The SAT -- according to UC itself -- finds poor kids from unrepresented minorities who really will succeed in college, and who won't drop out, better than any other measure. Why is that a problem rather than a success?

Because the evil of "standardized testing" — or, what us graybeards used to know as "tests" — is something agreed upon across the parental ideological spectrum.

They need to eliminate the test to hide the fact that they actively discriminate against Asian American citizens. The only ones they want are the Asians who the Chicoms pay the full tab for.

I always pissed people off when I was getting my EdM because I was always arguing in favor of tests.

If anything the tests are too easy. They test pretty basic high school skills. The SAT doesn't even get into Algebra 2, let alone Trig or Calc.

Sorry Kevin, but that is just your personal prejudices showing off. Isab is right. This is less about helping black and hispanic students and more about hiding discrimination against asian student.

And I agree on the tests NicoleK. We typically administer minimal achievement tests. That is terrible policy. We should be using maximal achievement tests. Really show what people can and cannot do. So what if you don't get 100% on the test. Make getting a 10% a passing grade. It is just a number. But then politics rears it's ugly head. The reason we do minimal achievement tests is so that racial and geographic differences are saturated out. If everyone gets a 100% you can't tell that guy A knows twice as much as guy B. They both got 100.

Isab is right: being able to reject all those Tiger Mom raised kids means they can admit whom they want. They can make that seem reasonable.

They'll go by high school records, which are cooked by the high schools. And the appropriate set of extra curricular activities that check off the appropriate boxes. Not to mention the race/gender boxes.

If you need a box in your favor, go with "questioning" or "non-binary".

There's also a move afoot to repeal proposition 209:

They will ask the Legislature to put ACA5 on the November ballot. It would strip language from the state Constitution prohibiting universities, schools and government agencies from using race or sex in their admissions criteria, hiring and procurement decisions.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/California-s-affirmative-action-ban-15121025.php

In which case, if you're an Asian-American and want to get into a UC school, you best be woke.

They'll go by high school records, which are cooked by the high schools. ~ I R A Darth Aggie at May 30, 2020 7:26 AM

The valedictorian at a sub-standard high school may not be ready for college. The SAT levels the field and measures the college-readiness of applicants. Not perfectly, but in a manner consistent across school districts, states, and ethnicities.

Wait. Janet "the system worked" Napolitano?

Why should anyone be surprised at her command of a failed, and getting worse, system?

She's just promoting the "diversity" hoax in which it is absolutely wonderful that you are different! because you are special! - you can still do anything and everything you want, just like the other kids!

So long as your parents send me money.

Testing? That lowers headcount. Can't have that.

As in so many failed/erroneous liberal policies, even if the results hurt the people they are supposed to help, liberals feel justified with their actions because their intentions were good.

Raddy, I swear to Christ, your comments are impenetrable.

If you do just ten comments in a row with zero attempts at sarcasm and irony, your life will never be the same... You'll become the persuasive, insightful rhetor you always wanted to be.

Later, after that, you can slip in a smirk or two and even though it will cut sharply, no one will mind, because your meaning will be clear.

Ten in a row, just ten. Like a late-springtime exercise regimen, just to prove you can do it.

NicoleK - small world! I have an M.Ed.; and I, too, used to piss off fellow students as well.

A bit differently as in my case it dealt with "teaching to the test" which they were against. So, I would point out the test represents the goal - and there is nothing wrong with teaching towards that goal. My God! you would have thought I suggested that we kill everyone's first born! They would get so pissed off.

Then there was the one time I really pissed folks off in grad school when the teacher asked the question: "Is higher education elitist?"

Most said no. I said, I hope so! If everyone can attend and graduate college then it is of little value. But, if we have entrance requirements (oh, say something like a test?) and we have graduation requirements (oh, say something like passing all of your classes and a final thesis or comprehensive exam) then the degree is elitist as it should be. Otherwise it is nothing but a "participation trophy." And what employer is going to impressed by that to hire you?

“A bit differently as in my case it dealt with "teaching to the test" which they were against. So, I would point out the test represents the goal - and there is nothing wrong with teaching towards that goal. My God! you would have thought I suggested that we kill everyone's first born! They would get so pissed off.”

If you don’t “teach to the test” What the hell are you teaching, and what the hell are you testing?

Raddy, I'll send you a DOLLAR!

