While I was unplugged, the New York Times published an article by Motoko Rich about whether schools had lowered their standards for high school graduation. Some “experts” complained that students were getting a diploma without being college and career ready, creating a need for significant rates of remediation in colleges and community colleges.
Rich visited a high school in South CaroIina where the graduation rate had increased impressively but college admission tests show that most students are not well-prepared for college, and only about half the students had the math skills needed for many jobs today.
The implication of the article is that high schools are lowering standards to increase the graduation rate.
Now here is the dilemma. Most employers won’t hire anyone who never got a high school diploma. What do we do with the significant numbers of students who can’t pass the increasingly difficult tests that policy makers have decided are essential? If the students flunk them again and again, they will likely drop out. What jobs will be open to them? They might be well qualified to learn the skills of a home health aide, a nurse’s assistant, a truck driver, a retail clerk, a construction worker, but these jobs will be closed to them without the high school degree.
If faced with this dilemma, what should we do? Long ago, it was possible to drop out of high school and get a good factory job. Those jobs are gone.
It seems to me that it is useless to keep raising standards and making tests harder, because that will increase the number of students who won’t graduate. I favor differentiated diplomas. One, a “local” or “general” diploma, signifying that the student took all the required courses, passed them, and graduated in good standing. Another might be a Career and Technical Education diploma, signifying success in a career path. And a third might be a college-ready diploma, signifying academic prowess.
What we can’t afford to do is to make schools so “hard” that half the students never get a diploma and are locked out of gainful employment.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“…only about half the students had the math skills needed for many jobs today.”
I’m sorry for the potty language, but ROFLMAO. How many jobs need *any* math today? Heck, even cashiers don’t need to know basic money skills – the cash register does it all for them. Most of those jobs that do need math, other than the obvious science, engineering and math jobs, require basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and – maybe – fractions/percents. I have a really, really hard time believing that today’s students are any less proficient than any other generation’s students on basic math. The rephormers are getting really desperate in their claims these days.
I agree. EXCEPT — the “reformers” are making it LESS likely that the students will have those basic math skills. Why? Because they DEMAND that teachers get their students with below-level math skills through the advanced Algebra 1 curriculum or be fired as having low expectations. So instead of slowing down the curriculum so struggling students can learn more, they rush through and no one learns anything except the students who are able to learn at that pace.
What a huge waste of resources. I truly believe that it is intentional. The reformers don’t really care about education or good teachers. They are looking to make the schools into failures and have glommed onto these “high standards” as a way to force the issue. It is shameful and those people care about nothing but their own pocketbooks and promoting their careers. And I include Arne Duncan among them. He cares about pleasing the billionaires who he is deluded into thinking are “smart” because frankly, he is not very smart himself and has a very limited understanding of the world.
I know he went to Harvard and I challenge him to release his Chicago Lab school GPA and SAT scores in math (and SAT II scores and AP scores in math and science) that got him in (as opposed to his basketball prowess which obviously helped enormously as the beneficiary of Harvard’s strong affirmative action for athletes). He majored in sociology which means I suspect he took almost no math or science classes at Harvard. Has anyone ever asked Arne how much math and science he took in college? In fact, at the top colleges, a “sociology” major can often get away with taking “rocks for jocks” as their lone science course. Those students don’t take math “placement” exams as they are required to do in community colleges so that their lack of real understanding of the high level Algebra II concepts are never revealed.
How did Arne Duncan prove he was “college ready” for Harvard? Or did his sociology major never demand he prove how much math and science knowledge he had?
Hey, hey, hey!
As a geologist, I bristle at the implication a geology course has less rigor than any other introductory college-level science course!
That wasn’t very gneiss.
I am NOT a geologist, but agree with rockhound2. At my liberal arts school a lot of people signed up for Geology 101 to help fulfill a science requirement and were surprised at how hard it was. Lucky for me, I did a chemistry for dummies class instead! And don’t you have to take statistics to be a Sociology major?
It was easy to fulfill my distribution requirements at UB with Calciulus and Statistics. While II was good in math, I could care less about science, yet I had to take one science course. I chose Astronomy which was very interesting plus more like physics (math based) than biology or chemistry.
Sorry to the geologists (and I have one in the family)! I know that students who pursue the study of Geology are taking extremely difficult courses.
But I also know that at some very prestigious colleges, there are certain science classes that are NOT designed for students who are going to major in the subject. They used to be known as “guts” and they were courses you could famously take to get your science requirement out of the way because you just weren’t especially good at science. So that students (like Arne Duncan perhaps?) in top college never had to prove their “college readiness” by showing they had a true grasp of advanced math and science classes. It was probably easier to get an A or B in certain highly selective college science classes than it was to receive a 90+ on Regents exams in the same subject. Fortunately for the many students from private schools like U Chicago Lab school, they never had to take those kinds of Regents or state exams or even SAT subject tests in those subjects to garner an admission to Harvard! The “math and science” readiness of Arne Duncan’s kids at U Chicago Lab never has to be tested if they choose to attend an elite college where they don’t have to take real math and science classes. They can still graduate magna cum laude from Harvard with their sociology degree.
Harvard has a well known reputation for handing out A’s (and “honors” at graduation) like they were candy, so passing and graduating would seem to be a no-brainer.
Harvard is one of those places where getting in is 99% of the game — and even that often depends on who (not what) you know.
And once you graduate, you’re pretty well set.
I’m on a school committee where I live and I can tell you lower income parents would worry about this. There are real class differences in this country and if you’re in a mixed income public school people talk about them- it’s discussed. If you have a higher income group of kids in a public school and then middle and then low, parents sometimes feel that the higher income kids are “steered” toward college while their children are not.
I think it has to be addressed because it’s real. They believe this is happening. It’s one of the reasons they want an “objective” measure, which translates to “standardized tests”. They don’t believe it is level playing field.
