Governor Dennis Daugaard says our K-12 education system is failing the majority of students by not preparing them all to get post-secondary degrees:
Are we sufficiently preparing our students for what comes next?
About a year ago, we pulled together data that indicated the answer to this question, for most of our high school students, is “No.” Of our students who start 9th grade, 80-90% will finish. About 70% of those will enroll in post-secondary education. This is less than two-thirds of those who started 9th grade. Of those who enroll at a tech school or university, only 50-60% will graduate. Thus, only a fraction of our students who started 9th grade will earn a degree. In other words, our current system is only working for a minority of our students.
We need to do better [Governor Dennis Daugaard, press release, 2018.07.27].
Governor Daugaard offers this grim conclusion to justify the new high school graduation requirements passed by the Board of Education Standards a couple weeks ago. The new, more flexible requirements will end the apparent “disengagement” that the Governor says results from forcing kids to take classes that don’t fit their career aspirations:
Under the new requirements, every student must still take four units of English, but an aspiring engineer might take a technical writing class instead of a lang uage arts elective. Every student must still take three units of math, but an aspiring accountant might take a business math class instead of geometry. Every student will still be required to take three units of science, but an aspiring nurse might be able to take an advanced biology class instead of physics. Any student who seeks to go directly into the workforce after high school can find that path through these requirements. A student seeking to enter a university and progress to postdoctoral work years down the road can also lay that foundation through these requirements. The new system serves our future nurses and welders as well as our aspiring teachers and doctors.
Students need to be well-versed in a variety of subject areas throughout their high school years. But they also need to start thinking about what they will do after graduation – looking for that intersection of aptitude, interests and workforce opportunity. These new requirements will help our students – ALL of our students – to do just that [Gov. Daugaard, 2018.07.27].
Unaccounted for in the Governor’s argument is what those aspiring engineers, accountants, nurses, and welders will do with their job-specific high school curriculum twenty years from now when economic forces, experiences, and unforeseen changes of plan render the jobs they thought at age 15 they would do forever untenable, or what knowledge and skills they might find helpful in leading purposeful, fulfilling lives during the two thirds of their working life and the three thirds of their retirement when they won’t be on the job. Those liberal arts still be darned; we’ve got cogs to mill for the economic machine!
Daugaard has found a way to market the dumbing down of education.
The career path/vocational approach has some merit, but it’s generally used to encourage students to take courses that challenge them, while keeping the goal of a broad education base, not one that is narrowed and dumbed down. Daugaard’s efforts and the Board of Education’s dumbed-down standards points in the opposite direction.
Since Daugaard loves to push technical writing over learning English, I’d like to address that. I know a technical writer. He does great work, but it’s a job that pays the bills, not what he really loves. What he really loves is science fiction writing, which requires a broad education in language arts and various science fields. He’s done a number of stories and completed a screenplay that was made into a short movie. Most technical writers, by the way, are the last hired and the first fired, so having a backup plan is critical for a technical writer. And being hired to do technical writing may not happen. Much technical writing is contracted on short-term projects, not done by an employee. So, you better hope Obamacare and Medicaid survives the Trump years, because you will be needing these. And prepare your move from South Dakota. You’ll find higher paying work in technical writing anywhere but South Dakota.
It’s not just Daugaard. It is the “educational institutions” as a whole. Top down management without the input of parents, teachers and the students themselves does not work. Remember when the PTA held any weight at all? Now decisions about a child’s education has been taken away from the parents, community and the students themselves. First it was the parent, then the teacher, then the PTA, it changed to the school district, went to the state level and then the federal level all to focus on the individual student from further and further away. It’s like searching for a bird through binoculars held backwards. . .
