“A” is for Algebra

How many high school valedictorians does it take to solve for “X”? If you’re in the Detroit area, the answer is “More than one.”
As reported by Chalkbeat, a non-profit news organization, Detroit’s Cody High School valedictorian, Marqell McClendon, “has struggled in the low-level math class she’s taking during her first semester at Michigan State University.”
“Sometimes when I’m in class and I’m learning, some things start to feel familiar from high school and I’m kind of like, ‘I learned this already, but I don’t really understand it.’ And I don’t know why I don’t understand it because it looks familiar.”
That, from a straight-A student, her school’s best and brightest. Imagine what you’d get hiring a Cody High “C” student. What exactly does “average” mean at that public school?
While wishing her the best at Michigan State and beyond, one could also wish that she had never been accepted in the first place. If you are struggling with Algebra I (and figure the odds that that’s her only academic deficit), wouldn’t a community college have been a better and cheaper place to start?
But “college for all” is the education establishment’s mantra, and the push is to four-year programs and not-ready-for-the-job-market majors. And why not? Federal loans are easy money (until the non-graduate or mis-educated must repay). The more unprepared freshmen like Marqell get in, the more need for costly but profitable remediation courses that don’t count toward graduation. These students require support from an army of otherwise unnecessary non-teaching staff. Plus: Diversity!
Studies consistently show that remedial courses and non-graduates are disproportionally “students of color” and/or of low socio-economic status. Accepting these students into programs for which they are ill-equipped does them no favors, but it sure helps the diversity & inclusion mafia take a cut of the action (which is what it exists to do), all the while virtue-signaling to fellow travelers.
To hide the malfeasance of teachers willing to pass out “A’s” like candy at a parade, the establishment turns its guns on the evils of “high stakes” tests, the things that might have pegged young Ms. McClendon as a promising but average student when compared to her peers across the country. Test like the SATs and ACTs – which more universities are making optional – and PISA, the Program for International Student Assessment that measures 15-year-old students’ reading, mathematics, and science literacy every three years.
Based on the 2018 results, U.S. 15-year-olds earned an average math score of 478 out of 1000, putting us 30th in the world, below the average of our economic competitors. Of course, we spend well-above the average for that poor showing. (More on what we should learn from PISA in a future essay.)
Imagine being an athlete at the NFL Scouting Combine and discovering for the first time that your football skills peaked in Pop Warner. Imagine the confusing distress of realizing that your coaches had been lying to you for years, building you up for something you had no hope of attaining. Imagine the dawning realization that you had spent years going down a dead-end road, when you could have spent that time on a different path, one that could have led you to achieving real success.
Now imagine parents and children locked into a system that works hard to prevent competition – tangible, accessible choices – in education. That’s the public-school system that failed Marqell McClendon and thousands like her, every year. Except that unlike the NFL, universities are willing to lower standards to accommodate those who don’t measure up – as long as they can pay the price.
It’s ironic that the people who blather on the most about “diversity” are the ones most against diversity in K-12 education options. “Diversity is our strength” they chant, while fighting to maintain a monolithic system that has created millions of academically weak students like Ms. McClendon.
When faced with the fact that their education assembly line is producing defective widgets, they attack the Quality Assurance process rather than look at how those widgets are made. They attempt to malign standardized tests like PISA that help identify academic deficiencies through setting an external baseline.
The teachers who made Ms. McClendon a “valedictorian” are liars. They committed education malpractice. They damaged a child for life. Yet they are protected by a powerful union in a government system and will never be held to account. But they can be circumvented by bringing a diversity of options to K-12 education…if we fight for it.
Sadly but predictably, our Democrat-majority legislature in Concord recently rejected $46 million in federal funds that could have supported charter school programs. It’s immaterial whether the state’s Democrats are in the pocket of the teacher’s unions for political gain or really just don’t care about your kid. The result of this epic fail is the same: the system is more important than the students and must be protected at all costs.

Ken Gorrell welcomes your comments at kengorrell@gmail.com