I think vocational ed is great. My first job was with a technical certificate from a community college (I later went to college) and one of my sons is a skilled trades apprentice. I just think you have to be really careful that it’s applied equitably, that no assumptions are made about what people are capable of and what they want.
This is a good point, and an issue in my mixed income district as well. The fact that our high school has a 50% graduation rate that will probably drop even lower when NYSED raises the Regents passing score isn’t doing anyone any favors, though, and speaks to Diane’s point, though. I think her idea is excellent, but agree that implementation has to be done very thoughtfully.
This sort of “steering” definitely happens in North Carolina. I’ve had many good students at my community college who were steered into vocational courses in high school because they were lower class or their parents just weren’t involved. One of these students needed remedial math, but then went on to get a B.S. in physics and a master’s in computer science.
I think that before we start jiggering with diplomas we need to ask what is actually happening. We need to look at the students. If the population of students is different, how is it different? Do they have the skills to be productive citizens? What does it take to be ready to obtain a job, enter a training program or pursue a college degree?
I struggle with this college and career ready label; I don’t think anyone has really defined what either term means and they certainly shouldn’t be uttered in the same breath. As a matter of fact, that kid who is going on with academic studies is not necessarily ready to take on a career, so I don’t think a student who is not going to pursue college should be receiving what could be perceived as a less desirable diploma. Entering the working world or a training program should not be viewed as the lesser of the alternatives. We all know there are high status and low status jobs, in this society, usually defined by how much money you make, which is usually further mediated by your level of education, which in a circular fashion is, in general, also mediated by your parents status.
What kind of solid base do we want to provide for our children so they continue to have options open to them beyond high school? What do we really need to know in order to continue to grow as a human being and a contributing and valued member of society?
“I don’t think anyone has really defined what either term means and they certainly shouldn’t be uttered in the same breath.”
Exactly. By definition, if you’re “college ready” you are not “career ready” because you need the college before you’re ready for the career that you’re going to college to get. If your chosen “career” doesn’t require college, then you’re not “college and career ready” because you don’t need the college.
Maybe the term should be “college OR career ready”.
Maybe the term should be “job ready” since many of the minimum wage jobs that seem to be created in our “new economy” are not exactly “careers”.
People keep talking about readiness, but it never occurs to them to question the idea that ALL students need to “possess” the SAME knowledge (other than literacy). Many students are so sick of being told what, when, and how to learn for 12 years that they disengage early on…or risk nervous breakdowns trying to keep up. What, specifically, would make them “ready” for college or work? I think a big part of that would be the ability to continue learning on their own. But why would we expect that when they have had no control over their learning for 12 years?
In schools where children are respected as individuals, and are given the opportunity to pursue learning authentically, as they do before they are sentenced to school, they become lifelong learners. They are “ready” for responsibility because they’ve experienced that responsibility for years. Unfortunately, this rarely occurs in public schools that still retain the factory model–one size fits all. The defective “parts” are not the fault of the raw material…They are the result of an outdated and destructive “manufacturing method.”
I agreed with you until you got to the public schools that still retain the old factory model. Unfortunately, today it is a matter of whether a school has bought into the scripted, test-centered culture which to my mind is just an enhanced factory model. Both stereotypes aim to produce identical widgets.
Exactly…as long as the mission statement of the DOE focuses solely on “educating” students who can “successfully compete in the global economy,” the reproduction of clones model will remain. Do they really think that developing the unique potential of every child would be BAD for the economy? Then again, if kids learn to think for themselves, they may start to ask questions as adults…and become much more difficult to govern.
In reality, the buzz phrase is is, “College (Debt) and (Poverty Wage) Career ready…
Back to the drawing board with education. Years ago, “somebody” decided that every student in the U.S. Educational system had to go on to college. Vocational education was done away with. And this was way before there ever was a NCLB law in place.
Then “Somebody” learned that each state had different ideas about what level of education was acceptable. Kids who went to grade school in some of the Southern States were way behind schools in the Northern states – learned the hard way when Mom and Dad needed to move.
Now “Someone” decided that was unacceptable, and changes were made. ITBS became a nation-wide used testing mechanism. That would shows us the “facts” about educational achievements.
And now we are at a 180 degree turn-about. Finally, “Someone” recognized that no, not all children will ever be “College” ready material. But no one is picking up the need for those students who need to be “career” ready. Some students may do amazingly well in vocational programs (Oops, we tore those down). The Armed Forces, for example, are able to train these “drop-outs” and these same kids now shine.
How about bringing back Vo-Tech schools?
I wonder if some of this is regional. We have a vocational high school and have for years. It’s always been popular. They do a half day at the high school and then take a bus to the vocational high school for the 2nd half. The vocational high school serves several districts so is centrally located. I always hear how vocational programs are “gone” but they’re not even close to “gone” here- they’re popular and have been for decades.
“Back to the drawing board with education.”
No, that’s been the problem of the last 15 or 20 years – we’ve been trying to re-invent what was basically working all along. Yes, various tweaks were needed, most especially in areas regarding equity for poor and minority students (which such areas, incidentally, are still greatly in need of tweaking). But throwing the baby out with the bath water is what got us into the predicament we’re in now. We don’t need to do more of that.
There are still vo-ed schools, but I believe the students STILL are expected to learn the much higher level of math that demonstrates they are “college ready”.
What’s truly sad is that instead of recognizing that the standards are outrageous, they simply say “well, you only need a 50 to pass the Algebra 1 Regents”. That is so infuriating! It makes it WORSE! Because a teacher is still expected to rush through an outrageous amount of material in a single year (or be accused to having “low expectation”) when it would make far more sense to have a 2 or 3 year Algebra I course for the non-math talented kids where they actually learn the concepts better, albeit slower. You FORCE a teacher to cover a massive amount of ground that the so-called “reformers” say is necessary to learn in 9th grade if you have “high expectations” that you need to have as a teacher.
