Nearly two years ago, the state Board of Education approved the first-ever common set of expectations all Colorado students must meet to earn a high school diploma, starting with the class of 2021. The idea is to move beyond the mishmash of graduation requirements at 178 school districts and replace antiquated systems of counting credit hours with measures that matter.
The shift envisioned for Colorado, a bastion of local control, grew out of education reform laws that are supposed to better prepare students for college and the workplace. Now, state officials are contemplating significant changes to those 2013 guidelines, including giving more local control over ways students can prove themselves, lowering the bar in some cases and eliminating science and social studies requirements, leaving only English and math.
-Eric Gorski
Author: Mile High Mamas
Reader in CO
In Germany – where the standard of living is higher than the U.S. – if a student wants to go into a skilled trade or technical job, they can do this at the high school level. In America, if you get your hands dirty at work you are looked down upon.
The chief purpose of the public school system in America is to take the wildness and individuality out of children and turn them into compliant automatons. In U.S. public schools children are taught how to stand in line and jump when a bell rings.
Martina
There are wonderful teachers-in fact I would say most are.
But this isn’t about teachers, nor about the students -this subject is entirely about funding, ie, money.
If CO schools might lose some Fed dollars [due to tying teachers hands and spoon-feeding what teachers are and are NOT allowed to teach] CO schools will just lower the requirements and pass more kids to keep that Almighty Dollar. And that is exactly the agenda here.
So open up vouchers. Then the good teachers can leave the gov. schools [because more voucher students means more teachers are needed] and good teachers can teach-really teach., like educate.
CB
Schools need to graduate people who understand the world and can acquire new information along with the ability to reason with that information.
The nonsensical notion of college ready ignores the great differences in colleges while failing to recognize the need for breadth of knowledge people need in real life. College ready for Berkeley or M.I.T. is different than for Aurora Community College or may four year institutions. I used information that I learned in metal and wood shop in Jr. High in physics graduate school. People need a broad knowledge base with the skills to acquire more information and apply it. These are things that are not easily measured with standardized tests or even required course lists.
The needs, problems, and solutions of small rural schools are different than those of large urban districts under the current educational structure.
Bev
Decreasing science and social studies will NOT move Colorado to the front of the pack–well, it will but not a pack I would like to be a part of.
Barbara
Every district should have a thriving technical school. Have you paid a plumber or an electrician lately? Many college grads can’t find work in their fields. Tech school grads have no trouble finding jobs at all!
Mike
I am in disbelief that the state board would even consider this. Instead of addressing the real issues of how to teach students and prepare them for life, be it college or a trade, they instead are considering more “dumbing down.” Is anyone else STUNNED that 37% of our “college” students need remedial courses????? Ergo, the secondary schools are not doing their job, period. Now they want to lower the breadth and depth of general knowledge required AGAIN?? This proposal has the added benefit of protecting the teacher’s unions from further loss of control by taking power away from local district boards. Oh, I know the article leads with a statement about supposedly more control by local boards, but as you read the article and the draft proposal, it’s clear the STATE would have to approve all local decisions, and that doesn’t sound like more “local” control to me. It would take power out of the hands of “rebel” districts like Douglas County and Jefferson County, and their reform-minded, elected boards.This is part and parcel of the failed liberal ideal of an equal outcome, not an equal opportunity. Hey, if the kids can’t meet the standards, let’s lower the standards, to make them FEEL better about themselves!!! They can’t make change at a retail counter, have no idea who Ernest Hemingway was, can’t locate Vermont on a map, much less Venezuela, don’t know a screwdriver from a lathe, and don’t have the vaguest idea that we are not a democracy, but a representative republic, but, damn, they sure are self-actualizing and achieve in non-traditional ways the growth of their inner child and the recognition that they have real worth as a human being.
Piper
Lowering the bar? Eliminating science and social studies requirements? Aren’t we supposed to be educating these young people, preparing them as well as we possibly can for life after school? Many if not most won’t be going to college. They need broad, solid, serviceable educations under their belts when they leave high school.
Carol
That’s bad lowering the standard to graduate. How are these kids going to succeed in the real world. If they only get the minimum in education. They should be held to high standards. Typical Liberal thinking for public schools and education in general. If I had it to do all over again. No child of mine would be in a public school. They’d be home schooled or in a very good private school. I am so glad Wisconsin is expanding school choice. So parents who can’t afford private school religious or non religious can have other options for their kids. Many times public school is not meeting the educational needs of the kids. We the parents should be able to choose how our kids are educated. Lowering the standard just lets our kids be lazy. They don’t have to do the work. Well for the ones who are capable of doing the work. Not talking of the kids with learning disabilities like the autistic.