Is dumbing-down why graduation rates are up? In both high school and college?

[Peeps]

At the early childhood end, that means forcing students as young as five into school - effectively criminalizing the proven Finnish system and other educational models (e.g. Waldorf) that don’t begin formal academic instruction until age 7.

Before my children were born, I read with great interest the books by Raymond and Dorothy Moore, who were reading specialists (doctoral level) who spent several decades following several thousand children from birth through high school graduation.

They advocated the idea of “home grown kids.” E.g., one of their conclusions based on their decades-long study is that children are best “socialized” by spending extended time with ADULTS, not other children. After all, adults know the “rules” and conventions of being “social,” while children do not know or have experience in “communication.” It seems so obvious to me that children learn “Please,” “Thank you,” and “That sounds fun! Tell me about it!” from ADULTS, not from other children.

Anyway, one of their conclusions is that later is better when it comes to formal schooling (the Moores were huge advocates of home-schooling). In fact, in their study of boys, they found–amazingly!–that if a boy stayed home and spent most of this time with parents, grandparents, and other loving adults playing and doing chores and just being a kid, and didn’t do ANY formal school at all–he would be able to spontaneously begin reading without any training at all. It sounds astonishing, but they had the research to back it up!

I know so many parents of young boys who spend their evenings tearing their hair out trying to help their young son(s) recognize letters, do phonics, finish “reading” homework, and the whole evening ends up with mom and son crying themselves to sleep. Many of their sons have been pronounced “learning-impaired” or “hyperactive” or some other label implying that they are just not good in school. It’s awful.

 

[Trader]

I am not sure if it is dumbing-down or dumbing-up. Sometimes it is plain old fraud.
Yesterday’s local headline was about virtual schools collecting state subsidies for children that were not actually students. At least one of them was dead.

https://121-jgweb.newscyclecloud.com/news/local/20190711/2-virtual-schools-misdeeds-stun-state

We have also had scandals where teachers changed student answers on a test required for graduation so their own statistics would look better. Maybe it was also to make sure the teacher would not have that student in her class for another year.