Textbook progress is not learning progress.

Lately at “the other place” the employees have been pushing students to finish the textbooks at a certain pace. They put these suggestions into the student’s profiles (that most teachers NEVER read).

This is dumb.

Moving through a textbook means nothing. It shows only that you know how to turn a page. But many students use it as a measure of academic progress at “the other place.” I completed one of the units, I MUST be improving.
This is not correct. There is a correlation between moving through a textbook but the causation is questionable. Is it the movement through the textbook that causes you to learn or the absorption and internalization of the content that causes you to learn?
If it is the movement through the textbook, skimming the contents or flipping through it should have the same outcome as someone who moves slowly and methodically through the contents. Stopping to read, learn, and practice each part of the contents.
But that is now what we see. People who rush through the contents appear to have worse outcomes. So I continue to advocate moving through the textbook at a pace that prioritizes understanding and improvement over simply moving on.

That’s not to say there is a such thing as moving too slow. You can induce a state of over analyzing in your students if you beat a dead horse for too long. Get them to a point of mastery and then reinforce what they learned periodically.

That’s my two cents. “The other place” is doing a disservice to it’s students. They just want to push their overpriced (and frankly poor quality) textbooks. If you finish one and fail the advancement assessment, that’s an extra textbook fee they can squeeze out of you. It hurts the students and it should bother any teacher with any semblance of passion for the improvement of their students.