The Santa Ana School District supposedly has some of the toughest graduation standards in the state. This, the administrators claim, has increased their dropout rate. With “a city of mostly Latino immigrants where 60% of the students are learning English as a second language and nearly 4 in 10 at some schools do not make it through their senior year, officials say they are contemplating a more pragmatic approach.”

I am all for the ideal of ‘you are only as fast as your slowest man’, but not in this situation. Graduating high school is not a team effort; it is an individual one. It also appears, to me, that none of the educators are pushing that they can achieve their high benchmark for graduation if they apply themselves and want it that bad. This situation is really no different than graduating bootcamp or any other military school. It is all about how bad you want it.

But, there are more blatant reasons for lowering the standards in Santa Ana. The LA Times reported that “school counselors support the plan, saying it will free up time in students’ schedules, giving them more opportunities to retake classes they have failed. It will also give more latitude to students taking remedial and technical classes, English language learners who require specialized courses, and honors students taking advanced classes.”

So, it sounds to me like the kids that are not English speakers are the ones having the problems. Is this a move to placate to the Latino community since they make up a large portion of their “No Child Left Behind” statistics? Or is there something else going on here?

Let me see if I can guess the picture, to which this story is only a part of.

Several years ago, Santa Ana School District raises their standards, bragging about how they are going to “challenge” children and increase the level of education in the state. They probably bragged about how they are “trend-setters” and all of that crap.

Now, with “No Child Left Behind” requiring them to post positive numbers as far as total graduation rates and testing scores, they realize that their policy is actually shooting them in the foot for receiving federal dollars. So, they come out now with a reason why they need to lower the standards, so that they can post better numbers to the state. Lower graduation standards = lower dropout rate = more money! Is that clear enough for you?

So, let’s lower the standards to graduate High School to showing up and spelling your name correctly, because as it is, kids don’t learn American History, basic Social Studies (i.e.: government), or logic. But they do get a world class education in Marxism though!!

(LATimes.com)