One has to wonder what the argument for public school is supposed to be when four out of five of the GRADUATES of a major public school system can’t read, write, or do math:
It’s an education bombshell. Nearly 80 percent of New York City high school graduates need to relearn basic skills before they can enter the City University’s community college system.
This doesn’t even account for the dropouts, who account for at least 12.1 percent of the city’s students even if we take the more generous “current methodology” at face value. “Since 2005, when the State began using its current methodology to
calculate graduation rates, New York City’s graduation rate has risen by
40.9 percent. In that same period, the dropout rate has fallen nearly
10 points from 22 percent to 12.1 percent.”
If we assume that the dropouts have similarly failed to learn the basic skills, that means that about 17.6% of the students in the New York City public school system are learning basic skills.
The public schools aren’t useless, they are worse than useless. Forget online education and homeschooling, children would probably learn more from playing video games all day for 12 years. And it would cost a lot less to provide every “student” with a PlayStation and a new game delivered every month.
UPDATE: It’s not just New York City and its vibrant community that are failing. Consider Minnesota, which spends $12,966 per year per public school student
- 23% of Minnesota students are not proficient in reading
- 38% of Minnesota students are not proficient in math
- 52% of Minnesota students are not proficient in science
By the way, the Minneapolis public schools spend $23,020 per student and 42.6% are not proficient in reading and 60.4% are not proficient in math.