By Staff Editorial
Passing through (Illustration by Susan Parker)
By Staff Editorial
Education seems to be the item on the back burner.
While higher education continues to be struck by large cuts, the Los Angeles Unified School District has decided to make a decision that reflects in a negative way to students.
The district wants to reduce the credits its high school students need to graduate and receive a diploma.
The high school students need 230 credits to graduate but the district wants to reduce 25 percent and make the requirement 170 credits.
The reason why the district wants to make the change is because they want to reduce the risk of its students dropping out of school.
“If we don’t do something, we have to be prepared to be pushing out kids as dropouts,” Jamie Aquino, the deputy superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, said to the LA Times in the article “LAUSD considers lowering the bar for graduation” by Howard Blume.
“We face a massive dropout rate in four years,” he said to the LA Times.
Along with decreasing the required credits needed to graduate, the district wants to allow its students to pass college-prep classes with a “D”, although college students must pass their college classes with at least a “C.”
Marlene Canter, a former board member of the district, said in the article that the decisions by the Los Angeles Unified School District do not make sense to push for a college-prep curriculum but not the grades necessary for the courses to count.
The decision is not appealing because, at a time when education is needed to continue driving a nation that is in a bad situation with its economy, the United States need to look out for its youth and make sure the future of the nation will be in good hands.
By making a decision to make students feel receiving a “D” in their classes okay, the school is making the thought process of these students worse, because the students are now thinking whatever they do with minimum work will get them through life.
Having enough to get by is not the mind set American children should set themselves for in life because if the youth of the nation thinks this way, then nothing will get done and the production and growth from these students will continue to decrease.
The message the Los Angeles Unified School District is sending its students is that they do not need discipline and they do not need to be motivated to work their hardest and reach for their highest goals in life.
Andres Schleicher, the senior education official at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, said only New Zealand, Spain, Turkey and Mexico have lower high school completion rates than the U.S., according to an article from the New York Times titled “Many nations Passing U.S. education, experts say,” by Sam Dillon.
“About seven in 10 American students get a high school diploma,” Schleicher said.
Schleicher said Finland has the world’s best performing education system because of its highly effective way of recruiting, training and supporting teachers.
The United States needs to learn from Finland and care for its students and teachers and stop taking resources from the education, because the road Americans are taking right now is going to lead them to more ugly issues.
