Jan 4, 2010

The Paper Chase

In the Heartland our leaders have decided the way to reduce the high school dropout rate is to reduce the high skul grajuashon reekkwirementz.

I liked myself better when I still had the capacity to be surprised at things like this.


3 comments:

TJP said...

Unfortunately, programs like this are very common, and in practice in ways that don't raise the graduate rate red flag. The thinking is that it's better to keep the student occupied in school, even if it means an abbreviated day and a collection of what we'd call remedial coursework.

I guarantee that if your town has something more than a one-room schoolhouse, a perusing of the course list will reveal the existence of such programs by their unusual course titles.

I also see that the pared courses are electives. It's hard to judge what's going on there without knowing what are the required courses. For all we know, the electives could be the regular trash heap of (long since disproven) social theory and envireligious nonsense.

Anonymous said...

There is skulduggery afoot in Texas to do away with the dreaded spelling test. "Students don't learn from rote memory. They learn by reading and comparing the assoications of letters". Or some such BS. Saints preserve us. JAGSC

Jim said...

One of our local school boards has just called a special elelction to hike property taxes enough to give every kid in grades 5-12, plus every teacher, a $1500+ Mac laptop. I figure that will reduce the dropout rate until the thuggish set figures out a way to hock them for pot money and pesuade their home room teacher the dog ate the Macs. This is the same school board which was convicted, en masse, of criminal violation of the state sunshine law by traveling out of town to hold meetings.

Peresonally, I always thought a substantial dropout rate tended to clear the decks for the serious students. It might help if the teacher dropout rate was a little higher, too.