Let's do this.

Also an autographed Blu-ray of my TED talk.

IJS, I *know* that sarcasm is a bigtitty vixen on a holiday weekend far from home. Totally difficult to resist.

TRY, though. Ten in a row.

"TRY, though. Ten in a row."

Nope. I can explain things to you, but I can't understand things for you.

Did you not remember who Janet Napolitano is? What her job is now? What the system under her control did at DHS? What the system is doing now under her control? What dumbing down education does?

To quote a great American: "Try."

> If you don’t “teach to the
> test” What the hell are you
> teaching, and what the hell
> are you testing?

OF COURSE I didn't save the cite! OF COURSE I let it drift off into the ether, as if I'd never again need to know who to credit for the insight, no matter how obvious that it wasn't my own. But somewhere within world literature across the last eight years...

Somebody who knows once wrote that nothing would be better for impoverished black American children than a reliable battery of testing for intelligence and comprehension. Most would do badly on those tests, for all the reasons typically mentioned, and for all the reasons (almost) no one has the balls to discuss.

But those tests would identify a considerable number of kids who could benefit enormously from the aggressive track of intellectual enrichment now most available to kids from high-achieving families of other races. This would happen for two reasons.

1. Everybody loves brains. Truly! The leaders who need bright people on their teams, both in their classrooms and working in their commercial enterprises, don't give a fuck what color you are if you're brilliant.
   
   
2. Everybody loves having an outstanding minority performer in a highly visible position of study or in an office of employment. All of these institutions, including the most bedraggled startups, are desperate to prove — to their customers, shareholders, wives, mistresses and (importantly) to their government — that their selection processes are not exclusionary by race.

And many authority figures with budgets to fatten think this unwitting sacrifice is worthwhile to sustain the presumption that anyone could be Steve Jobs or Bill Gates if given the opportunities.

T'ain't so.

> I can explain things to you

No, you cannot, and it's a problem.

Um, Crid, do you really have a TED talk, or was that a joke?

In the meantime...

Since the 1980s, many have said that you go to college to prove you have a high-school education. Obviously, that's not fair to those who can't afford college or would just rather save the money but are afraid to take the chance of being discriminated against.

Whereas, circa 1934, when Roald Dahl graduated his very expensive school, he refused to go to university, since he felt that only made sense if you were going to be a doctor, lawyer, etc. Why was he so convinced he was already as well read as he needed to be?

From one of his autobiographies, about his primary school, with its viciously violent masters - and the one thing that made it a truly happy memory for him, when, every Saturday, the masters went off to the pubs, in the late 1920s:

"...So much for the masters. But what of us, the great mass of ten-, eleven- and twelve-year-olds left sitting in the Assembly Hall in a school that was suddenly without a single adult in the entire place? We knew, of course, exactly what was going to happen next. Within a minute of the departure of the masters, we would hear the front door opening, and footsteps outside, and then, with a flurry of loose clothes and jangling bracelets and flying hair, a woman would burst into the room shouting, ‘Hello, everybody! Cheer up! This isn’t a burial service!’ or words to that effect. And THIS was Mrs O’Connor.

"Blessed beautiful Mrs O’Connor with her whacky clothes and her grey hair flying in all directions. She was about fifty years, with a horsey face and long yellow teeth, but to us she was beautiful. She was not on the staff. She was hired from somewhere in the town to come up on Saturday mornings and be a sort of baby-sitter, to keep us quiet for two and a half hours while the masters went off boozing at the pub.

"But Mrs O’Connor was no baby–sitter. She was nothing less than great and gifted teacher, a scholar and a lover of English Literature. Each of us with her every Saturday morning for three years (from the age of ten until we left the school) and during that time we spanned the entire history of English Literature from A.D. 597 to the early nineteenth century.

"Newcomers to the class were given for keeps a slim blue book called simply The Chronological Table, and it contained only six pages. Those six pages were filled with a very long list in chronological order of all the great and not so great landmarks in English Literature, together with their dates. Exactly one hundred of these were chosen by Mrs O’Connor and we marked them in our books and learned them by heart. Here are a few that I still remember:

A.D.

