A certain percentage of kids attach real value to their HS diploma. Of those, some view "education" existentially, as a means to rise--to acquire and accomplish, while some are behaviorally driven by the immediate, short-term consequences (their parents reward good school performance and punish failure). High school kids who graduate basically lie on a continuum somewhere between those points.
It is instructive that our national dialogue seems to focus on how to increase graduation rates instead of how to make the experience more meaningful to the kids.
American high schools, like many of the teenagers they ostensibly serve, try to do too many things at once. Like teenagers, when stretched thin and overwhelmed, schools choose to focus on what they do well. Schools depend on good PR to pass bond votes. The kids who make the schools look good have value.
The others, alas...
Who wants to teach the others? Who is good at it--the teachers who shop at Nordstrom and park European sports cars in the public school parking lot? The teachers who have a 2 handicap at the club? No, they are teaching the status classes full of affluent juniors and seniors, or the AP classes full of the children of influential parents, or coaching the big budget sports programs, where their jobs transcend those of everyday classroom teachers. If a kid has some academic or athletic talent, he/she is able enter a domain where they are nurtured by this system...and high school has value for them, also.
More and more, we have to bribe kids with social opportunities, a thin veil covering the unspoken tragedy that the school experience is otherwise not particularly meaningful or useful to most of them.
Because, for most of them, it isn't.
From K to 12, we assign to them the inexperienced teachers, the tired teachers, the old buildings, and the broken equipment. They sit on their hands during assemblies and watch the "popular" kids make speeches and receive trophies when they would really like to be in the shop, working on CAD, or at their ESL class, where their teacher understands them, or in the computer lab, editing skateboard video.
Schools are inequitable by design. That will not change--it is part of the culture. Until we scrap the whole medieval concept of putting a "master" at the front of the room for a year to force all the kids to learn what the master knows, we are going to fail to reach a lot of kids who would really like to be successful citizens, but don't recognize high school as a means to that end.
Because, for most of them, it isn't.
Schools are insular hierarchies that beg for transparency and accountability. Instead, they have secrecy policies and lawyers who are paid with education money to protect bureaucrats--most of whom will be paid by the taxpayers to shop at Nordstrom and play 18 holes for the rest of their lives, for work they didn't have to do very well.
Too many citizens are paying for artificial turf and state-of-the-art theaters that serve to educate a fraction of the school population while disenfranchising wide swaths.
Beaverton School District superintendent says cuts could reach $40 million
January 17, 2012 by Wendy Owen, The Oregonian
Beaverton School District will pay $75,000 to settle discrimination claim by gay student teacher by Dominique Fong, The Oregonian February 11, 2011
Beaverton School District superintendent says cuts could reach $40 million January 17, 2012
Beaverton School District is facing big layoffs because it delayed cutting staff April 20, 2012
Beaverton School District to spend up to $850,000 to replace failing artificial turf fields
By Wendy Owen, The Oregonian April 06, 2012
Beaverton School Board OKs Teacher Layoffs, Program Cuts June 05, 2012
Beaverton School District will hire a new administrator as it lays off teachers June 22, 2012
Beaverton School District computer quirk causes teachers, awaiting layoff news, some panic July 11, 2012
Beaverton School District laying off 204 licensed staff and moving 365 others to new schools or subjects July 26, 2012