Someday I hope those reformers are held up as charlatans they are.
In Washington state there is the option to take a ‘practical algebra’ course instead of Algebra II. This is intended for students planning to go to community colleges or other, less academic forms of job training. But passing Algebra I and Geometry (or soon their Common Core equivalent) are graduation requirements for all.
I am more puzzled by “college and career ready” when politicians and business leaders ensure college is unaffordable and careers become contract or temp positions while others are shipped overseas.
The conservatives will treat those discarded students just like their “get sick, die quick” approach to health care. Only “no diploma, lose your home-a”
What you said.
Wait till teaching is “uberized”.
ONE TAIL (pathway for success) will never WAG the BIG DOG (50 million children ranging from the super affluent and privileged to the impoverished and disadvantaged to the cognitively disabled).
However that is precisely what the dynamic duo of edu-fakers has foisted upon America’s vast diversity of young people. Coleman and Gates, impaired by their own arrogance and ignorance, have created a pathway for success that is more narrow and constrained than it has ever been in the history of US public education. And at a time when what we need is just the opposite.
Why more parents aren’t up in arms over this purposeful destruction of possibilities and opportunities for their own kids is somewhat surprising.
I have never understood what having a high school diploma has to do with being “college ready”. They should be two different things, as they were when I was in high school.
The high school diploma should signify the person has the basic math, reading, writing and knowledge of history that should be expected of adult citizens who wish to have basic level jobs for which all of those skills in LIMITED amounts are necessary. In other words, the most basic Algebra that is probably taught the first month of today’s “Algebra 1” that all 9th graders are supposed to pass. Most adults who haven’t had kids in the system do not understand how advanced the Algebra I has become and I am certain that most members of Congress could not pass a 9th grade Algebra 1 exam without massive amounts of tutoring. That’s because only 20% of it is what they learned in high school, and most of it many people didn’t even learn in college. And that is 9th grade.
There should be a SEPARATE college track for those kids who want college. Vocational tracks for those kids who want to learn a trade. And 2 year community colleges for students who wanted a vocational track in high school and at age 20 or 25 now feel they want to pursue higher education and need more advanced math, science or something else. If the teachers at community college feel their students aren’t “college ready” that’s just tough luck. Their job is to teach the ones who now want to learn that material. That is why there needs to be those kinds of colleges because expecting all kids to learn that in high school before they want or need it is absurd.
This isn’t brain surgery and it worked fine before the privatizers of public schools decided to change the rules because the best way to take over public education is to set up a system where all schools will fail, except the ones who have enough students who are on the 4-year college track because they WANT it — usually found in affluent communities.
“In other words, the most basic Algebra that is probably taught the first month of today’s “Algebra 1” that all 9th graders are supposed to pass. Most adults who haven’t had kids in the system do not understand how advanced the Algebra I has become and I am certain that most members of Congress could not pass a 9th grade Algebra 1 exam without massive amounts of tutoring. ”
It’s a great point. My 7th grader does much more complex math than I did in 7th grade, and I went from high school into a math-dependent technical certificate program. I did no remediation.
I listen to some of the middle aged politicians, people who are my age, talk about how we’re “dumbing down” high school and I don’t believe it was “more rigorous” when they went to school. I know it wasn’t. I was there 🙂
I teach philosophy at a community college, and it is not my job to teach students who are not ready for college courses. I’m not going to dumb down my course for those students. That would be a gross disservice to all my students who deserve a college-level course so that they can transfer to a university and be successful after transferring.
Eric,
70% of students at the community college where I adjunct take at least one remedial class. I believe the percentage is the same for CUNY community colleges.
Eric, no one wants you to “dumb down” your philosophy course. But it is possible that your students in that class are not “college ready” for math. Now, if they are lucky they are in a school where they are never tested to see whether or not their math skills make the grade (like some Ivy League colleges). And the same is true for some very math adept kids who might struggle in writing.
Someone needs to teach post-high school students when they are ready to learn. Maybe your community college philosophy classes are filled to the brim with eager and competent students. Maybe half the class are senior citizens who graduated college decades ago. But someone needs to provide an education for post-high school grads who did not choose the “college ready” track. If not community colleges, then who?
I teach high school math at a small Tennessee high school. We have always had a good reputation, and our experience with the winds of reform might be instructive.
In the 1990s, we decided that students growing difficulty with what they were having to do in Algebra I might be mitigated by placing a majority of the students in A pre-Algebra setting as 9th graders. Since we were a K-12 school, very proficient students could be placed in Algebra as middle schoolers, but we did not have to build an entire class of them. The pre-algebra experience was demanding, and we got as far into algebra as some other schools got into it in Algebra I. Most students were then ready for a rigorous course in Algebra I as 10th graders. Geometry and Algebra II followed, and the average student would come back from college reporting that students all around them were flagging while they succeeded.
Enter the first wave of reform, which required that all students take Algebra I. We are a bigger school now, as suburbia moves toward us, but our program is now dictated by the state. It is not as effective. Students more often feel less prepared than they did under the old program.
This illustrates that test scores and course titles are not really instructive a our efforts at reform. Not that we are a bad place now. Our kids are still great. But they deserve more than being told what to do from the top down. That never works.
Your suggestions about diplomas are a great way to address the problems presented. As long time educators know, academic skills are not really decreasing.
