"The Secret To Great Secondary Education"

[phantom power]

Of course, we do in fact have at least one political party who wants a permanent underclass...

Newsweek has released its list of America's best high schools, which reveal one startling key to a great high school: selectively screening all but the highest achieving children.

This is not a lamentation on bias towards smart kids - that's pretty much the last problem you'd ever find with these rankings. Instead, the issue is the idea that there's anything useful to be gained from a ranking system that penalizes schools for providing state-mandated education to all members of the community.

If American high schools could screen for students with high rates of academic success, high likelihood of going to college and home environments that encouraged both of those qualities, then we'd have the best high school system in the world...coupled with a permanent underclass even less mobile than it currently is. While it's great that there are environments for select smart kids to thrive and prosper, the vast majority of American high schools don't have the luxury of refusing to let in students who might mess with the good thing they've got going on.

The nominal purpose of this ranking list is to "highlight solutions" in terms of preparing secondary students for life in the real world. How can you possibly draw any conclusions from a sample of high schools whose entire purpose is to not have to deal with the problems you're attempting to solve?

http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/the_secret_to_great_secondary_education

[liberal N proud]

1. How do you determine a students potential?

A student does poorly his/her freshmen year in high school but then suddenly in the sophomore year, they realize that there is life after school and they know what they want to do with theirs. They nearly failed out of the freshmen year but the next they get straight A's.

But the evaluation based on their lackluster attitude in the year prior has said, they can't go to college and should go to work at WalMart.

I understand that each kid needs to be taught differently but do they need to be taught different things based on some evaluation?

The kids that are going to be pushed out are the ones who's parents don't live in the "nice" part of town or mom and dad are not business people. Yes, this will be a dividing tool in society, a culling of the heard.

[lumberjack_jeff]

2. By design, It's a very big mesh and easy to fall through.

The point isn't to maximize the percentage of academically skilled students, it's for *your* school to be populated by the tiny percentage that are.

[Bonhomme Richard]

3. Dumb. I was a barely "C" student and only did enough to get by.

Got into the one college (more like animal house) that would have me and graduated. Barely, as a matter of fact, for a while there, I was on disciplinary and academic probation at the same time.
Outcome. Been married for 35 years, raised two kids who graduated college, started a business, got a patent and who knows what the future will bring.
Makes me wonder what would have happened if the above policy were in effect.

[liberal N proud]

5. Sounds similar...

At that Animal House college, your story doesn't sound too different from mine. I didn't start a business but I have been successful in the company I have worked for for the last 27 years reaching middle management.

Not bad for a guy that was suspended from college for a semester for academics.

[proud2BlibKansan]

4. Also - if you remove the schools serving poor kids our test scores go way up

One of those facts they conveniently hide from us.