Stop Calling It Support. Remediation Is Keeping Kids Behind.

How do we help students catch up without keeping them permanently behind?

That question should be hanging in every school building in America right now.

Because here is what is actually happening. Gaps show up in the data. Urgency sets in. Leaders feel pressure for a quick turnaround, and almost instantly, the default response emerges--remediation. Pull-out groups. Intervention blocks. Study Skills classes. Resource rooms. Double-dose periods that quietly replace the elective, the enrichment, the thing the kid actually liked about school.

It happens in elementary schools where third graders are pulled from science to drill phonics in isolation. It happens in middle schools where a struggling reader sits in a "strategic support" class instead of the core grade-level literature everyone else has access to. It happens in high schools where a student who needs to recover a credit ends up further and further from the college-prep track.

We do it with good intentions. The data shows gaps, so we go back to fill them and make them re-learn everything they missed ….before letting them have access to grade-level work. It feels logical. It feels responsible. It feels like urgency in action.

However, here is what the research keeps telling us, and what many of us are finally willing to hear: remediation is not catching kids up. Never has, never will. It is keeping them behind while looking like help. It says, the child is broken and we need to fix them completely before they can learn with everyone else.

The better path is acceleration, and the difference between the two is not just instructional strategy. It is a fundamental statement about what we believe students are capable of intellectually.

Two Classrooms. Same School. Two Completely Different Worlds.

I was visiting an elementary school not long ago. I walked into the first classroom, the so-called higher-performing class. The work on the walls was a snapshot of the rigor and high expectations. Students were engaged. The energy in the room said: we expect amazing things here. The principals and teacher talked about this group of kids with pride.

Then I was taken to the other class, just literally three doors down.

The contrast hit me before I even sat down. The work was at the lowest levels, basic and extremely watered down. The pace was slower. No work present on those walls. The engagement, non-existent. Completely different vibe. Moreover, the way the adults talked about that class told the whole story. There was a resignation to the class. The low expectations, especially their chances of passing MSTEP, nobody had to announce because everybody already understood it.

Those kids were being “tracked”. The very thing being withheld from them, rigorous, grade-level work, high expectations, deep engagement, was exactly what the research says they needed most.

That is not a support system. That system has already decided who certain kids are and what they deserve.

I left that school thinking about those kids. Because what I witnessed in that second classroom was not an isolated moment. It was the visible result of deficit thinking and a fixed mindset-not in the students, but in the adults and surrounding system.

If I am being honest about what drives it, many of this lives in how schools respond to test score pressure. When proficiency numbers are the primary measure of success, there is a quiet, sometimes unconscious temptation to concentrate energy on the students who are closest to the bar. The ones who are further away get written off, not with a formal decision, not with a meeting, just with a schedule and a classroom assignment that tells them everything they need to know about what the adults around them believe.

A test score is a snapshot. It is one data point on one day. It does not and should not define a child's ceiling, their capacity, or their future. When we let it do any of those things, when we use it to sort students into what they deserve access to, we have stopped using data as a tool and started using it as a verdict.

Carol Dweck's research on mindset is clear. A fixed mindset says ability is static, you either have it or you don't. A growth mindset says ability is developed, with the right conditions, the right support, and the right expectations, people grow. When we track students, when we pull them from grade-level work, when we build schedules that separate the "high" class from the "low" class, we are letting a fixed mindset run our schools. We have decided, often before a child has barely gotten started, what their ceiling is.

Adam Grant pushes back on that directly in Hidden Potential: "People who make major strides are rarely freaks of nature. They're usually freaks of nurture." That second classroom was full of kids who needed better nurturing. What they got instead was a lower ceiling and work that confirmed what the system had already decided about them.

Remediation is Built on the Same Logic.

We dress it up in different names, intervention blocks, skills groups, pull-out programs, resource rooms, strategic support classes, foundational skills courses, but the operating assumption is always the same: this child is not ready for grade-level work yet. Let's fix them first.

The Michigan Department of Education is direct about this. Keeping students out of grade-level content until all their gaps are filled does not work. It widens the gap. It does not close it.