Not only are schools figging the graduation rate numbers, but (as a nation), I believe we are figging the unemployment and underemployed numbers, as well. I agree with Chiara. This is a real problem. Speaking as a Florida resident (and teacher at a big district in FL), the mantra is for all students to be college ready upon graduation. That’s why our 5th graders are writing literary essays, which once would have been reserved for honors classes in high school (for students on the college track). Not every child is college bound, but this is not to say that a child lacking stability in the home or classified as a low SES should be excluded either. With that said, I know a lot of really smart, college-degreed plumbers and technicians, and they make a heck of a lot more than I do with my graduate degree. There is definitely much more to this and, even with common core standards, each state and district has a different feel. I know my district is trying to create different diplomas; however, I also know that many employers require a “standard” diploma. This will only create greater inequities.
“With that said, I know a lot of really smart, college-degreed plumbers and technicians, and they make a heck of a lot more than I do with my graduate degree.”
One of the lawyers I used to work with sent me a joke I’m reminded of. A lawyer decides to go into solo practice and as he’s setting up his new office space, he realizes the toilet isn’t working properly. He futzes around a bit before giving up and calling a plumber. The plumber has the problem fixed in less than half an hour and tells the lawyer, “With parts and labor, that comes to $500.”
“$500!” squawks the lawyer, “that’s obscene!”
“Yeah,” replies the plumber, “that’s what I used to think when I was a lawyer.
The lawyer who sent me the joke added at the end of the email, “That’s one smart lawyer.”
This post is right on the money. They should return to the days when high schools gave out ACADEMIC DIPLOMAS and GENERAL DIPLOMAS. Back in the 1960’s and 70’s students entered different tracks. The non-academic kids could take vocational courses in auto shop, secretarial skills, mechanical drawing, etc; classes that actually helped them secure gainful employment after graduation. They did not have to take the more demanding Regents exams or other standardized tests.
Now they have abolished all the vocational courses; and every student must secure a one size fits all academic diploma. Believe it or not, this actually reduced the dropout rate. Many students with little interest in academic subjects came to school for the vocational courses.
And this should be done while ALSO offering 2 year community colleges that offer those more advanced “college ready” math and science classes for free to any former high school student who got a general diploma and now wants an academic one.
Teach the advanced math and science concepts to students when they WANT TO LEARN those concepts. Some will never want or need to learn them. Some will never need them but will want to learn them. Some will try to learn them and find that the concepts are difficult and they change their mind. But if you offer a free “post-high school community college” that allows students — for free- to get ready for more advanced college level courses on their own schedule, you probably help far more students in the long run. But graduating high school should mean that you know basic high school math, NOT that you are ready to start learning multivariable calculus.
NYCPSP,
Who is going to pay for free community college? Should freshman and sophomores at four year institutions be on board too?
Abigail, are you asking who will pay in the ideal world?
It would be far cheaper to have free community college for the post-high school grads who did not take the classes necessary to make them ready than to have them waste their time in high school sitting in classes moving 3 or 4 times as fast as they can or want to learn at that point.
I never had to take an exit exam at the high school level. We had end of course exams and that was enough. The only time I took a comprehensive exams was in college at the end of my major. We had to complete a major research project and write and present a paper as well. The college eliminated the exam requirement later.
In NY, once upon a time, there were two high school diplomas: a “local” diploma and a “Regents” diploma. Both were high school diplomas, but the local version did not require students to pass certain regents exams. All students took and had to pass the same coursework, but not all students had to take certain summative exams.
But the important question here is whether education should be only a handmaiden to a national labor market, driven by the needs of private corporations. Surely education in a democratic country must mean more than mere training for a job in a corporation.
We are beginning to bump up against an interesting national economic and political problem: we now live in a society that is technically capable of creating enough wealth for everyone to live decently without everyone needing to work! So we have a political problem: is the efficiency of business something that ought to satisfy people’s needs, or, are people created only to serve the profitability of corporations? Perhaps we should reduce the length of the work week to enable everyone to find work, without reducing wages. This change would enable everyone to buy enough to live decently, even though the profitability of corporations would suffer. (At that point, we’d need some kind of public bank to supply investment capital to deal with the fall off in private corporate investment as a result of an increase in the relative size of wage costs…but that’s a technical economic problem that could be solved. And it’s worth solving because it would improve the quality of our civilization!)
I don’t think we should ever exclude any student from enjoying a full curriculum of arts, physical education, literature, history, science, music, math, and writing because they might not show “academic prowess.” We need to be careful not to re-introduce the old tracking system of the post WWII period that led to all sorts of discrimination. We want everyone, regardless of type of employment, to be able to participate fully in the political and cultural life of the nation. Academic prowess should not be a necessary condition of earning a good living–if we could break the link between these two things, we’d do a lot to regain control of real education.
Education should not be subservient to corporations. So simple, yet so far from where we are. School has become little more than a credentialing mechanism, in the eyes of students. That’s when we know something’s really wrong.
From Albert Einstein’s essay “Why Socialism?”:
“This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career…
Human beings are not condemned, because of their biological constitution, to annihilate each other or to be at the mercy of a cruel, self-inflicted fate … The economic anarchy of capitalistic society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil.”
I think it is important to offer students options and second chances. I see no value to a “one size fits all” diploma. In a country with a diverse population, it is to our benefit to widen the net for students in order to be more inclusionary. It is both better for the students and for the economy as people with access to gaining a diploma will be more productive members of society. Likewise, I see no point to creating high failure rates for the GED, which has happened since Pearson revised the test. There is no point to creating artificially high barriers for those trying to apply to entry level positions.
Diane,
Have you read Ted Dintersmith’s new work, Most Likely to Succeed, co-authored with Tony Wagner. Also, a remarkable movie with the same title. He’s also written a couple of interesting pieces on Valerie’s blog at the Washington Post. .
Yes, I have read “Most Likely to Succeed.” What was your takeaway?
I’m a retired former high school principal who has worked in some highly complex schools. And I guess I am an optimist and hopeful for this kind of work. I think Dintersmith is a corporate type that seems to support and understand a progressive agenda. So much reminds me of the ideals of Sizer, G. Wiggins who dared to put ideas into place that most never thought of or tired.
