The Value of a HS Diploma
Back when I went to Burlingame, there was no such thing as an "exit Exam", you just exited school by not dropping out after 4 years. It didn't matter if you were a 4.0 or a 2.0 student, or even if you could read at a HS level, all that mattered was if you showed up some of the time for 4 consecutive years. So to improve our pathetic education system, they implemented Recently the new California HS exit exam has come under scrutiny for being unfair to students. But how unfair is it really? The most recent exam saw 7000 students take it, only 198 failed that's ~1.4% of a failure rate. Maybe it's just me, but that seems WAY TOO LOW considering the illiterates who are allowed to graduate and even go to college.
If the exam were truly a measure of someone's capabilities to succeed in the real world, the passing rate would be far less than 98.6%. It is simply not difficult enough, just as our public schools aren't difficult enough. I know this from experience because I attended prestigious private schools, a locally shunned public school and a poor public high school in a rich area. I started at Nueva, a "school for gifted children", where we'd learn geometry or complex creative writing if that's where we excelled. I was writing short stories that were bound and read aloud to my class once a week as a 4th grader while also learning about the angles of a triangle and how to figure out complex mathematical sequences. This education was actually good and has served me quite well as I've gotten older. Most public schools aren't like this, the kids sit in desks, have lots of busy work and only the motivated ones really learn anything. Nueva didn't assign homework until 4th or 5th grade (maybe 3rd, but it wasn't much), and while it may have contributed to my inability to do busywork without losing my mind, I think it gave me the ability to think critically instead of being taught to think like everyone else.
So I'm off topic now...not really mentioning the exit exam anymore, but don't worry, I'll get back to that soon enough. :-)
The next step I took was to be with "normal kids" after I grew tired of being surrounded by geniuses and nerds, so I enrolled at Borel Middle School, a slightly ghetto (for Bay Area standards) public school in San Mateo. While at Borel I learned what the average American gets out of education: Nothing. Despite my complete lack of effort, I still made principal's list and even got 112% in my math class in 8th grade (that's the whole year, not just 1 test). I was stuck in these classes with 30 other kids who were nowhere near the academic level of my former classmates at Nueva. The only kids who didn't pass were guys like Ricardo Vulteo, who only showed up about 6 or 7 times all year and was 16 and DROVE TO MIDDLE SCHOOL every time he actually showed. Why he hadn't dropped out altogether was beyond me. However, I saw a lot of people who shouldn't have even been C students graduate the 8th grade and move on to HS.
So I went to Burlingame for 2 years and had a pretty good time. The girls were stunning, especially those gorgeous cheerleaders, and I had a good amount of friends and didn't really get into fights anymore like I did in Middle School. But the academics were a joke! I had about a 3.8 and I literally did only 45 minutes of homework in my 2 years there - that's 45 minutes over two years, not per night. Not only that, but I slept in class a lot of the time and even told my Geometry teacher that he was stupid and that's why I never found his class challenging. I still got an A+ despite my horrible attitude. I never deserved any A's while in public high school, I simply didn't try hard enough; but because I actually had a fully functional brain I was GIVEN A's in every class except Drama and Band (seriously, I think I had those two Cs in drama and band, and maybe one or two B+'s while at B-Game.) So I made the decision to transfer to Phillips Exeter Academy, a prestigious prep school in New Hampshire so I could be challenged.
So I sought out a challenge, but most people do the opposite, they run from them. The average person can just coast through the first 18 years of their life with schools that expect nothing from their students and parents who don't care. Then they graduate; the ones with money go to state schools and the ones without go to JCs or get dead-end jobs. The HS diploma isn't something you're proud of on a job app, it's just a requirement. The diploma means nothing if you went to a public school in Cali, Texas, Louisiana or another non northern state. In England, they have an incredibly difficult exit exam from high school and it's proved to be a success. There, graduating from school and passing the exams actually says something about one's intellect instead of their ability to enroll from year to year. So I say that if 98%, 88% or even 75% of the people pass that exam on the first try, it's just too easy. Let's make the HS diploma worth something, because these days, I feel like a BA is about the equivalent of a HS diploma...an AA is like passing 8th grade. I don't want to have to go to grad school simply because everyone else has. More school isn't the answer, BETTER SCHOOL IS.