597
St Augustine lands in Thanet and brings Christianity to Britain

731
Bede’s Ecclesiastical History

1215
Signing of the Magna Carta

1399
Langland’s Vision of Piers Plowman

1476
Caxton sets up first printing press at Westminster

1478
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales

1485
Malory’s Morte d’Arthur

1590
Spenser’s Faërie Queene

1623
First Folio of Shakespeare

1667
Milton’s Paradise Lost

1668
Dryden’s Essays

1678
Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress

1711
Addison’s Spectator

1719
Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe

1726
Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels

1733
Pope’s Essay on Man

1755
Johnson’s Dictionary

1791
Boswell’s Life of Johnson

1833
Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus

1859
Darwin’s Origin of Species

"Mrs O’Connor would then take each item in turn and spend one entire Saturday morning of two and a half hours talking to us about it. Thus, at the end of three years, with approximately thirty-six Saturdays in each school year, she would have covered the one hundred items.

"And what marvellous exciting fun it was! She had the great teacher’s knack of making everything she spoke about come alive to us in that room. In two and a half hours, we grew to love Langland and his Piers Plowman. The next Saturday, it was Chaucer, and we loved him, too. Even rather difficult fellows like Milton and Dryden and Pope all became thrilling when Mrs O’Connor told us about their lives and read parts of their work to us aloud. And the result of all this, for me at any rate, was that by the age of thirteen I had become intensely aware of the vast heritage of literature that had been built up in England over the centuries. I also became an avid and insatiable reader of good writing..."
___________________________________

Whereas nowadays, when you go to Amazon and look up "Tom Sawyer," despite the fact that it's clearly escapist and not interpretive literature, you won't have to search hard to find amateur reviews by so-called adults who argue that it's too haaaarrrrrrrd for anyone who isn't in high school yet!!

Don't blame the teachers for that. After all, even well-educated parents typically see nothing wrong with letting kids wallow in hours of screen time once their homework is done, which is sort of like letting a kid eat a pound of candy every day once the vegetables have been eaten. Obviously, that doesn't lead to a love of vegetables - or exercise. So why don't more parents see the parallel? Why don't more parents read to their kids - or pay babysitters to do that?

In other words, if more parents did that, teachers could assign the same truly challenging books that they used to assign 50-60 years ago without having to sit through the agony of oral "reports" by students who clearly never bothered to read the books.

On top of that, while professional film and literature critics might get away with using the words "escapist" and "interpretive" today, the last time I heard a TEACHER use those words was in the 1970s.

My guess is, they're not allowed to. Another term teachers don't use is "lazy reader." That is, the term used to mean anyone who read only books that don't require a long attention span, like "The Guinness Book of World Records," or books with more pictures than words, including comic magazines. Nowadays, if the term gets used at all, it would likely mean someone who can, technically, read, but who never does. All other children get bowed down to.

> was that a joke?

I will always adore you for asking.

IIRC, Amy has one somewhere.

> In other words, if more parents
> did that, teachers could assign
> the same truly challenging books
> that they used to assign

I just no longer believe that's true. The problem is that not every kid is going to be deeply literate.

Their parents aren't going to force them to try, any more than they'd insist on a career of neurosurgery. The parents of most kids aren't neurosurgeons. Those parents don't know how to teach neurosurgery, and they don't want to torment their kids by pretending it could possibly happen.

It's not just an American problem, and throughout world history, it's not even a leading-nations-of-the-planet problem.

No one has ever known what to do with kids who are just not very bright… Other than exploit them as pawns in war and in cruel terms of servitude.

For all her faults, America's capitalism has done the best at letting people, even the dimmest one, find their own path without abject coercion.

You speak of high schools inflating grades. I think that some colleges do it also. This is so that the students will be able to stay there and the college will get their tuition money. Our small town newspaper often publishes the honor rolls of local students in colleges. There are too many on the Deans list for the sizes of the colleges.

You speak of high schools inflating grades. I think that some colleges do it also. This is so that the students will be able to stay there and the college will get their tuition money. Our small town newspaper often publishes the honor rolls of local students in colleges. There are too many on the Deans list for the sizes of the colleges.

Rita Fink at May 30, 2020 8:55 PM

Almost all colleges do it, and grad schools are even worse in many respects. The grades will be inflated to whatever the student needs to stay in the program.

Crid, I really don't see what's wrong with what Miss Manners once said:

"When a society abandons its ideals just because most people can't live up to them, behavior gets very ugly indeed."

