Quote:
Originally Posted by kane
That is one of our problems. We too have standards the schools must meet, but the problem is that these standards come in the form of test and graduation rates. If the school doesn't do well at the tests or has a low graduation rate they get less money. So the people running the schools do everything they can to get test scores and graduation rates up. This doesn't mean helping the students actually do better, but instead how to massage the numbers so they get paid.
An example. My nephew, when he was in 8th grade, failed every class except for PE. He was still allowed to graduate. In high school he got expelled early his junior year yet he was allowed to do a few packets of work and graduate. He can barely read or write yet he is a high school graduate.
It makes no sense to me that the way they punish the schools that are doing poorly by taking money from them. These are the schools that need help, but instead of trying to fix them it is more like everyone tries to figure out how to avoid it and just let it rot.
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Well, in our system we have to pass individual courses too. Though sometimes this doesn't make much sense. We have compulsory and somewhat hated Swedish lessons. I failed at starting exam and in prep-up exam. Despite of that, I did later on pass all the courses required to use Swedish in our administration (we have two languages), but they still made me to pass that starting exam years later (so that I could graduate), even though I had already passed the whole shit.