Remedial classes

This is pathetic. There is so much wrong in this story about how unprepared high school graduates are for college it's depressing. One student "took hard classes as a high school junior but spent much of her senior year in an 'on-job training' class that included working as a department store clerk." What?? This crap exists? That's not school, that's called "being an effective dropout." How can schools rationalize letting a student simply work as a senior instead of requiring real classes?

Almost half of high school graduates tested at the "adult basic" level in math, which means dealing with whole numbers and fractions -- in other words, junior high stuff. Gee, I wonder if that has anything to do with the apparent fact that math isn't required when you are a senior?

When shown student essays and asked whether they were college material, five out of six high school teachers said yes. No college instructors said yes. Why? Because the standards for high school teachers were based on the state's basic skills writing test, which only requires a few paragraphs that have a beginning, middle, and end. Don't set the bar too high there!

All schools should require math every year. Science every year. English every year. Social studies every year. At least two years of a foreign language, preferably more. Nobody should be able to go through their senior year or any other year of high school without taking a math class, a science class, an English class, and some kind of social studies class. The thought that we are giving diplomas to people who haven't done these things is disgusting. We aren't preparing students for the real world when we allow schools to have disturbingly low expectations.