Last month, the Department of Education released data showing that, yet again, American high school graduation rates have increased. This sparked a wave of celebratory press coverage across the country. But US News issued a note of caution: “Graduation Rate Up, But Not Enough.” In it, education reform advocates lament that the graduation rate didn’t rise faster.
But perhaps the bad news is the fact that it’s still rising. There are several compelling reasons to fear that graduation inflation is harming at-risk students of color, even if they rarely feature in the public debate.
First, few who are paying close attention believe that rising graduation rates represent genuine academic progress. Test scores are stagnant or declining, so how are graduation rates up?
Education, politics, and anything else that catches my attention.
Wednesday, February 13, 2019
Diluting the Value of a High School Diploma
When my parents graduated from high school in the early 1960s, a diploma had some value. By the time I graduated in the early 1980s, the value of a diploma had gone down somewhat but it wasn't worthless. Today, with grade inflation and "credit recovery" replacing actual learning, there isn't much value left in a diploma. If everyone earns one, how can one have any worth at all? There's such a push to increase graduation rates--but no real push to increase learning:
yeah anyone in education right now can tell you graduation rates mean nothing. Counselors pressuring teachers to change grades and credit recovery. Credit recovery is a joke. A teacher next to me who teaches Civics (required to graduate) had a student who was failing miserably, like 17%. Left his class for credit recovery and within a week had a 93%. If that doesn't tell you anything...nothing will.
ReplyDeleteMy small-town HS, in the 60s and earlier, had such a good secretarial program that its grads had their choice of good jobs in the nearby city and the area. Only those entering HS with good writing ability were accepted into the program. The same was true at my DH’s school and the best secretary he ever had, in the early 90s, was a recent grad from his old school. Now, they’re called administrative assistants and need a college degree, but I am betting that most are no better than those HS grads. My late FIL was, for many years, the principal of the local vo-tech HS; tool&die, sheet metal, auto mechanics, carpentry, cosmetology, LPN nursing etc - all tough programs to get into, and all with good jobs waiting when they graduated. However, you can’t run those programs if you have to have the right numbers of all the colors and flavors, include the academically/socially incapable spec ed, unprepared, lazy, disrespectful, emotionally unstable, potentially/actually violent and make sure they all get a diploma.
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