If teachers are assigning grades right now, what they are grading is PRIVILEGE. Without the equalizing force of the school-building and its services, limited as they are, teachers are grading on access to technology, wifi, food and housing security, and ableism. 1/

School districts have a moral obligation to promise right now that everyone will be promoted to the next grade. Otherwise, they will only be punishing poverty and neurodiversity, needlessly heaping anxiety onto already struggling children.

Holding back every kid who won't succeed at online learning will not only be a logistical nightmare, it will further stratify class, racial, and ableist differences in our ed system, leaving an entire generation of our less-privileged students traumatized.

Extensive research shows that being held back a grade correlates with higher rates of just about every negative consequence you can imagine--from incarceration, to premature death and suicide. And kids rate it as traumatic as the death of a loved one. https://www.nasponline.org/assets/Documents/graderetention.pdf

For school districts to continue to dangle this "threat" over kids' heads--as a way to supposedly motivate learning--is frankly reprehensible during a pandemic. Millions of kids are or will struggle this year w/ hunger, homelessness, or COVID itself, spreading in their family.

School districts should promise, right now, to every child that they will be able to rejoin their classmates when schools re-open, at their appropriate age level. And teachers will do what it takes to accommodate educational differences--as we are always required to do!

If you're wondering--but if we don't threaten them with retention, how will they learn?! Research shows conclusively that threats are about the most INeffective way to motivate learning. Positive motivation & relationship-building will be far more powerful.

Believe it or not, kids will work a lot harder for a teacher who checks in on them on Zoom, who they feel cares about them & is rooting fo them, than one who's constantly thtreatening, "You better do this homework or else I'm holding you back a grade!" This is settled ed science.

Some kids aren't going to be able to do any "gradeable" learning at all, because they're in survival mode. They're trapped with their abuser, or they're hungry, or they're sick or grieving. How heartless, to tell such children they'll have to repeat a grade to boot. For shame.

And as people are pointing out in the comments--yeah, we're ALWAYS grading privilege. It's ALWAYS harmful to grade-retain students. Just like the other needlessly cruel and inequal aspects of our society, the pandemic is only making them more apparent than ever.