Belligerent ghouls do not run American schools. From what I’ve seen of public education, our schools are overflowing with compassionate, intelligent, committed people (excluding the Physical Education departments, of course). The large majority of teachers, administrators and students all do their best within this broken, stale system.

So why are 1.23 million students NOT graduating this year?

How has our society let 1.23 million kids begin their adult lives with a failure that may damn them to poverty? 1.23 million is about the population of the Dallas, Texas metroplex, the ninth largest city in the country. Newt Gingrich suggested Sunday on Face the Nation that because of the recent Supreme Court decision on Guantanamo Bay we may lose a city. When Newt invokes a mushroom cloud to argue against legal rights, his hyperbole is tragic and now even cliché. But we are leaving a whole city of kids behind every year, and the critics, justly engaged in a variety of other emergencies, are silent.

Any sentient being who spends more than a day in an urban public high school figures will see that there are barely enough resources to support the students who want to learn and are behind for various reasons. Teachers have to focus on shepherding the promising, willing kids toward success while actively repressing the weight of empathy for the plight of so many students who will give up and fade away into lives of poverty, dependency and basic cable.

There is not enough time or energy to mourn all of the lives lost to low expectations and shitty circumstance—not if you want to help the kids who manage to show up with the ability perform nearly at grade level.

Despite every good intention, America’s schools are on the verge of (or in the midst of) colossal failure. Our current educational system was created in the late 19th century, expanded to serve immense numbers of students in the 20th century and finds itself paralyzed by a war between conservative and progressive philosophies in the 21st century. And this is all is occurring as the world grows more competitive and complex every day.

Our schools are on the verge of becoming what Dr. Scott McLeod calls dangerously irrelevant. Many public schools in the inner cities have been failing for decades—mini Katrinas where the graduation rates rarely approach 50%. Even 50% would be unacceptable. High school isn’t shooting a basketball. These are human lives we’re dealing with. A high school diploma is the ticket out of poverty wages. If a kid doesn’t graduate high school he is far more likely to end up in prison or on public assistance. Non-graduates earn on average $18,826 a year. High School graduates earn about ten thousand more dollars a year, $27,280. *

Of course, a diploma is only a ticket to the working poor but the distinction is huge, for now. But what will a diploma mean when employers begin to realize that only 35% of graduates read at a “proficient level?” Less than 25% are proficient in Math. And the most troubling thing is that these metrics are based entirely on a completely outdated pedagogy.

We’re trying to create 19th-century proficiency for a 21st-Century world. While many students come into school with an ability to use technology that surpasses their instructors, they often find their skills—their ability to communicate and process information at broadband speeds—to be detriments to accepting the “sage on the stage” old-world teaching they often receive.

While listening to a one-hour lecture, the average teenager can send fifteen text-messages, post nine blogs and download twenty-five pieces of porn. How the hell can you expect her to learn the way her parents did?

We need a Manhattan Project to revamp our schools and it needs to happen before High School Musical 4. Here are five crucial steps I believe need to be taken before we can expect underprivileged students to regain any hope of succeeding in our public schools.

1. Rebuild our schools
Dostoevsky said, “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” The quality of the education in a society can be judged by walking into the boys’ restrooms in any one of the Los Angeles Unified School Districts three-dozen high schools. If one could stand the stench, the vile odors compounded by vile images, you might get a sense of how desperate the situation is. If the thought that goes into one episode any of these home makeover shows was put in to how to redesign our schools bathrooms, the basic plan would be done replicated for schools all over the country. The renewal wouldn’t be fancy or cush at all. The bathrooms would probably resemble those in ballparks and stadiums. But the primary effect would to create an environment where students feel respected and safe. Schools need to be free of violence and destruction as a rule. We need to indulge our kids with proper custodial services (I know that the kids create the messes, but if they knew how to behave they wouldn’t be in school). The facilities need to appear policed, not to create a fascist sense of compliance, but to free up the brain to learn. Krashen’s work on the Affective Filter—students acquiring a new language need to be free of anxiety for the process to work—should be applied into every inch of a school’s campus. If we really care, we need our schools to look respectable.

2. End Social Promotion
There’s nothing more depressing that looking at a transcript of a ninth grader who has arrived in high school without passing one class. That’s completely possible in many large school districts where social promotion exists. Too many ninth graders face the reality of failure far too late in their life. Typically a ninth grade class will lose 30-40% of its students by tenth grade. Most of them, I imagine, are students realizing that for the first time in their lives fails actually count.

3. End the Standards Regime
Take a look at the California State Standards and see if they make a lick of sense to you. These standards are webs and mazes of edutalk and jargon that weigh on teachers and baffle students. Educational leaders need to work with business leaders to come up with specific expectations related to 21st century. These expectations could be related to specific projects or they can just be checklists. But they can’t be BS like: “Analyze the arguments for entering into war presented by leaders from all sides of the Great War and the role of political and economic rivalries, ethnic and ideological conflicts, domestic discontent and disorder, and propaganda and nationalism in mobilizing the civilian population in support of ‘total war.’” Not that our students shouldn’t know these things. But that one standard is a class in itself. It’s practically PhD dissertation. And there are hundreds of these things. Students need to know A) the skills they need to posses and B) the concepts they need to know. Everything else is just eduspam.

4. Require (Or Provide Tax Incentives/Disincentives) to Video Game Companies Who Make Violent Games to Make Educational Software
If the work and creativity that went into Grand Theft Auto went into a decent Algebra program or a grammar program, our kids would have a real chance. Our kids, even the poor ones to some extent, are media-savvy, plugged-in citizens of the web. We need to teach them how they learn. Our curriculum doesn’t need to be as compelling as GTA, but it has to be as relevant.

5. Free Higher Education for Any Student with a 3.00 GPA or higher
A promise of a real education in a state university is the kind of carrot that will motivate the students who might tend to slide by. It will inspire focus and drag every student up toward success. Parents will see tangible hope in report cards. Kids will see lights at the end of tunnels, and maybe we’ll all see an educational system reborn.

These cursory solutions represent a smidge of what must be done to address the crisis we face. For instance, universal Pre-K has to be a given based on what we’re learning about how much a child’s brain develops by age five. I think we need about 1.23 million good ideas to really get us to the point where we can stop failing our kids and start preparing them for the world that will be theirs.

*Those with a Bachelor’s degree earn about $51,194 a year. Advanced-degree holders average about $72,824 a year, according to the US census.

Photo by zombiefactory.

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