I would not trust any high school diploma or college diploma at all. I’ve met too many high school grads who cannot read and write and too many college grads who cannot complete a sentence (uh, like, you know, um, …) or think logically.
As this article notes, high school diplomas certify attendance at best. It sure doesn’t certify education.
Many corporate employers know this well, and they will do their own testing and bring new employees on provisionally before hiring them. They have to because our schools are graduating people who do not meet basic educational standards.
Earlier this month, the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress, aka The Nation’s Report Card, was released. It’s not a pretty story. Only 37 percent of 12th-graders tested proficient or better in reading, and only 25 percent did so in math. Among black students, only 17 percent tested proficient or better in reading, and just 7 percent reached at least a proficient level in math.
The atrocious NAEP performance is only a fraction of the bad news. Nationally, our high school graduation rate is over 80 percent. That means high school diplomas, which attest that these students can read and compute at a 12th-grade level, are conferred when 63 percent are not proficient in reading and 75 percent are not proficient in math. For blacks, the news is worse. Roughly 75 percent of black students received high school diplomas attesting that they could read and compute at the 12th-grade level. However, 83 percent could not read at that level, and 93 percent could not do math at that level. It’s grossly dishonest for the education establishment and politicians to boast about unprecedented graduation rates when the high school diplomas, for the most part, do not represent academic achievement. At best, they certify attendance.