I’m concerned about job prospects for my grandchildren who will all have the opportunity for a college education but may not have meaningful work opportunities. I am concerned about many of the kids I served as a principal who have little chance of getting a college education and lesser chance of a middle class life.
I love the ideas of High Tech High and other project based learning models. that kids need to make choices that follow their passions, and that school ought to think about non-cognitive skills in place of all the emphasis placed on testing.
Would love to know your takeaways from the book Diane. I guess you really do read all the posts.
Greg
What the heck is a “non-cognitive skill”? This outburst is probably totally unfair. I have not read the book although I am vaguely familiar with high tech high. I don’t care who you are or what you do if your brain ain’t engaged, you are trouble.
Not trying to put words in Greg’s mouth, but non-cognitive skills might refer to other “domains” of being human. Public schools focus only the mental domain. But learner-centered schools include social, emotional, physical, creative, natural (relationship to nature), and that dirty word “spiritual,” which is simply mindfulness, knowing oneself, and taking time for reflection. No, they aren’t skills, but they are all part of educating the whole person.
As long as we insist that everyone go to college and our economy keeps reducing the amount of jobs for non-HS graduates, the system will be flooded with more failure and depression.
Before the Christmas break a fellow blogger posted the following comment:
Policymakers aren’t really working that hard to increase enrollment or the benefit (in relation to the cost) of attending college. It’s just that “college and career ready” sounds better than “exploitable populace with adequate workforce skills”. Try validating misguided policy or running for office with that slogan.
It pretty much says it all..
It worked in the past. In NYS there was the Regents Diploma and a School Diplma as well as a Diploma for those who attended a Technocal School where they were trained to be a mechanic or beautician or nurse’s aid.
Then Commissioner Mills decided EVERYONE needed a Regents Diplma Unfortunately, not everyone can pass the five required exams. We relalized my dyslexic son would never be able to “walk across the stage” so we pulled him out at eighteen and he passed his GED (which would be impossible today since the GED is now a Common Core like exam).
Even bright kids might have a weak subject area. I tutored students who passed ELA and American History but couldn’t get more than a fifty on Algebra or Biology. Forget the Global Studies exam which covers two years of content.
We do a dis-service to our children when we put them in impossible situations which doom them to failure. And it’s not as if our graduation rates have always been high. My grandfather was the first in his family to graduate from eighth grade. My mother was the fist in the family to go to college. Most of her friends married and started their careers as house wives (it’s been relatively recently that women have routinely participated in higher education). Until about ten years ago, Eighth Grade Graduation was a big deal in Buffalo because parents knew there was a real chance that their kids wouldn’t make it through high school. Now it’s called a “Moving Up Day” to help change the mindset.
I agree with Diane. High School is not College Prep. Let’s give out appropriate diplomas representing what the child has earned, not punishing them for being unable to jump through all the hoops or climb all the walls we have placed in their educational path.
“Even bright kids might have a weak subject area. I tutored students who passed ELA and American History but couldn’t get more than a fifty on Algebra or Biology. ”
This is absolutely true of MANY students whose families are rich enough to send them to private school.
Those students NEVER have to pass any Algebra or Biology exam. Never. All they need to do it to take their private school class in it and if the private school gives every struggling student a B- many private colleges are delighted to take those students and don’t care one iota whether they are “college ready”. Those private school grads can’t go to state universities because they’d never pass a placement test with their lack of math ability, but they can graduate magna cum laude with a humanities degree from many, many private liberal arts colleges that employers think are “good colleges”.
Public school kids with middle class parents have to keep “proving” they are college ready. But rich kids at private schools never do. If they did, all of this nonsense would stop because so many of the parents didn’t realize how advanced in math knowledge their kids supposedly needed to be to worthy of a college education.
Recall that the College and Career meme was fashioned by Achieve,Inc. and others well before the economic crisis of 2008 and with data mustered to exclude/ignore the fact that a typical U.S. worker has 11 jobs before the age of 44 or so.
“Career” was also defined in relation to upward mobility within one of the official pathways fully mapped by the O-Net system widely used for career counseling.
The point is that the meme became hardwired into policies and practices with not an ounce of critical thinking about changes in the economy, the potential virtues of NOT having absolute clarity about careers (the idiocy of having Kindergarteners make career and/or colllege choices ( about which I have posted) and so on.
If job prep is to be considered important for the kind high school diploma one pursues, then you have to look beyond course requirements (e.g. Algebra,) and consider where the entry jobs are expected to be. The US Labor Department offers this information and updates every two years..
The largest projected employment increases from 2012 to 2022 are expected to come in 22 of 30 occupational categories that typically DO NOT require post secondary education .
Occupations that typically require an apprenticeship are projected to grow 22.2 percent from 2012 to 2022, faster than any other on-the-job training assignment.
Replacement needs. More than two-thirds of jobs between 2012 and 2022 are projected to come from replacement needs (not economic growth). In more than 4 out of 5 occupations these replacement needs exceed openings from growth (Economic growth looks bad as a source of new employment).
Moreover, most of these “replacement” jobs (nearly two-thirds) typically DO NOT require postsecondary education for entry.
Even so, occupations typically requiring some form of postsecondary education for entry generally had higher median wages ($57,770) in 2012 and are projected to grow faster (14.0 percent) between 2012 and 2022 than occupations that typically require a high school diploma or less ($27,670 and 9.1 percent).
So, what this means, if you like proportions, is that occupations and industries related to healthcare are projected to add the most new jobs between 2012 and 2022.
