? Or would you want them to receive the support they need at that moment to master the current learning and stay on pace with their peers?
Remediation has been a part of our schools for so long that it is a part of the culture of school. It is the practice of trying to reteach every single missing skill and piece of knowledge a student might be missing before allowing them to learn new, grade appropriate content. It is the belief that until they know all of knowledge they are deemed to have by this point, that they cannot learn new grade level material. When we automatically provide remediation to many of our students that are struggling, instead of acceleration, we reveal our hidden belief that some students just cannot master the appropriate grade level standards. Remediation says that we have low expectations for some of our students.
As educators we know that high expectations (Hill, 2017; Schmidt, Burroughs Zoid, & Houang, 2015; Schmoker, 2018; TNTP, 2018) are a critical foundation of students achieving on or even above grade level. We do not intend to have low expectations for some of our students. However, when we replace grade level instruction with remedial or below level instruction as we try to plug in every missing piece of information or skill from a previous level, we are saying to our students that we do not believe they can perform on grade level so therefore we are going to have them do below level work. We are telling them that they are lessor scholars (Wilkerson, 2020) than their peers. When we believe they cannot master grade level standards, our students often begin to believe the same thing about themselves. High expectations are communicated to students by the level and rigor of instruction provided to them.
In order to change the culture of our schools and truly establish high expectations for all our students, we must provide to all our students grade level instruction and ensure they master it. This means we provide every student with strong instruction that deeply engages them and demands high level thinking. This instruction includes engaging students with rigorous text, technical writing, problem solving, and creative and/or new ways of using their learning.
This type of instruction is demanding and takes careful planning and preparation on the part of educators. Providing this type of instruction to students working below grade level is even more challenging. Educators have to have an in-depth knowledge of what their students know and what are the critical knowledge and skills needed to learn the new material. They must be able to provide instruction using research proven strategies and scaffolded instruction just at the right time to ensure the student masters the new learning. (For more about research proven and scaffold instruction see Equity in Our Schools, chapter 7.)
Sometimes these students need more time to master the skills. Therefore. the schedules must be created that provide the additional time while their peers are learning this content as well ensuring that these students do not once again fall behind or that the achievement gap is widened. In other words, it takes a highly trained professional teachers to accomplish this work.
We all want our children to achieve at or above grade level. We want acceleration, not remediation, when and if our child needs additional support in learning. Just as we demand this for our own children, we must demand it for all our children. We must demand that all children be taught to master rigorous grade level content and skills by highly trained professional teachers.
References:
Hill, T. D. (2017). Combating the achievement gap: Ending failure as a default in schools. New York, NY: Rowman and Littlefield.
Holmes, G. (2023). Equity in our schools: ensuring marginalized students achieve at high levels. Rowman and Littlefield.
Schmidt, W. H., Burroughs, N. A., Zoido, P. & Houang, R. T., (2015). The role of schooling in perpetuating educational inequality: An international perspective. Educational Research, 44(7), 371-386.
Schmoker, M. (2018). Focus: Elevating the essentials to radically improve student learning (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: ASCD
TNTP (2018). The opportunity myth: What students can show us about how school isletting them down – and how to fix it. New York, NY: TNTP. Retrieved on August 27, 2021 at https://opportunitymyth.tntp.org/
Wilkerson, I. (2020). Caste: The origins of our discontents. New York, NY: Random House.
This blog is written by Dr. GwenCarol Holmes, a long-time educator and passionate advocate for all students mastering rigorous standards.