Also, immigrant parents can and do demand that their kids learn to become fluent in more than one language, even if the teachers don't have time to give them extra help, because they know there's no point in keeping the bar low. Plus, even those parents who couldn't afford college for themselves OR for their kids have often, in the past, insisted that their kids supplement their education any way they could, so that they could hold their own at most social and political levels. (IIRC, that's the Jewish tradition, for one.) So what's the difference when it comes to expecting one's kids to be able to read or do math at a REAL high-school level, instead of a dumbed-down version? Especially when the teachers would like that too? How many kids are culturally illiterate only because they're surrounded by classmates who have wimpy parents?

Back in 1988, when mathematician John Allen Paulos wrote "Innumeracy" (a book that made it clear how essential math skills are in understanding the world in general), he said that most adult Americans wouldn't admit it if they couldn't read above an eighth-grade level, but they would practically brag about not being able to do math at that level. Nowadays, he'd have to admit that adults also practically brag about not reading books. What good does that do? None.

Also, there's a big difference between expecting kids to get all As and Bs (which can tempt them to cheat) and expecting kids to do the best they can and SHOW that they're actually working hard (preferably with little help from the parents). If they can PROVE that they really can't even get a B in some subjects, fine. They just can't be slackers. There's no room for them anymore. Especially if the pandemic makes the job market even tighter.

Btw, in 2000, I think, someone pointed out that it was all very well for Mark Twain to say that Tom Sawyer, for all his skipping school and outrageous pranks, would likely grow up to be an ordinary, boring, law-abiding adult. That is, Twain could say that only because in his time, even being an 8th-grade dropout was no big deal with regard to one's economic future. Obviously, that is no longer true, in a high-tech world. So even if college isn't always "mandatory," practicing one's reading skills and math skills, regularly, should be. Especially with regard to newspapers, since sensible parents do not want their kids only following TV or radio news.

> "When a society abandons its ideals
> just because most people can't live
> up to them, behavior gets very ugly
> indeed."

The only thing I'm asking people to give up is the pathetic presumption that in matters of intellect, we can all become valedictorians if we just pay our teachers enough and insist that the kids try, I mean really, try, I mean torment and threaten and humiliate them until they make the magical effort, even if their parents (and everyone else in their genealogy) were none-too-brilliant, either.

For some reason, we don't torment short kids for other genetic limitations, like not being tall enough to contend with Lebron for a rebound. And we don't torment anyone for being as susceptible to cancer as their parents were.

But the intellect is said to be different! So if you can't comprehend some nuances of mathematics or literature, there's always a teacher promising that things will go better if only we spend ever-more money on our ever-'crumbling' school system. More teachers! More money for them! MANY more administrators!

And if that doesn't work, at least everyone will have tasted the universal thrill of clucking at those less fortunate.

…Except that in the better cosmologies, including my own, there are more important things than being bright.


The "ideal" that you're talking about is merely the needful presumption of Martin (and billions of others) that she deserves forgiveness for not seeing others for who and what they are… Because after all, her belief in magic FLATTERS the little people, doesn't it?

Sure! It flatters them from afar.

Dealing with people up close, especially slow, boring people, is a pain in the ass.

That would have been clearer if I'd said "billions like her" instead of using the word "others" twice.

Just so you know, MM wasn't talking about academics or intellect per se - she was, of course, talking about manners and general decorum and discretion. Surprise, surprise.

But she would see no reason to EXCLUDE genuine academic effort (as opposed to achievement) either. Obviously, only one person in the class can become the valedictorian. Also, there is no (automatic) disgrace in taking longer than other students to learn the same subjects. (Of course, it's better if the parents can figure this out before a kid starts first grade and hold the kid back a year, so that the kid doesn't have to deal with the embarrassment of repeating a grade.)

Also, see my last two paragraphs again.

Historian Stephanie Coontz wrote in her book "The Way We Never Were":

"Fewer than half the students who entered high school in the late 1940s ever finished."

Would we accept that rate today? Of course not - even though lots of modern, self-spoiled kids may be convinced they can drop out and become stars in sports, music, or gaming. Others don't even think that far ahead - they just don't want to work at all, because they're sick and tired of getting bad grades and not getting any help. (Or maybe they live in a bad neighborhood and go to a bad school - and most parents would want to get them OUT of that situation.)

