Eliminating Educational Standards Only Ensures Failure

An article published this week in Quillette argues persuasively that grade inflation is destroying education in the United States.

Author Shane Trotter describes a system where grades are no longer tied to actual achievement, where high school standards have been lowered so much that a college degree - and absurd levels of debt - now takes the place of a high school diploma, where self-esteem is more important than achievement and where the performance of American students relative to the rest of the world keeps dropping.

That's the same impulse behind the practice of grade inflation Trotter wrote about.

It is the impulse behind the practice of passing students from grade year to grade year, despite the fact that they did not successfully complete the work associated with the grade they'd just "Passed." Or the grade before that.

A 2019 report showed that fully 60% of Wisconsin students could not read or write at grade level, and the number of students with grade-level proficiency is dropping annually.

A recent ranking of public-school performance places Nevada's at the bottom of the list, but if Democrats get their way and Washington, D.C., is made a state, it will likely take Nevada's place at the bottom; only 23% of D.C.'s eighth-grade students are proficient at grade level - the lowest in the nation.

Can't pass the grade year? Change the grading structure and pass them anyway.

https://townhall.com/columnists/laurahollis/2021/04/29/eliminating-educational-standards-only-ensures-failure-n2588702