If the exam were truly a measure of someone's capabilities to succeed in the real world, the passing rate would be far less than 98.6%. It is simply not difficult enough, just as our public schools aren't difficult enough. I know this from experience because I attended prestigious private schools, a locally shunned public school and a poor public high school in a rich area. I started at Nueva, a "school for gifted children", where we'd learn geometry or complex creative writing if that's where we excelled. I was writing short stories that were bound and read aloud to my class once a week as a 4th grader while also learning about the angles of a triangle and how to figure out complex mathematical sequences. This education was actually good and has served me quite well as I've gotten older. Most public schools aren't like this, the kids sit in desks, have lots of busy work and only the motivated ones really learn anything. Nueva didn't assign homework until 4th or 5th grade (maybe 3rd, but it wasn't much), and while it may have contributed to my inability to do busywork without losing my mind, I think it gave me the ability to think critically instead of being taught to think like everyone else.
So I'm off topic now...not really mentioning the exit exam anymore, but don't worry, I'll get back to that soon enough. :-)
The next step I took was to be with "normal kids" after I grew tired of being surrounded by geniuses and nerds, so I enrolled at Borel Middle School, a slightly ghetto (for Bay Area standards) public school in San Mateo. While at Borel I learned what the average American gets out of education: Nothing. Despite my complete lack of effort, I still made principal's list and even got 112% in my math class in 8th grade (that's the whole year, not just 1 test). I was stuck in these classes with 30 other kids who were nowhere near the academic level of my former classmates at Nueva. The only kids who didn't pass were guys like Ricardo Vulteo, who only showed up about 6 or 7 times all year and was 16 and DROVE TO MIDDLE SCHOOL every time he actually showed. Why he hadn't dropped out altogether was beyond me. However, I saw a lot of people who shouldn't have even been C students graduate the 8th grade and move on to HS.
So I went to Burlingame for 2 years and had a pretty good time. The girls were stunning, especially those gorgeous cheerleaders, and I had a good amount of friends and didn't really get into fights anymore like I did in Middle School. But the academics were a joke! I had about a 3.8 and I literally did only 45 minutes of homework in my 2 years there - that's 45 minutes over two years, not per night. Not only that, but I slept in class a lot of the time and even told my Geometry teacher that he was stupid and that's why I never found his class challenging. I still got an A+ despite my horrible attitude. I never deserved any A's while in public high school, I simply didn't try hard enough; but because I actually had a fully functional brain I was GIVEN A's in every class except Drama and Band (seriously, I think I had those two Cs in drama and band, and maybe one or two B+'s while at B-Game.) So I made the decision to transfer to Phillips Exeter Academy, a prestigious prep school in New Hampshire so I could be challenged.
So I sought out a challenge, but most people do the opposite, they run from them. The average person can just coast through the first 18 years of their life with schools that expect nothing from their students and parents who don't care. Then they graduate; the ones with money go to state schools and the ones without go to JCs or get dead-end jobs. The HS diploma isn't something you're proud of on a job app, it's just a requirement. The diploma means nothing if you went to a public school in Cali, Texas, Louisiana or another non northern state. In England, they have an incredibly difficult exit exam from high school and it's proved to be a success. There, graduating from school and passing the exams actually says something about one's intellect instead of their ability to enroll from year to year. So I say that if 98%, 88% or even 75% of the people pass that exam on the first try, it's just too easy. Let's make the HS diploma worth something, because these days, I feel like a BA is about the equivalent of a HS diploma...an AA is like passing 8th grade. I don't want to have to go to grad school simply because everyone else has. More school isn't the answer, BETTER SCHOOL IS.
posted by Dan Pasternack at 4:26 PM
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