I'd say that the REAL p.i.t.a. is dealing with kids whose parents refuse to set an anti-hedonistic example of any kind, since we live in a hedonistic society. If parents don't really care that the kid is just plain lazy, why should the kid?

Finally, if we can understand why average parents don't tolerate the idea of their kids' dropping out of high school, (unless they have really serious mental disabilities), we can understand why reading to children on a daily basis is truly worthwhile (and having them read back), since it's the LOVE of learning and the love of exploring the outer world in general that really matters - and teaching kids to love learning can take as many years as teaching kids to eat vegetables, daily, without having them cry or throw up. (There's a reason many people will tell you that patience is everything when it comes to being a good parent.)

"No, you cannot, and it's a problem."

For you, obviously. There are gaps in your lucidity spanning the years; not surprised today to see that again. So you have no idea who Napolitano is. But chicks dig you, cool.

I know but don't care what you say about her. So what do you want?

> MM wasn't talking about academics
> or intellect per se -

Right, and neither were you, and I'm saying that people should talk about intellect per se, most thoughtfully in matters of education, wherein our continuing delusions are cruel and ruinous.

> Would we accept that rate today?

I'm asking the questions here!

Look, we're in a loop. I keep saying the whole machine is built on incorrect presumptions of better-empowered people who are getting their needs met, and you return to precisely the tropes I mean to indict. There's an expression for this: Fish don't know they're wet. To wit:

> no reason to EXCLUDE genuine academic

"Genuine" is the corrupting sentiment. Or as described earlier, "insist that the kids try, I mean really try, I mean torment and threaten and humiliate them until they make the magical effort...." Genuine, magical, wut-evar.

I'm a year older than Jordan, whose vertical leap was thirty-three inches. Mine, at the athletic prime, was (maybe) eight.

Will you piss my 5'7" life away until I make an effort at the backboard which you can smugly adjudge to be "genuine"?

Because that's exactly what we're doing with the lives of millions of children.

The teachers unions are totally cool with that, and are glad to have you onboard with the oppression.

> if we can understand why average
> parents don't tolerate the idea
> of their kids' dropping out of
> high school

We've discussed it a number of times this very month on the blog… Education at all levels is about where national politics was in October 2016: A lot of people are tired of machinery that brings only heartache decade after (deplorable) decade.

How'd that work out for Judith Martin? By the way, does she still work at the Washington Post?

> if we can understand why average
> parents don't tolerate the idea
> of their kids' dropping out of
> high school

We've discussed it a number of times this very month on the blog… Education at all levels is about where national politics was in October 2016: A lot of people are tired of machinery that brings only heartache decade after (deplorable) decade.

How'd that work out for Judith Martin? By the way, does she still work at the Washington Post?

Sorry.

Sorry.

Additionally, everyone please take note of
Isab at May 29, 2020 11:15 PM

✔

Also, Lenona—— How will this work out?

We rightly condemn ME cultures for swaddling their women in yards of fabric to pretend to be unconcerned with their beauty.

In the West we'll similarly make enormous sacrifices to pretend that being smart isn't important.

But it really is. It's not the most important thing about you, but the magnitude of your intelligence will have a determinative effect on the course of your life and the lives of those around you.

The WaPo still runs her column, but since I usually hit the paywall, I just go to Uexpress instead. (Her two kids now help out, since she's in her 80s.) Btw, she used to be an English professor. She also lived in South America when she was young; her father was a diplomat.

Of course there are schools in bad shape at all levels - but allowing teens to quit their schooling completely, with no alternative to a GED, hardly sounds like a good solution to me. Were you really suggesting kids should be allowed to drop out, instead of figuring out how to make kids not act like hoodlums or how to help those kids whose parents just don't care about their education? (If not, I don't understand your question.) Not to mention that a well-known teacher, when asked "do you really think more money for the schools is the answer" responded "well, it seems to work for YOUR kids." (Namely, kids in private schools.)

And I think it's terrible to put athletic achievement on the same level as academics, so of course it's wrong to push kids to join teams if they don't feel like it - or let the KIDS put sports over academics. There's bad snobbery and then there's good snobbery. Just because kids aren't getting the exercise they used to before 1960 or so is no reason to glorify team sports.

