Sometimes LESS is MORE but in this case, LESS is LESS. Santa Ana, a community about 10 minutes NE of Disneyland, is planning to do something about their lackluster high school gradutation rates. Instead of requiring 240 credits to graduate, they are proposing eliminating 4 classes and make them electives rather than requirements. The four classes are Health, College and Career Planning (Life Skills), World Geography and Earth Science (I teach the first two on this list). Now the burden to graduate is about 10% less.Hum... Let's say you are manufacturing engine parts for Boeing and the widgets you produce are allowed a .05% failure rate. But would it be okay to increase that failure rate to .15%? What about the doctor who is about to do life saving surgery on your child, or sister/brother/parent. Is it okay that the medical school where she graduated relaxed it's standards by 10% and now allow students to take 10% fewer classes or pass with a 2.6 GPA rather than a 2.8 GPA?
Now those are dramatic, life and death situations but what about for the rest of us where life is not on the line at our workplace. What about me as a teacher? Is it okay for me to start making 10% more mistakes in entering grades in my computerized gradebook? Is it okay to have 200 mistakes in grading out of the 2000+ grades I have to enter every semester?
Santa Ana Unified School District, if they go through with the relaxed standards, will be sending a message, one that most of their graduates will remember for a lifetime. Can't quite cut it, just change the rules. Is that the message we want to give to 18 year olds as they enter college, work, marriage,and life?
And once you begin to make excuses for certain classes, can it's cousin cheating be far behind? Dumbing down the standards is bascially institutionalized cheating. We need to keep standards high and think of new ways to can help students succeed.
LA Times Santa Ana Unified School District article: http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-me-graduation8-2009feb08,0,7528768.story
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