Right now, here is where the action is. Most jobs available and median pay
Personal care aides 580,800 $19,910
Registered nurses 26,800 $65,470
Retail salespersons 434,700 $21,110
Home health aides 424,200 $20,820
Food prep//servers 421,900 $18,260
Nursing assistants 312,200 $24,420
Secretaries/admin asst 307,800 $32,410
Customer service rep 298,700 $30,580
Janitors (not maids) 280,000 $22,320
Construction laborers 259,800 $29,990
General managers 244,100 $95,440
Laborers movers 241,900 $23,890
Carpenters 218,200 $39,940
Bookkeeping clerks 204,600 $35,170
Heavy truck drivers 192,600 $38,200
Medical secretaries 189,200 $31,350
Office clerks, general 184,100 $27,470
Childcare workers 184,100 $19,510
Maids/ house cleaners 183,400 $19,570
Licen practical nurses 182,900 $41,540
Note that many of these occupations require skills that are not strictly academic or “skill sets” as currently construed–easy to teach and learn. Empathy, sensitivity to how others may see and think, dispositions and attitudes matter a lot in jobs that cannot be reduced to punching buttons and perfect “best practice” one-size-fits all protocols.
In light of here recent claim that she “wouldn’t keep any school open that wasn’t doing a better than average job”, I’d like to see Hillary Clinton take a basic math test.
It would be very entertaining, if nothing else.
According to the following image (click link) showing education level and jobs in the United States, 27% of jobs do not require a high school degree. There are about 143 million full time workers in the United States. That means there are 38.61 million jobs that do not require a high school degree. How much college and areer readiness does it take to drive an 18 wheeler or a FedEx truck?
https://www.google.com/search?q=image+of+jobs+by+education+level&espv=2&biw=1097&bih=546&tbm=isch&imgil=rfBcWy8mP_rgdM%253A%253B1PRD082tG7FAOM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.bls.gov%25252Fcareeroutlook%25252F2014%25252Farticle%25252Feducation-level-and-jobs.htm&source=iu&pf=m&fir=rfBcWy8mP_rgdM%253A%252C1PRD082tG7FAOM%252C_&usg=__EjOWyeLWu2a-3mtC3AKSZb8sHd0%3D&ved=0ahUKEwimyZONpJjKAhVN9WMKHYi4CocQyjcILw&ei=6aeOVuawJ83qjwOI8aq4CA#imgrc=rfBcWy8mP_rgdM%3A&usg=__EjOWyeLWu2a-3mtC3AKSZb8sHd0%3D
Until NCLB, the requirements, in most if not all of the states, to graduate from a public high school had little or nothing to do with college and career readiness linked to a faulty, secretive, for-profit high stakes test.
Instead, students had to earn credit by passing classes in specific subject areas. In some states that requirement also meant passing a minimum competency test as proof that the student read at a certain reading level in addition to having a minimum level of math skills. In California that level was set at about 9th grade but other states, like Texas, I understand, set that bar at 4th grade. Most if not all high schools also offered classes designed to ready students for college but that was a decision the students/parents made on their own—what track to follow—the minimum necessary for high school graduation or a college prep track.
In fact, there are millions of jobs that do not require a high school or college degree.
http://www.moneycrashers.com/jobs-require-no-experience/
In addition to Best Jobs for High School Dropouts, and some of these jobs start out earning more than a college graduate who becomes a public school teacher.
http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2012/08/24/9-good-jobs-for-high-school-dropouts/
Simon Cowell is a high school dropout.
If only we required every Presidential candidate to prove they are “college ready” by taking the same tests they are insisting that high school grads have to pass.
The majority of those jobs you listed make less than 30k a year. That’s not a middle class life.
Someone has to do those jobs and it was their choice for whatever reason. Everyone is not going to go to college and end up in high paying jobs that require college degrees. In fact, there is already a glut of college educated Americans. For every job that required a college degree, there are almost three college graduates and then factor in the fact that many college graduates don’t have the degree for many of those jobs.
And here the problem is capitalism itself. By definition, there will always be lots of people in subservient positions with a much lower quality of life — all because they weren’t born into a certain situation, or weren’t inclined to certain things, or weren’t exploitative.
Over the years I have come to the conclusion that the letter C stands for cancer, capitalism and communism and they are all related.
Pure capitalism only benefits a few at the top of the food chain just like pure communism and both are cancers.
I think the best ecnomic system is a balance between capitalism and social programs that offer a secure safety net for most of the people who do not become rich or powerful. There are about 536 billionaires and 9.6 million millionaires in the United States. They are the winners of the capitalist lottery system of cut throat competition, but there are almost 319 million people in the U.S. That means more than 309 million people must depend on the social safety net that the 10 million winners of the capitalist system despise and hate.
There is quite arguably a place for both the public and private sector. The trick would be getting it right — which goods and services should be public, and which should be private?
Education, healthcare, safety, and defense are obvious ones for the public sector.
And yet it’s not all an argument of public or private. The call for socialism (workers owning the means of production and distribution — in other words, economic and workplace democracy) becomes more enticing when we look at the jobs that many people will have to do in any society where there is a hierarchy of power, especially in the workplace: they will be wage slaves, performing menial tasks for the sake of others’ wealth accumulation.
The “mixed” economy, such as Scandinavian and Bernie-Sanders-ian Democratic Socialism, is a major improvement on our current situation. Many will argue, however, that we shouldn’t stop there.
That will always be the struggle. To keep a balance between capitalism and the social safety nets. Going too far one way or the other will cause an imbalance and someone will always suffer. When we go to far to toward socialism, then it becomes more difficult to become the next Bill Gates, and when we go to far to toward capitalism, then poverty skyrockets and many more people risk starvation, homelessness and even prison.
“When we go too far toward socialism, then it becomes more difficult to become the next Bill Gates,”
Would that be a bad thing? Especially when it is at the expense of so many others?
I think fewer people like Bill Gates, the Koch brothers, the Walton family, Eli Broad, those hedge fund managers who are out to rob the world, etc. would be a very good thing.
