Let me preface this article by saying that I am an educator with over a decade of experience in the public education system. I have taught science in a handful of different districts with different demographics and socioeconomic make ups. I see the value and the place for a free public education system, but I am not blind to the problems within our system here in America. Indeed, I see many things that need to be changed and, in some instances, completely overhauled.

The opinions shared in this post are my own. They are in no way an indictment against any particular school that I have worked at, and especially not my current district. In fact, I was ready to get out of the education business completely until I landed here, and I am pretty sure this will be my last stop in the field. I’ll either retire from here or find a new career path.

All that being said, let’s dive right in.

Growing up, I was told that “it’s getting harder and harder to get a job without a college degree.” My dad knew what he was talking about. Those words are even truer today than they were back then. An article on www.usatoday.com reports that in 2015, college graduates made 56% more money than those with a high school diploma - the largest such gap since the Economic Policy Institute started collecting data on the issue in 1973. Furthermore, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, the cost of attending a 4 year in-state public university has risen from an average of $407 ($2,312.07 in today’s dollars) per year during the 1972-1973 school year to $8,141 per year in 2015-2016. In other words, today’s workforce needs a college degree to make money, but a college degree costs more money than it ever has! How have we found our way into a mess like this?

Our public education system has destroyed the value of a high school diploma.

I remember my first few years in the public education system. Like most new teachers, I thought that the sole reason for the existence of a public school system was to educate students. Imagine the naivety! It didn’t take long to realize that today’s public schools have to be ran like a business. Our government and politicians have ensured that. It takes money to keep the lights on and the building warm, and the money is tied to test scores and graduation rates. This has led to some disturbing trends, and one of the most alarming to me is the reluctance to hold students back if they haven’t mastered the minimum requirements for an academic year.

If you look back just a few generations, school attendance was more of a privilege than a right. Teachers were under no obligation to pass you along to the the next grade. Even when I was in school, it was not uncommon for students to repeat a year. In my teaching experience, this rarely happens today. I have had a handful of students throughout my career who I am positive would have benefitted from repeating a grade level, but I can not recall a single one that was held back. Back when I still thought I could change the system, I had a talk with my (then) superintendent. I expressed my concern about passing students along who could barely read or perform basic arithmetic. He explained to me how ”studies show that if you hold a student back, even for just a year, they are more likely to drop out before graduating). (This was the same superintendent that told me if I could make my physical science class interesting enough, the students wouldn’t even WANT to play video games on their school-issued Macbooks - but that’s another story.) Now, I have never seen this study, and I can’t even begin to imagine how a reliable scientific study could be designed that would gather that type of data - students who have been retained were retained for a reason, and no one can predict whether that individual would have graduated had they not been held back - but even if it is legitimate, that means we are knowingly passing students along to graduation who can not read, write, problem solve, or understand mathematics on a high school level. Some can barely perform on a 7th grade level, but they walk away with the same piece of paper as everyone else. Back when my grandpa entered the workforce with his high school diploma, employers could be confident that he had at least a baseline education. Now days, it’s a crap shoot. For some graduates, all a high school diploma proves is that they were patient enough wait it out. College has become the new proving ground in the eyes of the business world. It’s no wonder that today’s employers are looking for people with college degrees to fill jobs that historically have gone to high school graduates.

So, what can we do?

For one, quit handing out free diplomas! Not everyone deserves a trophy! If that sounds harsh, then you need to think about those who actually earned their high school diploma but can’t find a job because of the growing number of meaningless graduation certificates being handed out. For those who drop out and end up regretting it, they can always go back and get their GED.

Second, we need to quit treating our high schools like training grounds for college. College is not for everybody! There are so many kids just floating through high school because, in their minds, “why do I need this crap if I’m not even going to go to college?” Every public school in America should be offering their students the opportunity graduate with a marketable trade skill that will allow them to enter the workforce right out of high school. There are so many well paying and much needed trades that we ‘forget’ to tell our kids about: welders, cosmetologists, mechanics, dental hygienists, and the list goes on and on. Students should be able to graduate with the appropriate skills and licensures to compete for these jobs. I think we would be shocked by how much “student achievement” increased if we gave our students who don’t plan on going to college an end goal that they were motivated to work toward.

Finally, we need to develop a meaningful Alternative Learning Environment (ALE) program to accompany the regular classroom. A properly used ALE program should give students who have been held back multiple years an opportunity to catch up on their credits in something approaching a 1-on-1 environment so they can be plugged back into the regular classroom to graduate with students their age. It is criminal the way many schools abuse current ALE programs; using them as a holding ground for students who are considered behavior problems or class disruptions. Behavioral issues should be handled at the building level with expulsion being the final step.

I think our ‘everybody is entitled to a trophy’ philosophy has gone too far. It has even bled into our public school system to the point that our children are growing up without the basic skills they will need to succeed. Maybe I’m wrong, but I believe that the best way right the ship is to get rid of the water wings and force kids to swim on their own. What do you think? I welcome the discussion.

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