Will they learn what they are supposed to? That's an interesting question...

If you didn’t know that the blooming shrub in your garden was an azalea, how would you find out? (Image by Kohji Asakawa)

I’m not meaning to call anyone out, I promise.

Off the top of your head, do you know where a comma goes in a compound sentence?

Do you know how to calculate a 40% discount in your head, standing in a store?

Can you explain the impact of the Black Death on the economy of Europe?

These are all things we learn in middle school. These are all things that, I would argue, are highly useful things to know. And they are all things, that, in my experience, a lot of American adults don’t know. What are the implications?

An education is important — it opens doors. But it seems to me that it’s less about what you learn and much more about continuing to show up, day after day, long enough to get a diploma. Apparently, it doesn’t matter that much what you know and can do; in the end, your educational success is more dependent on where you’re from, who your parents are, and what kind of support you have from them.

So when parents express concern about their child being ready for high school, I have to laugh. If you’re a parent with the wherewithal to be concerned, your kid is going to be fine. He may not get straight A’s, but he’ll make it.

On any given day, I’m not going to have to search very hard on the Internet to find a college-educated adult using “it’s” when they mean “its” or professing a strong aversion for anything to do with math. And I’ve met many degreed music teachers who don’t understand music theory, despite taking several semesters’ worth of courses. Whether someone walks away from a particular grade or program with the body of knowledge they are supposed to have gained is arbitrary.

Many students enter my middle school programs with second-grade skills in one or more subjects. Others arrive ready to read high school texts and do algebra. There is a huge range, and the requirements for completing sixth grade or seventh grade have little meaning under such circumstances. It’s clear that many students have been simply passed along from grade to grade, regardless of the skills and knowledge they can demonstrate.

For any parent who’s worried about whether their kids are going to be academically successful after the pandemic-related disruption in their education, let me say: They’re going to be fine. Even if they don’t learn something they were supposed to have learned, they’re going to be fine. They’ll just join the millions of others who didn’t learn what they were supposed to learn in school.

The students we really need to worry about are the ones whose parents don’t have the time, energy, or health to worry about them. They are going to need help to keep showing up, now and later.

When we begin to return to normal on some beautiful future day, schools will find a way to elide the gaps created by this spring’s disruption, just the way they elide the gaps created by poverty, learning disabilities, curriculum or instructional problems, and the wide range of student work ethic and ability. Students will keep moving forward, whatever that means.

If you want your child to actually develop meaningful skills and be able to demonstrate them as a result of their education, well — that’s a different story. Traditional school was never set up for such an outcome. But under the current circumstances, we do have an extraordinary opportunity address individual needs. Let me know if you would like to learn more about how you might do that.