In fact, I think there should be a cap on wealth acquisition by an individual. Let’s say no one would be allowed to be worth more than one billion dollars and anything else they earned would go to pay off the national debt and support public infrastructure projects to keep America running and in good shape.
How dangerous would Bill Gates and the other oligrachs be if each one only had $1 billion to buy the world?
It would be much better to change the marginal tax rates. Establishing a point past which individuals were not allowed to earn anything would create more tax haven tricks and/or Reagan clones. Someone said Reagan only made one picture a year because of the tax consequences of making more.
Well the thing about Socialism is that wealth and enterprise are still allowed, if not more possible than before. It’s just that in Socialism, it would be much less possible for one person or group to undermine the wealth and enterprise of others. Socialism = Democracy. Society decides — not CEOs, not Bankers, not Politicians — unless they serve us to our satisfaction.
Pure socialism is where the people own all means of production and the retail sector, but who manages that system? Not all the people. Someone has to make the decisions and that’s when we end up getting a Stalin or Mao. Not a good thing.
I still think the best system is a hybrid balance between a private and public sector that has a social safety net and isn’t pure anything. Isn’t that what China has been doing for the last three decades, and China is responsibly for 90% of the reduction in extreme global poverty while next door in India, a multi party democracy on politically corrupt steroids, in the last 60 years there hasn’t even been a dent in poverty?
If we get a Stalin or Mao, that is not socialism, but something of a failed attempt at socialism.
Northern Europe is the best example of the “mixed” economy, and in some ways it is a dreamland compared to the U.S. But can we improve upon it? Life is not always good there, either. In socialist theory, a “mixed” economy is actually still capitalism, because most the same fundamental issues still exist. While greed and hierarchy and ruthlessness are subdued, they are always present, and always trying to break free. To my understanding, this is pretty much what any Marxist will say, and essentially the justification for socialism and then communism.
A lot of people in the U.S. would be happy if we were more like Denmark or Finland in terms of social welfare. Personally, I want to get there first, and then go from there. We need to move quickly away from what we’re doing right now.
But I never want to stop exploring better options, so that more people can know liberty and justice. The “mixed” economy may be a dead end, for some people.
I agree about Stalin and Mao. They were brutal tyrants and did not allow a socialist system to sprout so there was no experiment—just a lot of suffering and pain.
And yes, I think the U.S. has to back away from the direction it is going in guided by the likes of Gates, Broad, the Waltons and the Koch brothers and their ilk. I don’t see much difference between them and a Mao or Stalin if any of them became the visible leaders of this country instead of just the puppet masters they are today.
It must frustrate these authorcrat oligarchs no end that they don’t have puppet strings attached to every elected state or federal official.
Diane, the three types of high school diplomas you describe are exactly those that existed in New York State when I started teaching almost twenty years ago. Regents exams, which today are taken by all students, even special education students and English language learners, at that time were seen as a measure of those students planning to go to college.
However, once the so-called reformers took over and infested the state department of education, it became imperative that Everyone Goes to College, and we’ve had the consequent mandate that everyone take the tests.
Guess what? Though the Regents tests were not dramatically dumbed down (they were clever enough to cover themselves in that regard), the cut scores and grading rubrics were, which amounted to the same thing.
The previous system honestly acknowledged that not everyone was interested in or capable of doing college-level work, and responded accordingly. Now, however, when the educational system is controlled by pathological liars, parasites and thieves, everyone is forced to lie about or finesse everything, upon pain if professional death.
It’s only among the so-called reformers themselves that there is no accountability, and gross, vicious failure is rewarded.
With the loss of manufacturing and trade jobs, and the overall decrease in vo-tech education in our nation (no more home-economics, woodshop, agriculture ed, etc) it is sad to think about the loss of opportunity for today’s generation.
But (IMO) the myth is that high school needs to be “hard and rigorous”, because many students can do well and find a career with math and science skills that don’t have to by “cutting edge”.
For example, while nurses will need a HS diploma, of GED equivalent, they can get an education at a tech-school, or get a full 4 yr BS in nursing. Yet, the only math a nurse needs is basic algrebra, along with basic anatomy-physiology and basic chemistry.
As a teacher of chemistry, biology and physics, I know that not even all the chemistry learned in high school is needed for nursing, nor the Algebra 2 or Pre-Calc.
While I’m all for STEM education, the truth is that many of these fields already have enough employees, and not everyone has to be a STEM-master to find a good job.
A basic-education can get one plenty of jobs, if the opportunities are open. For example, just with a HS diploma a student, or group, could get a loan, buy some land and begin to farm it, raising vegetables or livestock, and make a good living at it. Yes, having a college degree in animal husbandry would help, but an average-smart and responsible person could learn what they need to know as they owned and did the job (it’s not “rocket science”).
Unfortunately, we think everyone needs to be a rocket engineer, electrical engineer or programmer. But, what about the need for farmers and food producers and food-service workers. Without a strong, viable, and sustainable agriculture and health-care sector, any economy will collapse, and a society will be in chaos. The idea that we need more programmers, so that Disney can make more animatronic entertainment rides is a joke, if we first don’t have enough farmers and healthcare workers.
One could argue that farming is the preeminent career and most important job, because “No Farms, No Food”, and no food, no life. Yet, we fantasize about the need for “cutting edge” STEM education, as if the world will run on robots one day, but not need farming or health care. I love math and science, but readily admit many solid careers don’t require one to be a genius in these disciplines.
In my country we have internal assignments and external exams in the last three years of high school called level 1, level 2 and level 3 respectively. These qualification are used as entry points to post-school training – a car painting certificate might have an entry requirement of level 1 English and level 2 maths, physiotherapy might need level 3 maths, biology and chemistry.
