Government Schools Part 1

The recent California court ruling that children who cannot pass the embarrassingly basic high school exit exam should still receive a diploma, makes the diploma meaningless, even for the students who have met the requirements and passed the exam.

What the proponents of this judgement fail to understand is that the market will adjust. If a diploma does not guarantee that an applicant can read, write, do basic math, or speak English, employers will administer a test of their own to determine such competency as a requirement for hiring. Fail and remain unemployed, or take the sort of job that doesn't require the ability to read, write or cipher.

Giving students high school diplomas when they have not demonstrated competency in the most basic skills won't save them from failure, it will just postpone it until they are out in the world, ill-taught and unprepared, bereft of the resources of school and teachers to remedy it, dooming them to low-wage, dead-end jobs.

Is there a more efficient prescription for failure, hopelessness, and the 'cycle of poverty'?

How in the world can we justify doing this to our children?

(Too bad you can't just shoot the bastards.)

The Gunslinger