re: 17 year old 7th grader.

I bet this is a VERY common occurrence in public schools if you looked close enough. At 13yo, I moved from a city school to a small town country school in the seventh grade, the age of the guys and gals on the back roll was between 16 and 18. Best real world education of my life while the absolutely worse scholastic education of my life. My parents realized that mistake with a quickness and enrolled me in private catholic school to save me from all that I had seen, done and learned, too late, scarred by life...

no social promotion. we had 3 17y/o 8th graders at Baker Middle back in the early 80's. They were complete badasses in middle school, but all quit before High School, where they would not have been big dogs.

"My mom held me back"

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I don't know about that

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Of course there's likely more to do it than just "being dumb"