It’s a high trust model and works because we have a small population but it’s way, way better for the kids than the all or nothing high school diploma.
We always had a standard set of requirements for a diploma. In addition to that there was always a description of what it would take to get into different post secondary programs depending on their selectivity/needs. I like your system but I’m not sure how many kids who, given a couple of years, might make a different choice. How does your country’s system make allowances for that?
You are voicing some legitimate concerns and seeking for some workable answers. I commend this–for whatever my commendation (as a teacher who has not only taught in the schools for the past three decades but also observed and reflected on what I have seen) is worth. 😉 Thanks!
The danger is believing that either the mythological investors and job creators, or the economy and job market the way it is, are prepared for the fantasy that every child graduates capable of attaining a four year degree (or that the writers of reform narrative truly believe their own narrative). Public education is being placed on a mouse-wheel and the rats gobble cheese and laugh.
How hard should a particular class be? Isn’t that the issue of a common curriculum? The designers of common core seemed to have tried to decide that. But on what basis?What I have seen of it, is that items are a collection of what it has always been for middle class students. The CC just tries to remove the modifications that teachers made to fit the students in front of them. Then norm-referenced, standardized tests are given to show what teachers could tell them. (Only one employer ever contacted me in forty-four years regarding a reference for a student job candidate.) Since grades reflected social norms and effort, someone, and I don’t know who, decided they needed to know exactly who in their universe knew the difference between an adjective clause and a noun clause.
I hate to admit it, but there were remediation classes in the 60’s. My parents could not go to college, but there may have always been remediation classes before then. Maybe, the classes should not be considered remediation but simply entry level courses that some students can bypass. Then we wouldn’t get our panties or briefs in a twist.
And maybe some people don’t need to be in college. It should be for academics. Maybe we could have career academies for nurses, businessmen, computer science. Maybe college should be a liberal arts education and separated from the technical education. All educators would be expected to have liberal arts degree and then a technical education degree. Others could skip the liberal arts part unless they wanted an academic experience.
Humans as disparate as Americans will not learn lock-step as much as those of us linear thinking types would like. So just educate the bodies in front of us and feel in the gaps as needed.
Giving up control and being moderately generous with time and money might work out O. K.
I think remediation classes served an important purpose, but colleges no longer want to fund them. It was more of a student centered approach to help “fill in gaps”. Less of the negative connotation of today. I knew plenty of fellow high school classmates that matured by leaps and bounds the summer, or year, after graduation. Remediation was a chance at redemption or at least another opportunity for poor and middle class families. A fair number of my classmates did poorly in high school for various reasons but went on to become business owners, teachers, CPAs, lawyers, military officers, and more after returning to college and, yes, taking remediation courses. Not every kid develops in a lockstep march towards “college and career ready” nirvana. Reformers seem to miss that important fact.
They didn’t used to be called remedial courses. You could test out of a basic level class in English composition. People came into college with different levels of math which determined your placement. There was no stigma attached to having to take the first level class just elation if you got to skip it. 🙂
I’ve been saying for a long time that we,need to return to having the possibility of 3 different types of diplomas. One could be an academic diploma leading to college. Another could be for commercial skills, using computers or other kinds ofskills. The last could be a,diploma stating that you attended,high school.it. We should not be looking for a,one size fits,all education.
I do not understand why a diploma became a one sized fits all. Why not a base level diploma with specialties – college prep, vocational, skilled trade, military training, performing and fine arts. So, for example, a diploma could affirm you took basic math, maybe something equivalent to prealg/geo which most kids seem to do OK. Then a student specializes in business math concepts or computer based math. It makes NO sense for a future novelist to slog through conic sections. They would be better served studying financial math to help understand the publishing business. Can we have a successful Army specialist that does not write like Hemingway? Play to student strengths, not using tests to beat them over the head with their weaknesses!
That’s basically what we had. Anyone who needed or wanted more information could look at a transcript.
Here’s a video that I’ve seen making the rounds recently:
It’s about Common Core
When my husband and I started college in 1979, neither my top public school, nor his well respected private high school offered calculus or trig. Most students at our college began their math sequence with intermediate algebra, for credit, which is now considered “remedial” and offered for no credit. Elementary algebra was also for credit. Those who decry the remedial offerings should be aware, things were very different 37 years ago, and there was not this utopia of advanced students like the press and the opposition would have you believe. In my district, you could graduate high school with 1 math credit, and could make a D- and still get the credit. Things are far more advanced today.
Bingo, CDW, all education policy is based on the assumption that all students can achieve as superstars and quality for entry to Garvard. They don’t understand that school today makes much higher demands, especially in math, than in previous generations. Anything less than 100% is blamed on teachers, with no recognition that students differ in their interests, abilities, talents, and motivation.
The Polish system of education speaks to many of the issues discussed here. There are several types of ‘late secondary ed’, from pure academics through a couple of tech levels and vocational; tracking for these starts after age 15, and there are several options for moving back & forth among them, arriving at higher tech or academic level before (if) pursuing college. If our govt were actually interested in improving ed outcomes– if they actually cared about PISA comparisons (as opposed to using them as a talking point to push anti-Union, pro-ed-industry policy)– they’d take a look, as Poles have zoomed up in these areas.
One of the problems of tracking students is that some children are late bloomers. My husband is a genius but you wouldn’t know it from his high school record. His blue collar parents had a limited educational background (his father was illiterate) and it wasn’t until he went away to college (after two years at a local Community College) that he began to hit his stride. While he completed the first two years of medical school coursework with honors, he still was not accepted into Medical School because of his nontraditional record (vs honors high school/pre med students who followed the more traditional route). He probably would be a brilliant surgeon today if his parents had been from the college educated middle class.
And the current system is perpetuating this dilemma, preventing talented individuals from reaching their true potential by being labeled a failure at the age of eight or nine.