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The only obvious solutions were to (a) blame the kids — especially immigrant children, or (b) fudge the statistics.
Designed to Fail: A History of Education in the United States by Ira David Socol will be available in print and via Kindle on November 7. The Kindle edition can be pre-ordered now. An excerpt from Chapter Seven: Systemic Anachronisms that Limit the Opportunities of Our Students.
Dividing children and adolescents by age is not a “traditional” system. Traditionally, in the one-room schoolhouse multiage model, “grades” represented a level a learner accomplished — the mastery learning model.
When a student finished “third-grade reading,” they showed their accomplishment to the teacher and moved on to “fourth-grade” work. The idea that all eight-year-olds would be in the same place academically would have seemed ridiculous.
The idea of these age-graded schools faced a great deal of opposition. In 1874, the St. Louis Superintendent “argued that annual promotions held back students who might be moving through the curriculum at a more rapid pace, and that many students, failing to be promoted a second time, withdrew and were permanently lost to the school.” (Angus, 1988) In 1899, the New Castle, Pennsylvania Superintendent offered an alternative “plan of frequent promotions based on subject mastery, flexible…