At the moment, and these thoughts may change, I think the duty and focus of a school is misdirected really. For generations we have always said “it’s the needs of the student, every student succeeds, the student comes first, it’s all about the kids” everything is just “student focused” and that is good and all but it is in reality crap. Maybe it isn’t about the student. Maybe it shouldn’t be about the student at all but rather what the community needs. Maybe our schools should be focused on providing our communities with contributing, worthwhile members. If we changed the focus of the school “from the student” to “the community” the students would understand their role as a part of the community, parents would understand their child had a purpose and had a role in the community and even the school would see developing young people to be their primary purpose. Could you imagine the climate of a community, school and the students if they approached education as a part of the whole community as opposed to how it is seen now? You can see this now in the far east in their schools. I’m not saying it is the best model but I will say that students in Japan saw themselves as privileged to attend school and even obligated perform to bring honor to their school, family and community. I use Japan because I attended school there. I did not attend a Japanese school but we intermixed with them on a daily basis. Something else I like about their education was that when you graduated from High School, depending upon performance, you were either on track for a trade school or were college bound. Now that didn’t mean if you were selected to go the trade route you could not attend college but if you chose to go to college it was on your dime and not the communities obligation to provide the scholarships and aid. All of it is based upon the student’s desire to work hard and the standards of the entire community.
“Maybe it shouldn’t be about the student at all but rather what the community needs. Maybe our schools should be focused on providing our communities with contributing, worthwhile members. If we changed the focus of the school “from the student” to “the community” the students would understand their role as a part of the community, parents would understand their child had a purpose and had a role in the community and even the school would see developing young people to be their primary purpose. Could you imagine the climate of a community, school and the students if they approached education as a part of the whole community as opposed to how it is seen now?”
This is vague and meaningless other than the part where you mentioned kids with great grades going to college and kids with less great grades going to trade schools. Be concrete. What does this mean, practically, for teachers and students on a day to day basis at our schools?
Dicta, I didn’t intend it to be specific but rather a philosophical change in our view of education. I appreciate wanting to know specifics and I think they will be needed but your asking is no different than Daugaard’s focus on graduation rates rather than what the student contributes to the community. I don’t think my idea is original or unique but all new ideas/methods start with a specific question, develop a hypothesis, experiment to gather data, analyze the data, and then evaluating the data to determine if the hypothesis is correct. It’s called “The Scientific Method”. It’s pretty cool. You and the global warmist/socialist should try it.
Funny, in your attempt to be a smartass, you’ve revealed some holes in your own education. First, if you are going to use the scientific method and apply it to a claim, that claim has to be falsifiable. That means that it can’t be some vague notion. It has to be concrete so that a set of observations can either support or contradict the claim. What’s bizarre to me is that you seem to want to implement “something” that you never really identify, and would spend ?????????? on it. Because that is fiscally conservative, right? You criticize Daugaard’s metrics, which is fair, but christ, at least his claims are measurable. You just have some mealy-mouthed concept that you feel pretty strongly about despite not really knowing what “it” is. And when pressed on the issue, you resort to name calling because you are, to be blunt, an exceedingly dull and uncurious mind.
Technical Writing instead of English is a bad idea. I’ve been a technical writer and worked with lots of talented tech writers. It’s a specific skill, not a replacement for a basic English education. You can’t do good tech writing unless you first learn to Read, Write, Analyze, and Organize — you know, what you learn in English classes.
You can’t do specialized things well until you’ve mastered the basics. That fact remains true whether you believe in education, or whether you just see young citizens as worker drones.
Dicta it is an “idea”, a thought, a musing. Do you not realize it is your attitude that does no more than suppress free thought? Back to education: The majority of students an our communities do not benefit from our existing educational design and focus. To reorient our views of the purpose of education would obviously improve from what we are doing now. You want metrics? Look at what constructivism math has done to our youth. Hell they no longer even learn their multiplication tables. Ask yourself why we no longer read the works such as Shakespeare, Dante’s Inferno, Canterbury Tales, Beowulf, Paradise Lost, Huck Finn, Moby Dick, Tale of Two Cities, Lord of the Flies, and other great literature which now the students get excerpts. You want metrics? I’ll give you a metric. 80% of the kids we are turning loose in our communities are narcissistic punks. 71% of the kids who attend our high schools go to college and only 23% graduate within 4 years yet almost all of them have freaking student debt amounting to $23,000. So, what does all this tell you? It tells you are schools are producing CRAP that is unprepared to graduate much less than go to any college and only a fool would loan them a dime to attend. So, if you think the governor putting a band aid on a artery cut will stem the flow you’re an idiot as well.
From Daugaard’s Press Release: “Under the new requirements, every student must still take four units of English, but an aspiring engineer might take a technical writing class instead of a language arts elective. Every student must still take three units of math, but an aspiring accountant might take a business math class instead of geometry.”
