Classroom Chaos, Covid, and Automatic Promotion: Why So Many “Disruptive” Kids Are Actually Victims of Broken Teaching

 

In a recent discussion on Twitter (Now X) a teacher Jen@jenteach13 said:

You want to fix education?

Let teachers remove kids who make it impossible for everyone else to learn.

I agree — teachers must have real authority in the classroom. No one can teach effectively in chaos, and the majority of students deserve an environment where learning is possible.

But if we truly want to fix education, we must go deeper than simply removing “problem kids.”

 

The Post-Covid Surge in Disruption

 

We have seen a noticeable increase in disruptive behaviour in classrooms since 2021–2022. Why? During Covid, millions of children missed nearly a full year of school. Instead of holding them back or giving them proper remediation, most education systems continued the long-standing policy of automatic promotion without mastery of the 3Rs (Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic).

Children who were already behind were pushed forward anyway. The result is entirely predictable: greater frustration, wider gaps, and more acting out.

Many of these so-called “impossible” kids are not inherently disruptive or “bad.” They are bright children who shut down early in their schooling because they were taught distorted letter sounds (“buh” for B, “duh” for D, etc.). When they fell even further behind during lockdowns and were then automatically promoted, their frustration boiled over into disruption.

 

What 15+ Years of One-on-One Teaching Has Shown Me

 

For more than 15 years I have worked with many children labelled “dyslexic” or “problem kids.” When I teach them with clear, accurate phonics from the very beginning — no added “uh” sounds — and insist on mastery before moving forward, two things happen quickly:

They start reading fluently. 

Their behaviour improves dramatically.

 

The shutdown ends. Confidence returns. The “disruptive” label often disappears within weeks.

 

Applying Blackstone’s Principle in Education

 

This brings us back to the principle: “It is better that ten guilty persons go free than that one innocent suffer.”

Removing disruptive children may feel like justice for the majority, but we must ask: How many of these children are actually innocent victims of bad early reading instruction and automatic promotion policies?

Silencing or expelling them without addressing the root cause risks punishing the innocent. The real solution is prevention:

 

Teach clean, accurate letter sounds from day one. 

End automatic promotion — insist on mastery of the 3Rs. 

Provide proper remediation for children who fell behind during Covid instead of simply pushing them ahead.

 

Fix the teaching at the foundation, and you will need far fewer removals.

Teachers deserve authority in their classrooms. But real education reform means stopping the creation of frustrated, shutdown students in the first place. Until we do that, we are treating symptoms while the disease continues to spread.

The message has remained consistent for 15+ years because the results speak for themselves — one child at a time.