Sunday, April 06, 2008
Florida Public Schools Suck
The Tampa Tribune editorial board: "The new commissioner [education] should do away with Florida's dirty little secret. Earning a GED certificate is not the same thing as fulfilling the requirements for a high school diploma. Yet Florida continues to count the state diplomas awarded to those who pass the GED test as regular high school graduates. Florida should own up and tell citizens the truth - our high schools are not as successful as the state has reported. Indeed, Florida's Department of Education routinely reports a graduation rate as much as 10 points higher than what researchers have found. The Manhattan Institute, which doesn't include GEDs, put Florida's graduation rate at 59 percent in its 2005 study. And researchers at Johns Hopkins last year arrived at roughly the same percentage, tagging Florida and South Carolina high schools as the worst 'dropout factories' in the nation. By their accounts, half of Florida's high schools earned that disturbing moniker.
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5 comments:
I DISAGREE WITH U CASSIDY. HAVE YOU EVER TAKEN THE GED TEST OR EVEN STUDIED FOR THE GED TEST? I MYSELF HAVEN
T, BUT I KNOW OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE STUDIED FOR IT, AND THEY SAY THAT IT IS VERY HARD TO STUDY FOR AND PASS. SCHOOL I BELIEVE IS NOT FOR EVERYONE, SO IF YOU GO FOR THE GED, IT SHOULD BE JUST AS EQUAL AS A HIGHSCHOOL DIPLOMA.
I don't think there is anything astonishing about those statistics. All that is being shown there is that Florida has a high drop out rate. It seems to me that the GED program is exactly what Florida needs to allow dropouts a chance to move on to higher education. I think to say that the GED program is reducing Florida's graduation rate is a bit of a stretch. The relationship is much more dynamic, and personally, I think the GED program does more good than harm. Although, I agree with the notation that maybe Florida's dropout rate is excessive, I don't see the negative, direct relationship between dropping out and getting a GED. If anything I would say that the GED program is an absolutely necessary tourniquet for the hemorrhaging rates of Florida dropouts.
-Charles Gresko-McTiernan
Those statistics are pretty reasonable. It's sad when one out of three high schoolers are going to drop out of school to get their GED. I don't agree that a GED is the same as a high school diploma. It is almost the same a certificate of completion. The test isn't as hard, your only tested on the information you learned up to the 10th grade. If you gained a real education by the 10th grade, we would graduate in the 10th and not the 12th. So no, I don't believe Florida should count GED's as high school diplomas. It's misleading the education level of our state.
Florida is one of the worst states in the country in terms of education, that is no secret. I know of several schools here in Tallahassee that should have been closed down years ago.
David Lippold
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