Accelerate or Remediate? You’re At The Controls.
By Sonya Murray-Darden, PhD
It’s Monday morning, and Maya Johnson stands outside her seventh-grade classroom door, feeling the familiar weight of worry settling on her shoulders.
Her recent data shows that half of her students read below grade level. The district is pressuring teachers to address ‘learning loss.’ A colleague just suggested Maya pull struggling students for remedial work during core instruction time.
“Should I even try to teach grade-level texts?” Maya thinks. “Maybe I need to go back to fifth-grade material to fill the gaps first.”
If you’re like Maya, you know this dilemma all too well. As middle-level educators facing unfinished learning, we’re constantly told what our students can’t do, what they’re missing, and what they lack. The pressure to remediate – to pull students backward to ‘catch them up’ – feels overwhelming.
We can’t control the pandemic’s impact, years of missed instruction, or the gaps our students bring to our classrooms. But here’s the truth: We can control whether we accelerate or remediate. And that one decision changes everything.
The Acceleration Mindset: From Reactive to Proactive
In Serving Educational Equity: A Five-Course Framework for Accelerated Learning (Corwin, 2023), my co-author Gwen Turner and I drew on Stephen Covey’s work in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to help educators distinguish between being reactive and proactive.
Covey explains that proactive people focus on what they can do and influence, while reactive people drain their energy worrying about things beyond their control.
This mindset shift is critical when addressing unfinished learning. As we write in the book, “We agree with Barbara Blackburn (2008) that we should focus on the things we can control and quit worrying about the things that are out of our control” (Murray-Darden & Turner, 2023, p. xxiii). When educators consider embracing learning acceleration and educational equity, we must remember our power and influence in the classroom.
The reactive approach involves feeling paralyzed by what students don’t know and defaulting to remediation. The proactive approach involves recognizing what you can control and choosing acceleration.
Understanding the Three Circles: Where Acceleration Lives
We adapted Covey’s Circle of Control diagram to help educators assess their mindset and identify where they can take action on acceleration. The framework consists of three concentric circles:
Circle of Concern (I, We, & It) – The outermost circle represents what you know but cannot control: the external impacts on learning (like politics), students’ previous educational experiences, systemic inequities, or family circumstances. These factors created your students’ gaps, but they’re largely outside your sphere of influence.
Circle of Influence (We) – The middle circle encompasses what you can participate in but don’t fully control: school-wide intervention decisions, professional development offerings, or curriculum adoption. You can advocate for acceleration-focused approaches here.
Circle of Control (I) – The innermost circle contains what you can directly act on: your instructional decisions, your belief in students’ capacity for grade-level work, how you respond to unfinished learning, and whether you choose acceleration or remediation in your classroom.
The Acceleration Decision Lives in Your Circle of Control
Here’s where it gets exciting: The choice to accelerate rather than remediate falls squarely in your Circle of Control.
While you can’t control the gaps students bring, you absolutely can control:
► Whether you teach grade-level content or pull students back to ‘fill gaps’
► How you provide just-in-time support within grade-level lessons
► Your belief that all students can access rigorous, grade-level work
► The scaffolds you use to make grade-level content accessible
► Whether you group students by perceived deficits or maintain high expectations
► How you respond when students struggle with grade-level material
► The language you use – ‘unfinished learning’ versus ‘learning loss’
► Your commitment to acceleration over remediation
When we focus our energy on our Circle of Control, we stop saying, ‘I can’t teach grade-level content because my students aren’t ready,’ and say, ‘I will teach grade-level content with the supports my students need to succeed.’
Taking Action: Questions for an Acceleration Mindset
In the book we encourage educators to pause and ask themselves two critical questions before feeling overwhelmed by factors beyond their control:
- “Do I have the power to make changes in my classroom?”
- “Is this something I can decide to implement in my classroom?”
For acceleration, these questions become:
- “Do I have the power to teach grade-level content?”
- “Can I provide scaffolds rather than pull students backward?”
The answer to both is yes. You cannot control your students’ past experiences, but you absolutely control your instructional approach today.
Practical Applications: Choosing Acceleration
Let’s return to Maya. After reflecting on the Circle of Control framework, she shifts from a remediation mindset to an acceleration mindset:
Instead of: “My students read at a fifth-grade level, so I need to use fifth-grade texts.”
