'Disconnected' diplomas are useless
- Joanne Jacobs
- Feb 5
- 1 min read
Lowering academic standards and dropping graduation exams don't reduce student stress or promote a "holistic" education, writes Chris Cerf on The 74. They make it look as though students are prepared to succeed without doing the hard work of teaching them. Students with "diplomas disconnected from proficiency" will experience plenty of stress when they discover they're not prepared for job training or college classes.
"The New Jersey Assembly recently moved to eliminate the New Jersey Graduation Proficiency Assessment, writes Cerf, who served as New Jersey commissioner of education, superintendent of Newark Public Schools and New York City deputy schools chancellor.
It's a national trend, he writes. Fewer than 10 states still require high school exit exam, down from a peak of nearly 30. Students get diplomas "without any objective evidence that they have mastered the minimal skills necessary for future success."
A graduation exam warns students they need to improve their skills before they try to enter the workforce or higher education, he writes. It's an objective metric, unlike course completion, which has become meaningless due to grade inflation and "credit recovery."
"When policymakers eliminate a uniform metric, they don’t eliminate inequity," writes Cerf. "They hide it."
Thanks for the link to the "credit recovery" article from Fordham. Mirrors exactly what is going on in our school. We are also now under pressure to allow students who fail the first semester to earn credit for the failed semester if they do better in the second semester.
Another article was just released showing that Gen Z is officially dumber than their parents, now given that one in 5 students in grade 12 are proficient at math, approximately 1/3 proficient in reading, and 1/4th are proficient in writing, how does ANYONE see that lowering standards and eliminating graduation exams makes any sense at all...
Also given that many students who are admitted to college these days have incredibly poor reading and writing skills, I would say the continued lowering of standards has doomed at least ONE generation (Gen Z) and will doom Gen Alpha (2013-) but what do I know
Cities remain free to organize final exams for the basic school grads they certify; what New Jersey, like most states, is wisely doing is removing the pretense that the standard education reforms of reformers like Mr Cerf actually worked, which they most certainly did not, at least compared to the policies of foreign states whose youth have now been trained and are genuinely employable, unlike the poor young adults in the mid-Atlantic states superintended by Mr Cerf, and his successors uselessly patrolling twin cities overwhelmed by external disorder.