Educational Malpractice

You will find this hard to believe, but college has become a racket. American college, that is. 

John Leo has the story (via Maggie's Farm) and it is not encouraging.

First, he notes the results of the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress report on high school graduates. How proficient are they in math and languages? Not very proficient at all.

Whatever they are doing, America’s high schools are not teaching much of anything. Leo explains:

The nation’s public schools are a mess. Only 37 percent of 12th graders tested proficient in reading and only 25 percent in math. 

Proficient is a baseline. We are not talking about excellence… which, under these circumstances, feels like a joke.

And yet, lack of proficiency does not prevent these students from going to college:

Yet the inability to read or do math seems to be no barrier to college. Unprepared students are flooding into college in record numbers.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says 70 percent of white high-school graduates and 58 percent of black graduates in 2016 enrolled in college. In his syndicated column, veteran columnist Walter E. Williams asks, “If only 37 percent of white high school graduates test as college-ready, how come colleges are admitting 70 percent of them? And if roughly 17 percent of black high school graduates test as college-ready, how come colleges are admitting 58 percent of them? It’s inconceivable that college administrators are unaware that they are admitting students who are ill-prepared and cannot perform at the college level. “

How do colleges adapt to the situation? They dumb down the curriculum, by offering a great deal of remedial education. That is, with the coursework that students should have completed in high school.

That’s why more than 200 colleges put more than half of incoming freshmen in one or more remedial classes. Colleges keep searching for unchallenging courses that barely literate students can pass.

Of course, there is also grade inflation. Anything but allowing these students to learn that they have been lied to throughout their school years. They have been lied to by teachers who puffed up their self-esteem by feeding them a diet of unearned praise.

Beyond the remedial education, colleges have instituted a series of programs in what are called “studies,” which are designed for students who could never survive in real courses.

Leo continues, quoting Williams:

Williams says one clue to badly watered-down classes is the word “studies,” as in ethnic studies, cultural studies, gender studies and American studies. And what major is most selected by ill-prepared students? Education, Williams says. When students’ SAT scores are ranked by intended majors, education ranks 26th on a list of 38. I’m not sure about what can be done about education,” Williams writes. “But the first step toward any solution is for the American people to be aware of academic fraud at every level of education.”

Of course, it’s an academic fraud. One suspects that it must be good business. Classrooms and dormitories are filled with students who are forced to borrow their way through school, only to end up, assuming that the graduate, being barely proficient.

What do you think happens when these students enter the workforce and discover that they cannot compete? Will they vote for socialist candidates who will provide them with cradle-to-grave security? Will they complain about discrimination?

America’s schools have chosen to teach children to become culture warriors, to think the politically correct thoughts, to vote for the most left-wing candidates. It is educational malpractice on a very grand scale.