Punishing the Best

Scott Daubenspeck:

When Jay Schalin asserted in his Jan. 1 Point of View article "Misguided agenda for universities" that "the presence of disengaged students will only lessen a high school's ability to focus on students who are interested in learning," he skimmed over the larger problem of the falling educational standards caused by such policy initiatives.

When schools cater to business and popular demands to increase graduation rates and college attendance rates, they are forced to pass less intelligent and less productive students simply to meet the new quotas, usually by curving tests or lowering expectations for the same grade. This demeans and devalues a high school diploma or bachelor's degree in the job market due to the ease of obtaining one as well as the higher number of potential employees with such degrees. In such cases, the best students are punished, suffering through a dull curriculum for little payoff without postgraduate education.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at January 11, 2008 12:00 AM
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