Does That Really Mean Schools Are Failing

Also from City Journal:

Carranza made it clear before he arrived that his principal interest is ethnic equilibrium in the nation’s largest public school system, not achieving positive, across-the-board performance outcomes. The system has some bright spots—they’re moving center stage as the chancellor’s obsession with “integration” unfolds—but New York’s schools in general are a mess. As recently as two years ago, 420 of the city’s 525 high schools had prepared fewer than half of their graduates for college or a career.

I'm not going to get into the "ethnic equilibrium" part of quote but I was surprised that the usually critical people at City-Journal wrote about "fewer than half" their graduates as if that is necessarily a problem. It probably is NOT.

The public school system is required by law to enroll every and all students regardless of ability. Private schools may pick and choose who they may enroll. Often these schools have IQ tests called "entrance exams". This allows them to enroll students with above average intelligence which is a prerequisite to performing at a level that is required for college.

Since public schools cannot skim the "cream" of students and often have the cream of the student population removed from their populations, they have less students who have the necessary intelligence to qualify for college than that of private schools.

Anyone familiar with the bell curve distribution of intelligence knows that half the population falls below 100 and generally for college one should be at 105 or so. The hard sciences usually require something closer to 110 and often go above as you head into the nether regions. Only about 25% of the population actually meets this requirement. knowing this, is the fact that half the students from the NYS public school system, which is comprised largely of students from populations with statistically low average IQ's do not graduate able to do college level work? And we're not talking about the multiplying remedial classes that are offered in colleges.

Perhaps what we should be doing is focusing on alternate paths for people who simply are not college material and stop glorifying college as the end all and be all for everybody. People's value to society should not be based on whether they have a college degree and we certainly have use for people who work with their hands and backs more than their fingers. Oh and stop diluting the significance of a college degree by handing them out to unqualified students given inflated grades and junk degrees for "reasons".