What’s needed and what’s politically feasible are two different things.
Step 1 stop promoting and graduating students that aren’t at grade level. Yes this will likely increase the drop out rate but that will just highlight what the real problem level is.
The state just elimininsted the graduation testing as a failure. The true failure is the graduation testing would just make the failure of many schools blatantly obvious. We can’t have that can we so instead we just give them a diploma call testing a failure and end testing.
We won’t even have agreement on that.
Second may be to recognize counter to the education complex that college education isn’t for everyone and possibly building a more German-like system were some go college prep and some prep for trades.
That in turn involves lifting the lower rungs of the Economic ladder thru meaningful wage laws and applicable labor enforcement.
Frankly I don’t think it’s solvable until we address the mass consumption dependency of our economy and our indulgent dependence on 99 cent per pound grapes and $5 disposable t-shirts from China, and cash base house cleaners no employment questions asked.