Again, yes, it's still possible to do well in life without going to college - but not so often for women, especially. So those teens who plan not to go had better have very careful plans in mind, which means they'll have to use their wits as much as their hands, which is why parents aren't doing their kids any favors when they allow them to do less than their best. (Also, parents, for their OWN sakes, had better make it clear that the kids can't stay at home either, if they don't plan on college. But again, society is loaded with wimpy parents.)

> allowing teens to quit their
> schooling completely, with no
> alternative to a GED, hardly
> sounds like a good solution
> to me.

Who suggested such a thing?

Did I defend them, or address their rhetoric in any context?

And about the would-be police officer, Robert Jordan...

From what I've always heard, the trouble with cops that are too smart is, much of their work is very dull, so they'd go crazy if they had to do work every day that a high-schooler could do, which is why the police don't hire those with very high IQs - or those with master's degrees. Don't they have enough hazards on the job already - and don't the smartest people often get high-paying jobs anyway?

In short, I don't understand what your question is, regarding him.

What solution WERE you suggesting?

Bottom line is, when there are bad teachers, even if they can't be fired, parents still have the power to organize and raise quite a stink about individual teachers, as they wish. Online, maybe?

Whereas if there's any way for teachers to demand that bad parents do something about their kids' lazy or disruptive behavior without getting in trouble for it, I've never heard of it. Even parents of bullies often threaten to sue schools, after all.

So my point is, self-disciplined kids are the foundation of a good school. Whereas a school that's loaded with students whose parents even make excuses when they CHEAT is more or less doomed. (I heard of a case like that on TV - I think it was in Kansas, in the 1990s. The teacher who gave the cheaters failing grades quit in disgust.)

I trust you're not saying that the average teacher can straighten out a class of spoiled brats - or make the effort and not pay for it.

“What solution WERE you suggesting?”

Not all problems have solutions Lenona. Some of them are intractable. Recognizing this truth is half the battle.

> What solution WERE you suggesting?

Late for asking, isn't it? You could have looked back at what I wrote instead of dreaming up something for your favorite reply.

You know what argument you want to have. (And which words your counterpart should say to give you that argument.)

I'm not offering it to you. Reread

"with no alternative to a GED"

Huh?

“If not, I don't understand your question.) Not to mention that a well-known teacher, when asked "do you really think more money for the schools is the answer" responded "well, it seems to work for YOUR kids." (Namely, kids in private schools.)“

Another trope that is totally untrue. The budget per student at private schools averages considerably less than at public ones. In general they can do this because they have considerably less admin overhead.

I've never heard of a private school teacher who made as much as a public school teacher, but there are compensatory advantages: The kids whose parents care enough to cut a separate check for school tend to do their fucking homework, and behavior problems are over on the first evening that parents learn about an incident.

...but allowing teens to quit their schooling completely, with no alternative to a GED, hardly sounds like a good solution to me.

A GED is not really a viable alternative to dropping out. A few years ago, I read an article about a study that showed that drop-outs who got a GED did not significantly improve their lives. Economically and socially, they were not better off than drop-outs who did not get a GED.

The GED is an easy way out and those seldom pay off. It's a one-time pass/fail test. Studying for it does not teach the traits that sticking out high school does - a work ethic, punctuality, goal setting, etc.

That said, dropping out does not have to put one's life in the toilet, though it usually does. I know two people who dropped out and never went back for a GED who are doing okay. Unfortunately I know of at least twice as many who dropped out and whose lives are less than optimal, defined by government dependency, poverty, crime, and despair.

Of the two mentioned earlier, one owns a construction company and the other has worked several jobs which somehow combined to prepare him for a career in sales at which he is doing well. These are the exceptions, of course, but they show that hard work and diligence pay off.

I've never heard of a private school teacher who made as much as a public school teacher, but there are compensatory advantages: The kids whose parents care enough to cut a separate check for school tend to do their fucking homework, and behavior problems are over on the first evening that parents learn about an incident.

Crid at June 2, 2020 11:00 AM

Yes, and some really good teachers such as math and chemistry majors like to teach in private school instead of having to jump thru the union driven hoops of certification in mindless drivel Ed courses, which all public schools require.

My aunt, a college math major, and World War II aircraft engineer taught math and tutored in Westchester PA for years.

Education above the eighth grade should all be privatized in this country. State constitutions often require that the states fund it to that point.

Conan, I think you are confusing correlation with causation. Keeping low IQ students in school, and handing them a certificate for existing there for three or four years, with no real academic achievement does not magically improve their lives.

