How often do we need to repeat the material?

Until they get it.

And we need to be 100% clear — If we move on before students understand, there’s a real chance no one will fill in missing knowledge later. As curricula keep getting more demanding due to districts’ struggles to hit test targets, repeating material becomes more problematic. After curriculum planners put 192 days worth of material into the plans for a 180 day school year, often they can’t add in another whack at finding the area of a hexagon. With curricula stumbling clumsily over one another, maybe the hexagons will disappear. Maybe telling time will be left to a future person whose school’s curriculum has dropped the clocks that used to be taught in the next grade.

Eduhonesty: The risk of putting too much material into the curriculum and then going too fast is huge. Because if we “taught the material” but they “did not get it” — we taught NOTHING, all the while wasting our students time.

Why districts should hire extra help for small group interventions:

Without extra bodies in the picture,

The math’s wrong.

A fixed number of

teachers cannot do small

group interventions

without leaving other

kids rudderless,

teacherless, killing time

by default.