High school dropouts cost state billions
California’s descent into http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3402 learners.
In the US as a http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2375, approximately 5.5 million students, nearly one-tenth of the total, are ESL students, who speak English as a second language if at all: No Spanish-Speaking Child Left Behind.
“Each year, about 120,000 students fail to get a diploma by age 20, according to the California Dropout Research Project, which on Wednesday released detailed recommendations for state lawmakers and educators.
“Each annual wave of dropouts costs the state $46.4 billion over their lifetimes because people without a high school diploma are the most likely to be unemployed, turn to crime, need state-funded medical care, get welfare and pay no taxes, according to the report.”
But instead of preventing the entrance of millions of foreign students (many from Mexico, which has one of the world’s most anti-education cultures), the report suggests that standards be lowered.The state should instead require schools to improve at a faster rate, the report says.
One way to do that would be for schools to change their graduation requirements and spend less time on academics alone; they should teach more “soft skills” such as how to be punctual, persistent and work well in groups – all valuable “if California wants to truly prepare its students for life beyond high school,” says the report.
Dumbing down schools to make them appear like they are accomplishing education when they are not is absolutely a strategy for creating the third world within the first — pronto!
http://www.limitstogrowth.org/