Falling standards in American high schools

Goodhart’s Law at work. Probably no coincidence that “No child left behind” coincided with an increase in secular homeschooling.

> People rise to the expectations you set

And yet they clearly don't, since a quarter of high schoolers were consistently failing to graduate before this trend of lowering standards started.

We've structured a large part of society to care about whether you have a diploma and not whether you've actually learned something, so it's no surprise that education systems are prioritizing the former over the latter.

Seriously, what else do you do when withholding a low-performing student's high school diploma will very likely kneecap their professional career? They don't learn a lesson when they fail out of high school, they just go get a dead-end job and stay in it forever (obviously I am generalizing a lot here, and there are plenty of exceptions). Giving them their diploma anyway at least gives a better shot of success to students who were academically failed by the education system or don't learn well in such an environment but would still be decent employees if given a chance. The rest aren't going to be materially impacted by it.

tiktok should get people to flex there qualifications. Lets see pass rates go up then! Kids think that all crap from Tiktok is cool.