Most junior colleges actually let you in without a hs diploma. My daughter finished high school in college. She sent her transcripts back to the high school to get her diploma issued.

Conan, I think you are confusing correlation with causation. ~ Isab at June 2, 2020 12:18 PM

Even the low-IQ students can learn regimentation from high school. That means they can develop the habit of showing up on time and completing tasks that are assigned. Taking a one-time GED test does not instill those habits into a person. It's an easy way out.

As for finishing high school in junior/community college, that still involves regimented habits - showing up, turning in the work, etc.

The GED was a good idea, flawed by the ease with which someone can use it to bypass the tedium having to do regular work in high school to get a diploma. However, it's in that tedium that a person develops habits that enable one to meet the minimum expectations of an employer. Wax on, wax off.

The GED was a good idea, flawed by the ease with which someone can use it to bypass the tedium having to do regular work in high school to get a diploma. However, it's in that tedium that a person develops habits that enable one to meet the minimum expectations of an employer. Wax on, wax off.

Conan the Grammarian at June 2, 2020 2:42 PM

If high school and college were more demanding I might agree with you.

A lot of GED takers that I know could do the work but were bored silly by the slow academic pace and busy work in school. Most of them coincidentally are boys, who wanted to move into the work world or the military where they succeed.

If a young man doesn’t want to sit in a history class and listen to some socialist nit wit drone on, but at the same time has the drive to practice his guitar seven hours a day, I wouldn’t exactly call him undisciplined.

This is because school has been deliberately structured to be what girls are good at....especially extremely average girls.

Because of this, Girls are a different story. A girl who can not sit still in class and do the extremely minimal work required in high school, is not going to be helped any by the GED. They often have another agenda. Nothing that involves actually working, in the conventional sense.

I liked this discussion thread. Some good points of view on education that I hadn't considered before. Thank you.

A lot of GED takers that I know could do the work but were bored silly by the slow academic pace and busy work in school. Most of them coincidentally are boys, who wanted to move into the work world or the military where they succeed. ~ Isab at June 2, 2020 7:25 PM

You bring up good points about the watered-down and overly politicized curricula of the modern American education system, as well as the incompatibility of current teaching methods with boys' mental, emotional, and physical development.

For most post-secondary paths, however, - education, work, military, etc. - an actual diploma is preferred, although a GED is generally accepted. In terms of long-term success, the GED has not provided a path equal to toughing it out in high school.

According to a 2002 City Journal article:

Nobel Prize–winning economist James Heckman and colleague Stephen Cameron have found GED holders to be “statistically indistinguishable” from high school dropouts: they’re not significantly more likely to land a job or to have higher hourly wages. Other studies find that GED holders do slightly better than dropouts but still lousy compared with regular high school grads—who themselves, in today’s knowledge-based economy, earn only 54 percent of what college grads make, according to 1999 Bureau of Labor Statistics figures.

The GED holders who go on to post-secondary education (about 60 percent) also compare poorly with high school grads who do so. Almost three-quarters of GED holders who enroll in community colleges fail to finish their degrees, compared with 44 percent of high school graduates. In a four-year college, the prospects are even grimmer ... an astonishing 95 percent of GED holders don’t finish, compared with 25 percent of high school grads.

The discipline engendered by completing tasks on time and turning in assignments is not taught by taking a one-time test.

The article goes on to say that the GED does not test knowledge, instead testing reading comprehension through a series of multiple choice test questions referencing a paragraph read by the test taker. The GED student needs to know only what information is already provided to him on the test, almost nothing more than that - and will leave the test knowing little more than that, if even that.

Small wonder that students don’t need to go through anything like a full-fledged program of study to get their GEDs. The average GED recipient passes the test after just 30 hours of class time and study.

The Jobs Corps found that GED students with a fifth-grade education—that’s right, fifth-grade—could pass the test after 200 hours of instruction.

Granted, the City Journal article is a bit dated, but I've been unable to find any article or data that contradicts the finding that the GED is simply not equivalent to finishing high school.

I'll concede that, for some, it may be a decent option. However, for most, dropping out of high school is not a good idea.

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I liked this discussion thread. Some good points of view on education that I hadn't considered before. Thank you. ~ David H Doo at June 3, 2020 4:53 AM

It's been a good one.