The Whiteboard Jungle: School should be a place where students thrive

“Graduation rate at Glendale’s high schools tops 90%” according to a Glendale News-Press headline recently. On the surface, this statistic is celebratory, something Glendale Unified should prominently display at the top of its website’s homepage.

Before we pat each other on the back for a job well done, keep this in mind: many high school graduates are not ready to start college or get a job.

For too many, a high school diploma only confirms that an individual met minimum standards.

If the purpose of a high school graduation is to give a thumbs-up for a job accomplished, i.e., you attended school kindergarten through 12th grade, then we should call it “completion” rather than “graduation” because disturbing trends lurk beyond high school.

MORE: Read previous columns from Brian Crosby >>

There is a high remediation rate in colleges. Some surveys say 20% of those attending four-year colleges and 60% attending community colleges take at least one remedial class, meaning that whatever knowledge and know-how students were to absorb and practice through their high school career is not evident.

Such retraining often continues when college graduates enter the workforce. According to Washington Post reporter Jeffrey J. Selingo, employers say that young people lack “problem solving, decision-making and the ability-to-prioritize-tasks” skills needed to excel on the job.

Somewhere in the education pipeline, especially in high school and college, young people are just getting by with underdeveloped abilities that delay future success.

Much of the hype surrounding the Common Core standards is that its higher expectations on what skills teachers should be teaching at certain grade levels will produce a higher caliber of student. In reaching for an elevated learning level, we should see a drop in graduation rates due to students struggling with the more rigorous work. So what accounts for the rise?

A push to ensure that every last senior crosses that stage at the end of the year. No district official or principal wants a less than stellar grad rate for it darkens the reputation of a school.

At the high school level, there is pressure on teachers to pass students (a grade of ‘D’ or higher).

Some administrators contact teachers who have too many students with failing grades. In other words, the teachers are questioned why they are failing the kids rather than the kids being questioned why they are failing the classes.

Then there is the wide variation among educators on how they evaluate student work and calculate grades.

Teachers are permitted, rightfully so, to determine their own amount of work to assign, and what percentage of a class grade is based on participation, homework and tests.

But when some ingratiate themselves with their pupils by grading easy, the result is that an ‘A’ in one teacher’s class does not signify the same level of achievement as an ‘A’ in another.

Years ago, when California developed the High School Exit Exam, its original intent was to make a diploma not attainable but meritorious. It didn’t work. Soon after piloting the test, results showed more than half the students not passing it.

So the test was whittled down to the point that it would merely rubber stamp the diploma not elevate it, adding a bureaucratic hoop for students to jump through, wasting millions of tax dollars and hours of classroom time.

School should not be the place where kids survive, but where they thrive.

All of us — educators, parents, children — need to accept the challenge and work toward meeting higher expectations so that more young people finish college and perform well on the job. Maybe if students knew that there was a realistic chance they may not cross the graduation stage, more effort would result, so that the diploma would not simply be a piece of paper.

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BRIAN CROSBY is a teacher in the Glendale Unified School District and the author of “Smart Kids, Bad Schools” and “The $100,000 Teacher.” He can be reached atbriancrosby.org.