She thinks: “I can’t control their reading levels, but I can control my decision to use grade-level texts with strategic scaffolds – vocabulary pre-teaching, chunking, partner reading, and text-dependent questions that build comprehension.”
Instead of: “I should pull struggling students out during core instruction for remedial work.”
She thinks: “I can’t control what they missed in previous grades, but I can control keeping them in grade-level instruction and providing just-in-time support for the specific skills they need within the context of rigorous content.”
Instead of: “They’re not ready for this standard yet. I need to spend weeks on prerequisite skills first.”
She thinks: “I can’t control their prerequisite knowledge gaps, but I can control my commitment to grade-level standards while embedding foundational skills within the lesson rather than delaying rigorous content.”
This isn’t about ignoring what students don’t know or pretending gaps don’t exist. It’s about recognizing that remediation – pulling students backward – is one choice, and acceleration – keeping students moving forward with support – is another. And that choice is yours.
Why Acceleration Matters
Research consistently shows that acceleration, not remediation, serves students best. When we pull students backward to ‘catch them up,’ we often widen gaps rather than close them. Students miss new grade-level content while reviewing old material, falling further behind their peers. Worse, we communicate low expectations, which impacts students’ academic identities and motivation.
Acceleration means providing grade-level instruction with strategic scaffolds and just-in-time support. It means believing students can access rigorous content and building the supports to make it happen. And it’s a decision that lives entirely within your Circle of Control.
Making It Actionable: Your Acceleration Plan
Try this exercise this week to shift toward acceleration:
- Identify one unit or lesson where you’ve been tempted to pull students backward to remediate. What grade-level content were you considering delaying or replacing?
- For that lesson, ask: ‘Is my temptation to remediate in my Circle of Concern (I can’t control the gaps) or my Circle of Control (I can control my instructional approach)?’ Recognize it’s in your control.
- Design three specific scaffolds that would make grade-level content accessible: vocabulary supports, graphic organizers, sentence frames, strategic grouping, or modeling.
- Commit to keeping students in grade-level content while providing just-in-time support for prerequisite skills within the lesson context.
- Reflect afterward: What happened when you chose acceleration? What did students accomplish that surprised you?
The Framework in Action
The Circle of Control is the beginning – “Meal Planning, Prioritizing, & Prepping” in our Five-Course Framework for Accelerated Learning. Once you’ve assessed your mindset and identified that acceleration lives in your Circle of Control, you’re ready to move through our five courses: examining equity through self-awareness (Soup), building relationships and addressing trauma (Appetizer), using data and surveying curriculum (Salad), implementing effective instruction (Main Course), and elevating engagement and motivation (Dessert).
But it all starts with understanding what’s on your plate and recognizing that you have the choice to accelerate rather than remediate.
The Bottom Line: Acceleration Is Your Choice
As middle-level educators committed to excellence for all students, we face real challenges. Past external influences on education have created unprecedented learning disruptions. Many students arrive with significant unfinished learning, and the pressure to remediate is intense and constant.
But remember, here’s what you control: whether you believe students can access grade-level work, whether you provide that access through acceleration or deny it through remediation, and whether you maintain high expectations or lower the bar.
When you walk into your classroom tomorrow, remember: You can’t control the gaps your students bring. But you absolutely control whether you teach grade-level content. You control your scaffolds, your supports, and your belief in students’ capacity. You control whether you pull students backward or move them forward.
And that’s where transformation begins – in the daily instructional decisions you make within your Circle of Control.
References
Blackburn, B. (2008). Rigor is NOT a four-letter word. Routledge. (also see: 4th Edition, 2025)
Covey, S. (1990). The 7 habits of highly effective people. Simon & Schuster.
Murray-Darden, S., & Turner, G. (2023). Serving educational equity: A five-course framework for accelerated learning. Corwin.
ALSO SEE THESE MIDDLEWEB ARTICLES:
The Critical Partnership of Rigor and Scaffolding (Barbara Blackburn)
Breaking Down Fluency Gates for Middle School Math Students (Juliana Tapper)
We Need to Accelerate, Not Remediate Learning (Murray & Turner)
Sonya Murray-Darden, PhD, is CEO and founder of Accelerated Education Consulting and co-author of Serving Educational Equity: A Five-Course Framework for Accelerated Learning (Corwin, 2023). She is also an adjunct professor at Saint Louis University and a Missouri Leadership Development Specialist for EducationPlus.
