Fear of change hurts students

Sometimes it hurts to say, "I told you so." Sometimes there is no satisfaction whatsoever in having your views supported by one of the nation's largest daily newspapers.

But that's just what is happening in the Los Angeles Times right now.

Starting Sunday, the Times began printing a four-part series of stories about life in high school in 2006. The first in the "Vanishing Class" series is "Back to Basics: Why Does High School Fail So Many?"

The Times reporters spent eight months shadowing students, teachers and administrators at Birmingham High School in Van Nuys.

Birmingham has a predominantly Latino student body, much like the schools on Costa Mesa's Westside.

When you read the series, you'll want to cry because you understand quickly that the system we have established to educate our kids is not working for those who need it most.

First, we should define "fail."

When the system fails a child, that child does not have to be a dropout. Unfortunately, that distinction was not made in the series. There are plenty of kids who have graduated but have failed, either literally or figuratively.

In the literal sense, they have failed and got promoted from grade to grade anyway just because the system is not set up to catch enough kids when they fall.

In the figurative sense, a child can graduate high school without such poor grades but could still be considered a failure of the system because he or she was not properly prepared for the change to college or a career.

So let's discuss college and high school kids. One of the failures of the high school system is that it does not allow for enough development of the kids who cannot, should not or do not want to go to college.

That sentiment was echoed in the story: "Today, the operating philosophy is that every student should be prepared for college, and high schools have little room for courses that don't further that goal." Amen.

So what do these kids do? Disenchanted with a system that puts far too much emphasis on college, and seeing no point in going to classes to learn things for a higher education they will never achieve, they drop out.

Or, at best, they graduate and go to work at a minimum-wage job, never reaching their full potential, believing that they have failed because they did not go to college.

Another theme in the series is the ridiculous requirement that all students must pass algebra in order to graduate. This is something I've been questioning for years.