Kiaira Wheeler
On Sunday, September 19th, 2023, TikTok user and teacher @Qbthedon posted a video discussing his concern about kids failing to perform at their actual grade level. He mentioned that he feels the world is behind globally due to the pandemic. He also expressed the belief that people are not stressed enough about how bad this gap is and how it greatly affects students’ learning ability.
He revealed that he teaches 7th grade, and they are performing at a 4th-grade level, which is cause for concern in the education system. He said, “So just imagine that your child has been on the second-grade level since the second grade, and they are now in the 7th or 8th grade.” His video has been seen across the world; his TikTok video has reached 4.6 million users and teachers around the world have stitched his video to also address their thoughts and concerns about children and their education.
For instance, user @pachristia discusses how the country doesn’t value children, education, a healthy work-life balance, or consistent and effective programs to help children who need extra help academically. She discussed that this topic is hard to bring up since people begin pointing fingers at the wrong people.
“Children begin behind academically, which is a systemic issue within many systems itself,” she states. She also mentions that this situation is more than a parent issue; it is a systemic issue. Pachristia continues stating that parents should have the time and patience to help their kids with their schooling, including reading to their kids every day and helping kids with sight words every 15 minutes a day. Instead, parents don’t take the initiative to help their kids.
This conversation sheds light on many issues that are happening in the education system. It’s sad to realize that the school system is passing these kids along without helping them with the areas they need to work on. Ever since Qbthedon’s TikTok post went viral, there has been a big debate on who’s responsible for kids not performing at their grade level.
There have been statements about parents not taking the initiative to provide their kids with extra help or help them at home. There are also statements of teachers not putting their effort into giving one-on-one sessions with the students to help them be on the right track instead of leaving them behind and moving on to the next subject.
The New York Times published an article called “Parents Don’t Understand How Far Behind Their Kids Are in School,” which discusses how in 2020 and 2021 a lot of parents expressed that the pandemic affected their children’s education. By the spring of 2022, there was a study that addressed how the average student was half a year behind in math and a third of a year behind in reading.
There was a research team of scholars from Harvard, Sandford, Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins, the testing company NWEA, and the Education Recovery Scorecard Project. The objective of this study was to analyze data from 7,800 communities across 41 states to ascertain the locations where test scores had the most significant fall. Additionally, the study aimed to discover any noticeable trends in the data and determine the likelihood of these patterns persisting over time.
The researchers identified the school districts in these communities enroll 26 million elementary and middle school students in more than 53,000 public schools, roughly 80 percent of the public K-8 students in the country. They quote “We’ve looked at test scores, the duration of school closures, broadband availability, COVID death rates, employment data, patterns of social activity, voting patterns, measures of how connected people are to others in their communities and Facebook survey data on both family activities and mental health during the pandemic.”
Researchers found out that on average, both math and reading scores declined by roughly a tenth of a year more in the 10% of districts where social activities were most curtailed than they did in the 10% least restricted. They state, “We also found that the test score declines were smaller in communities with high voting rates and high census response rates — indicators of what sociologists call ‘institutional trust.’ School closures were also less harmful in such places.”
The phrase “No Child Left Behind” must be used to emphasize today’s needs. This act indicates that every child is expected to learn, and it is the responsibility of the nation to provide for every child’s education. The future depends on us, and we need to find ways to create after-school programs to identify and target the areas where the kids need help.
Qbthedon’s post has been an eye-opener to teachers and parents alike. Not only do kids need their teachers’ help, but they also need support from their parents. It is very important to start at home, and parents need to create fun activities for their kids to engage in their learning.
It’s not too late to fix the issue by developing after school programs for kids to help them stay on the right path and build their future. Society needs to realize that to have our future teachers, lawyers, doctors, and entrepreneurs, we need to put students on the path to success.