"Our high school kids are taking harder classes than they used to. And they are earning better grades......."

   As I try to do a few days a week, found this article in my local newspaper and thought it was worthy of passing on....... 

"Finally, after so much handwringing and worry about declining standards in American education, that is the news we have been longing to hear.
      Before we start poping the cork though, consider the painful contradiction that accompanied that banner headline: Despite all those top grades and "honors" classes, actual performance is down.
    "The government agency that measures progress in American education reported last week that reading skills among 12th graders have not imporved in three years and they are dramatically worse than they were twenty five years ago.
      Barely one third of all high school seniors are now considered proficient in reading; twenty three percent are proficient in math, the exhaustive report found.
     It is an unhappy echo of the dismal findings offered by a national consortium of nonprofit study groups last fall. Its report, "Are They Really Ready to Work?" found that schools are not preparing students to succeed in the post academic lives."
      Well, of course all of these children are ill prepared to enter the working world. Look at how many of them skated through their grades year after year after year. They have at least assigned a word for what the public schools have been doing. It has been tagged "Social Promotion".
      This "Social Promotion" was going on fifteen, maybe twenty years ago, but there was no word assigned to the pattern of behavior.  I have heard teachers telling parents to "just have your son or daughter attend class" and they will be given a passing grade. Who exactly does this help? Does it help the student? Does it really even help the teacher? 
      Unfortunately the fault does not necessarily fall on the teachers either because they are obliged to follow the policies of the school they are licensed to teach in.       
      It really is not such a surprise to find so few students are graduating high school without having developed any working skills. Now this becomes the problem of the community.
     This article continues....."We have spent a lot of time teaching kids that they can be anything they want and encouraging them to "dream big" We are proud and impressed when they dutifully report that they want to be pediatricians or astronauts.
     Naturally, we do not want kids to limit themselves. They should be encouraged to envision themselves as successful, to set ambitious goals.
     But saying ain't doing. A kid who cannot read at a 12th grade proficiency level is not going to get into medical school, no matter how big his or her dreams."
     "If, in their desperation to improve the statistics, schools are inflating the grades, then shame on them. But if we are expecting schools to teach kids, who do not have a clue how to apply themselves to a task that is not instantly entertaining or gratifying, well, shame on us."