Vocaboly.com

[Ray Woodcock]

First, an excerpt from my post here on March 28, 2000:

"Here's a somewhat radical scenario. Suppose that the core of
essentially free public high school education ends after the second
year of high school. Now the student has a choice among several part-
or full-time options, presumably with parental approval. ... [A]t this
stage we could begin to enlarge the number of educational and job
opportunities open to the student. ... "

I revive that quote because of this excerpt from the New York Times at
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/10/education/10exam.html?th:

*** BEGIN EXCERPT ***

A study of high school graduation exams, rites of passage for more
than half the nation's secondary school students, shows that they
largely test material taught in the 9th and 10th grades. Such
material, the study said, is often taught at the middle school level
in other industrialized countries.

The study found that the tests measured very basic material and
skills, insufficient for success in university courses or in jobs
paying salaries higher than the poverty level, currently about $18,000
for a family of four. ...

The study also compared the material tested with benchmarks from the
Third International Mathematics and Science Study, concluding that in
math, the skills tested on high school exit exams in the United States
are taught in middle school in many other countries.

Lisa Graham Keegan, the former commissioner of education in Arizona,
said she had begun looking into high school graduation exams, but on
the first administration of a test found that 84 percent of the
students had failed. ...