Education reform can begin with a policy that prohibit the granting of honor roll grades to students who are not doing work that is on grade level. Grades are deceptive and few parents know what children are expected to know at various stages of their development. Accepted practices of grade inflation need to be banned as a destructive form of consumer fraud.
Honor rolls can create a deceptive sense of satisfffaccction for everyone involved. It would produccce a higher level of advocay and effort from parents and students if they were aware that they were achieving excellene in work below the core ontent standards for their grade.
In every school system, there are students who will do whatever it takes to master all of the work required of them. It is not fair for them to never be presented the full sclope of academic instruction that is given to other students that they will have to compete with in college. Valedictorians from one school district are place at a disadvantage next to "C" students from another.
Many college freshmen are surprised and discouraged to learn that they have to take loans and acquire debt for non-credit courses. This often includes the cost of room and board for instruction they should have obtained while living at home attending public schools where they excelled. Without proper support, many of these gifted students are lost to higher education, forever.
All positive change does not require money. A public policy that requires 'truth in grading' can go a long way toward preventing schools from languishing, unchallenged in entrenched failure.
Deborah Joyce Dowe