This is a dumbing down of the high school curriculum that does the student a sever disservice. That aspiring engineering student would be better to take an honors or AP English class to increase his or her chances of getting higher ACT or SAT scores and getting into a good engineering program. An aspiring accountant would be better off taking geometry, which is normally taken by most students by the ninth or tenth grade. Then that student should continue on with Algebra II. College entrance exam scores are going to be very low for that student who fails to take geometry and Algebra II. All these dumb down standards are going to do is increase the need for remedial programs at the college/tech school level. Stupid.
Many foreign countries, and increasingly in the US, geometry is taken in eighth grade.
Doesn’t surprise me that the government is being more honest about the role of public education. It is not about creating an educated and moral citizenry in order to provide stability to the Republic (per the SD constitution), but rather a pipeline for producing a working mass for the factory floor. All hail the Growth Economy; Consume Citizen!
OldSarg: “Maybe it isn’t about the student. Maybe it shouldn’t be about the student at all but rather what the community needs.”
When you say “community,” is that really meaning “employers?” You hit upon my fear: this rhetoric is really about creating a pool of labor for the employers – a pool that needs government intervention because wages and benefits have not created the flow into the workforce required to perpetuate employer profit.
Will schools also offer classes in prevention of workforce exploitation and the importance of collective voice for workers — will workforce education provide the full scope of the issues of workforce to students to allow them to make informed, professional decisions?
I also worry that the discussion compares actual, current curriculum (which admittedly is not perfect) with a hypothetical technical version of Math and English that is assumed better. Shouldn’t we have to make a fair comparison between the merits and outcomes of actual curriculum – not reality versus fantasy?
If Daugard is focused on creating workers, he ought to check in with Aldous Huxley who had a great plan in detail that filled all the needs. It’s outlined in a textbook titled _Brave New World_.
On the other hand, if a nation wants education to play an important role in creating contributing citizens – OMG, I kinda agree with OS about this! – Some changes need to be made.
Get rid of Betsy DeVoid of All Humanity, who’s enabled student rip offs by diploma mills and student abuse by just about anyone. Fund education well by raising taxes on the rich so they pay their fair share. Don’t use taxes to fund private schools in any way. Ensure that teachers are well-paid and actively work to rebuild the respect they once had to raise their morale. Dramatically shrink class sizes. Put teachers in charge of curriculum planning because they are the experts. Require civics and a full course of US History.
There’s plenty more, but that’s for starters.
When we allow our students to opt out of Geometry, Physics, or other advanced level (college prep) classwork, will these same politicians then rail that our “failing schools” fall further behind our international competitors or national metrics in math and science ability?
Pick a lane.
o, “When you say “community,” is that really meaning “employers?”, No, but yes in a way. I am talking about “citizens” not slaves, indentured servants or even leeches. I am talking about teachers, police, city workers, store clerks, and even employees. I’m not talking about a labor pool of specifically trained students as if they are a product to be used but rather a well educated, rounded individual that knows they have a role and responsibility to the society. Debbo points to one person but it is much more than one person. A lot of it is the power the state and federal government has taken away from the local communities in how to run there schools and what subjects are required. Here is a good example: SMARTER BALANCE. Smarter Balance testing was purchased, at the recommendation of the Feds as a method of testing student progress. Then it all became about taking a test rather than the education itself. Soon the public, after seeing their children were giving up valuable learning time for only test prep, hiring extra staff to just drive the test tech into the kids heads and then tying the kids to a chair for 8 hours in one day figured out the test was never even normed. No one knew what the test results should be or what they meant. . . Soon the importance of the test began to wane and the school administrations stopped pressuring the test prep so much but instead of stopping the testing guess what? They just keep on testing but it doesn’t mean anything anymore. The kids will sit there all day, the school will turn n the results and the time still gets wasted but NOBODY cares. This is what happens when you turn over the responsibility of education of “your” communities students to some unnamed bureaucrat from Pierre who moved there for a state job originally from Lemmon (just as an example) who knows nothing about education but does know there is a federal rule to abide by, which the school district knows nobody cares, the principal knows nobody cares and the teacher realizes they are wasting their time but nobody does anything. The is all because YOU in the communities turned over your responsibilities to the unnamed gourmet official. Just keep on testing and testing and testing because there is a “rule”. Somebody has to stand up sometime and say STOP!. I have to tell you it isn’t just education and this is where is many people need to rethink their trust in bureaucrats. I have 32 years working for “The Man” and his actions, as a whole, are honorable. They want to do good but: when this behemoth starts rolling it doesn’t stop F’ing Up! This is why you should never turn over the education of your communities future to some unnamed journalism major that couldn’t find a job in the DC area so they took a Federal position, which they qualified for because they had a worthless degree but it was still a degree, as a regulation writer for the government. The same happened to us with ACA, Patriot Act and on and on. . . No, it’s not just Betsy. It is US, as in “we”. We turned over our responsibilities to someone else. It is our fault and only we can fix it.
