SAD INDICTMENT OF OUR NATION'S PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM

The front page headline on Sunday’s Houston Chronicle read:

MANY IN COLLEGE LACK BASIC SKILLS
For Texas, it’s a $200 million –a-year problem
　
"It has been the dirty little secret of higher education for decades: Tens of thousands of [public] college students can’t do the work. Developmental education – reteaching basic skills in reading, writing and math, is a $200 million-a-year problem in Texas, funded by taxpayers, colleges and the students themselves. …..But relatively few students who need the classes go on to earn a degree, raising questions about whether money spent on developmental education is a wise investment."
　
It was a dirty little secret that I quickly discovered in 1970 when I started teaching at the community college where I remained until I retired in 1993. Many if not most of the high school graduates I registered could not read and write. Nor could they add, subtract, multiply and divide. These nearly-illiterate students were required to enroll in, and pass remedial (educational development) courses before being allowed to take the college’s regular courses.
　
This is not a problem unique to Texas. Registrars of public colleges throughout the U.S. report that two-thirds of incoming students lack the basic skills that are needed to pass a college course. And I am sure that some private colleges and universities also have a number of entering students who are deficient in reading, writing and math, but to a much lesser extent than public institutions. That is a sad indictment of our nation’s public school system.
　
Since 1970, I have often written to express my disgust with our public high schools for graduating students who are close to being functionally illiterate. When I graduated in 1943 from a small East Texas high school and when I taught high school in Dallas from 1954-56, public schools were held to a higher standard and students did not graduate who could not read, write and do the math. Why then have those standards been lowered? My answer will get me accused of being a racist.
　
The standards were lowered as a result of Brown vs. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court decision which held that separate but equal was not equal. I am a product of racially segregated schools and I taught in the racially segregated school system of Dallas. Once the schools became integrated they had to cope with disadvantaged minority students who suffered from attending substandard all-black schools and who were members of a racial group that did not value an education because it had long been suppressed.
　
In order to accommodate the influx of students from substandard schools, educational standards were lowered not only for blacks, but for all students as well. And that is why two-thirds of the students entering our public colleges lack the basic skills to do college work.

Our public school system needs a complete overhaul and our compulsory attendance laws need to be revisited. It makes no sense to require high school-aged children to attend school against their will. All their presence does is to disrupt the learning process for other students. There should be no place in the school building for habitually disruptive students. As for those high school students who do not intend to go to college, or who are obviously not college material, vocational programs should be provided that will give them skills needed to enter the workforce.

My question is, why should we spend billions of dollars on remedial education, especially since most of those enrolled drop out of college anyway? WE SHOULDN’T! Instead, we should insist that our public schools raise their standards so that NO ONE will be awarded a high school diploma who cannot read, write or do math well enough to pass college courses in English, math, science, etc..