Crippling graduation requirements

I've been trying to get my head around this topic for a few days. Here in Michigan, where our Democratic governor is at war with our Republican legislature, they've found one idea with bipartisan support: strengthening Michigan's high school graduation requirements.

Currently, Michiganders can't get a diploma unless they pass one semester of government class (aka civics). This new plan would expand the state-mandated requirements hugely, to include:

• four years of English
• four years of math
• three years of science
  
• three years of social science
• two years of foreign language
• one year of health / physical education
• one year of visual / performing arts
• as before, one semester of civics

First of all, any of our state politicians should be able to see that this plan cannot be implemented because there are not enough math, science, and foreign language teachers. Predictably, just days after the governor's State of the State speech in which she touted this plan, articles started showing up in local papers saying it isn't feasible:

Macomb County educators want the state to delay implementation of new graduation requirements for at least two years, in part because there aren't enough certified instructors to teach the new courses.

. . .

A major concern is the availability of qualified teachers to teach courses such as chemistry and physics.

[Gayle Green, chief academic officer for the Macomb Intermediate School District] said there simply aren't enough to go around. "They're just not coming out of the colleges," said Green. "We need more flexibility."

In order to meet the new standards, Michigan's colleges and universities must begin to produce more teachers certified to teach in those historically more stringent disciplines, Green said.

Green also said a requirement that all students take a second algebra course means present teachers must be re-trained to be able to reach students who don't normally enroll in that higher level math course. Algebra 2 is an elective course in most Michigan schools and typically attracts college-bound students.

Macomb County is where I grew up. It's quite well-off compared to the county to its south, which contains Detroit. How is Detroit going to get enough physics teachers to come to its deteriorating schools, get paid practically no money, teach giant-sized classes, and teach to kids who didn't elect to take physics?

Maybe the good governor thought of providing extra money for teacher re-training and economic incentives to attract math and science majors to teaching? Well, no:

School board President Susan Amato-Henderson said as she understands the language of the bill, it amounts to an unfunded mandate.

"There's not a dollar increase (for schools) tied to this," she said.

[Superintendent John] Vaara said if the bill becomes law, it will place an extra financial burden on schools because of the need to buy more text books and to hire more teachers for the required courses.

"You can't just put in any teacher to teach any subject," he said.

So, basically, in the poor districts we just aren't going to have any more diplomas. It just won't be possible anymore. Governor Granholm should have known, when she received the enthusiastic support of state Republicans, that there was something she was missing. That in some way she'd been had. This will be worse for the state's public schools than NCLB was, and it's being pushed by a Democrat... it's just maddening.

Putting aside the infeasibility of the plan, it also removes yet more student autonomy. Consider a creative and artistic student who wants to take 4 years of band, 4 years of art and 4 years of drama. Under this plan that is impossible, if they also plan to receive a diploma. Or consider a vocational tech student who wants to take computer science, auto CAD, drafting, and some shop classes. They have 6.5 available class slots, assuming there are no scheduling conflicts; is that enough? Is it reasonable to say "Sorry, you won't be able to take that drafting class since it conflicts with Spanish," when the kid has no intention of going to college and no personal use for a second language?

There are some who get offended when you suggest there are kids who we know are not going to college, as if acknowledging this fact means we're selling those kids short. But in Michigan, only 41% of kids go to college directly after high school, and only 18% eventually get bachelor's degrees. It is not right to deny a kid a diploma because they failed their second year of Spanish or their fourth year of math, when they have no intention of going on to college. This plan will certainly reduce the proportion of students who attain a diploma. And it will certainly increase drop-out rates (if you fail math two years running, what are your chances of graduating anyway? so why bother?).

What is the purpose of this plan for the majority of students who are not going straight on to college? Are the politicians going to argue "universal knowledge" and say these classes will enhance the lives of all students? My rebuttal to this argument is that if school courses were really about enhancing people's lives, the required curriculum would include things like:

• home finance (credit cards, mortgages, 401ks, etc)
• cooking
  
• nutrition
  
• early child development
  
• human physiology
• probability, percentages, and statistics
• local government

Trigonometry enhances no one's life. And I say this as a math major. Much more useful to know how to take some chicken and some pasta and some vegetables and make a meal. "Universal knowledge" was a concept invented by the aristocracy, to distinguish themselves from upstart nouveau riche merchants in the aftermath of the industrial revolution. It's a concept that needs to be retired, in favor of more individual autonomy.

These graduation requirements are taking us in the wrong direction on so many levels.