I teach high school English in what most people would call an inner city school. I sometimes liken it to "Lean on Me." It may not be as bad as Eastside, but the potential to get there is right around the corner. However, this post is about the number of high school students who actually earn a diploma.
In the United States, according to www.higheredinfo.org, the average graduation rate is 68.6%. Now some people may think that is a fairly decent number and they may be correct; however, what is happening to the other 31.4%? America needs to wake up and realize we are doing a disservice to ourselves if we don't try to fix this public education system. There are so many children (especially in minority communities) who are being pushed through the system it's ridiculous. Many educators often feel like they are forced to pass students who come to class but don't do any work. What type of example is this setting?
I know in the past, the school where I teach used to allow students to walk across the stage even if they weren't eligible to graduate. It seems like the expectations for children has been lowered so low that doing something "for show" is the only thing that matters. What happened to working hard and earning a good grade? Many people can't just show up to work 100% of the time, do 50-0% of the work and receive a full paycheck, so why do we allow our students (who are supposed to be our future leaders) to do this? It makes absolutely no sense.
America is failing our future and we don't even care, or is it because the ones who are failing don't resemble the majority it is okay? I'm asking someone to who may be more astute than I to tell me if a high school diploma is worth the ink used to print it?