I might be able to recite the long litany of so-called “reforms” of South Dakota’s education system since the 1980s have occurred under Republican rule. Daugaard sums up 40 years of what he considers Republican failure in education, a period that includes his own almost eight years of failure:
“…Of our students who start 9th grade, 80-90% will finish. About 70% of those will enroll in post-secondary education. This is less than two-thirds of those who started 9th grade. Of those who enroll at a tech school or university, only 50-60% will graduate. Thus, only a fraction of our students who started 9th grade will earn a degree. In other words, our current system is only working for a minority of our students.”
First, only a nincompoop would consider graduating 90 percent of high school students in four years as a failure. If Daugaard will study the real data (at the school and student level) he will find a lot of “failure” starts pretty early, and involves students missing/skipping school. Schools can’t teach kids who aren’t in their desks. Students who don’t show up for class are on a slow-motion trip to dropping out. School districts try hard to get students to come to school, and if that doesn’t work, they have set up all sorts of innovative programs to help that student through. Blaming school districts for the difficulties students have after high school, when the state short-funds every layer of education because the leaders don’t want to tax the donor class, seems like Daugaard blame-shifting the failure to anyone but himself.
Daugaard has part of the answer right, though, but he seems to think this is something new, and something that should be forced down the throat of the 80-90 percent of students who are doing OK in school. If you talk to any student, he or she will tell you what their dreams are. What they would like to do as a career when they grow up is tied into that, but there is often a disconnect between their dreams and what they have to do to reach those dreams. There already are innovative programs in school districts to address the motivation factor, and to work around the difficulties some students face in the regular classroom. It would be nice if the state actually funded these programs adequately. For others, who graduate high school, but can’t see their way to graduating from a post-secondary program, maybe the financial burdens play a bigger role.
So here’s a solution: an income tax on higher incomes to better fund education to address those problems Daugaard lists. Dumbing down, as Daugaard suggests, will create worse problems.
Higher income people are already paying more in taxes than the poor.
The fact is some kids don’t care about graduating and no amount of money can reverse that.
Several Korporations paid as much or less income tax than I, last year. I paid nothing for Income Taxes.
Stop blaring out the obvious and find something substantial to report.
So, Jason, you must agree then that dumbing down the curriculum, as Daugaard suggests, won’t make any difference. Making those changes Daugaard proposes will cost money, so you must be opposed to what Daugaard proposes.
OldSarge, it looks like we finally found an issue on which we agree.
Jason. Which is a larger group? The kids that don’t care about graduating or the kids who don’t care about going to college? Where did you go to college, Jason? Hmmmmm ….?
Donald,
How is it being dumbed down?
o, welcome to being a “Classical Liberal”.
OldSoapweed, it is Smarter Balanced and teaching to the test started years before Smarter Balanced ever showed up. Dumbass dubya’s whole Every Child Left Behind policy started when he was governor of Texas and teachers stopped their curriculum and started teaching kids to pass the Texas state tests they had to pass to be promoted.
Jason, when you tell a kid that they don’t have to take geometry and they can take some fluff course that doesn’t even exist, and get credit for it, that is the very definition of “dumbing down” the curriculum. You are condemning that student to never being able to go to a post-secondary institution, the exact opposite of what Daugaard says he wants. It’s a stupid statement and a stupid idea that needs to be rethought before he can ruin students’ lives.
Donald take a step back and think about what you said.
You said a course that does not exist yet is a fluff course.
Do you see the faulty logic in your thinking?