The research backs that up consistently. Students in classrooms with grade-appropriate assignments and strong instruction close academic gaps by more than seven months in a single year compared to peers who were remediated. Seven months. For a kid who has been falling behind for years, that is not a rounding error. That is the difference between catching up and falling further behind every single school year.

Still, the pull toward remediation is strong, especially when schools are desperate for a fast turnaround. It feels like action. It looks like intervention. However, too often it is just a more organized version of giving up.

Acceleration Is Not What You Think It Is.

When most people hear "acceleration," they think gifted programs or honors tracks. That is not what I am talking about.

Academic acceleration means keeping every student moving forward on their grade-level trajectory, and providing targeted, just-in-time support to fill the specific gaps standing between them and success in current content. It is not skipping steps. It is not ignoring where students are. It is refusing to let where they are become a permanent address.

The distinction is important: remediation asks "What did this student miss?" Acceleration asks "What does this student need right now to succeed in what comes next?"

That is a fundamentally different question, and it produces fundamentally different results.

Acceleration builds the ramp.

In Practice

Talk is easy. Here is what it looks like when a district actually commits to this.

At Saginaw Public School District, we have been deliberate about dismantling the structures that quietly kept students out of rigorous content — at every level.

At the high school, we eliminated gatekeeping practices that had been denying students access to Advanced Placement and dual enrollment courses for years. There were unwritten rules. Unofficial filters. Counseling pathways that steered certain kids away from college-level work before they ever had a chance to try it. We changed that. We opened the doors. And what happened? Hundreds of students who would never have been given that opportunity are now sitting in AP classrooms and earning college credit while still in high school. Not because we lowered the standard — because we stopped letting adults decide in advance who was capable of meeting it.

That is acceleration. That is what it looks like when a growth mindset moves from a poster on the wall into an actual scheduling decision.

At the middle school level, we launched a redesign built on an MTSS framework — not to sort kids into remediation tracks, but to wrap support around grade-level instruction. Our students are working in Eureka Math², Read 180, and Math 180. These are rigorous, research-based programs that do not water down expectations. We added High-Dosage Tutoring through Varsity Tutors and after-school acceleration programs designed to build the skills students need for upcoming learning — not to re-teach everything they missed in fourth grade.

The shift in mindset among staff has been just as important as the program changes. Teachers who used to think their job was to remediate gaps are now asking different questions before a unit: What do my students need to access this content? What am I teaching next, and who needs what before we get there?

That is acceleration thinking. That is growth mindset in action, and it starts with a belief in every students ability to achieve at high levels if we design instruction that actually prepares them for it.

Keeping it Real

Every time we place a child in a remediation class instead of grade-level instruction. Those classes spend the majority of the time and in a cycle of below-level worksheets, recall tasks, isolated drills, low expectations and more remediation. The intention is good. The unintended consequences is that some spend years in this cycle, while peers take advanced courses, electives, dual enrollment. The unintended consequences of sending strong messages to children that they internalize…that they do not belong, that they are remedial or slow kids. Students feel it. Just like those kids in that lower-tracked classroom felt it, in the work they were given, in the pace of the room, in the way adults spoke about them when they thought no one was listening.

Students know when the bar has been set for them, and they perform accordingly.

That is not a student problem. That is a systems problem, and people who can choose to build them differently build systems.

The Standard

Acceleration does not mean ignoring learning gaps. It means refusing to let those gaps become justification for denying a child access to rigorous content. It means designing instruction that meets students where they are and moves them forward. It means believing, actually believing, not just saying it because it sounds good…that every student in front of you is capable of more than their last assessment score suggests.

That belief is not a slogan. It has to show up in scheduling decisions. In how we staff intervention. In what we hand students on the first day of a unit. In whether we walk into a classroom with high expectations or quiet resignation.

Excellence is not a privilege. It is a promise every leader must keep.

Dr. Mit Foley is the Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Curriculum, Instruction & Athletics at Saginaw Public School District and author of Transforming Urban Schools for Educational Excellence: A Guide to Moving from Vision to Victory (Routledge, 2026).