The question to ask is "how many kids graduate high school vs. how many should".
Turns out the answer is interesting - about 50 years ago, the graduation rate for high school was around 50%. These days it's much higher (90% or more in some areas).
Does this mean the children is learning? Perhaps.
It also may represent a failure of our systems - in the past, not everyone needed a high school degree to be a functional member of society, and forcing those people to "graduate" may in fact be a net loss to society.
In other countries, this is explicit: people are tracked to "educational" vs. "vocational" career tracks earlier, and there is not the emphasis on graduation rates as a metric.
> It is amazing how many people complain about "kids these days" while every measurable statistics shows that their generstion was much worse.
> drink less alcohol, commit less crime, get teenage pregnant less often
Stats lie.
Their doctors give them drugs way more fun than alcohol, all of their crimes are unattributable to them because they're being committed in a virtual world where there is no accountability (it's not the Boomers SWATing each other, DDoSing anything that disagrees with them, and running fraudulent crowdfunding grifts), and the decline in teenage pregnancy has more to do with the entire demographic's sexual interests being fine-tuned to bespoke pornography and/or their own reflections.
Number of school shootings only ever increases, and an entire generation claims to be mentally ill. Something is wrong here.
Overall violence committed by kids went down. Simple as that.
Pluuus it was kids who then protested and lobbied against legalized guns. Aaand it was his generation who called them crisis actors and bullied then. And bullied parents of dead kids.
In here, I would point out that SWATing is a thing solely and absolutely because adult cops behave over the top aggressively. SWATing is not a thing in countries with less aggression and violence prone police. Not because their teenagers would be overall better, but because their police forces are harder to be used.
A 50% graduation rate for US secondary education had been attained by the 1947-48 school year, which is now 75 years ago. By 50 years ago (1972-73), the actual rate was 75%, among 17 year olds. (Note that some normal-schedule students would be graduating at age 18, and other statistics look at graduation or G.E.D. equivalent at later ages, e.g., 19 or 20.)
That said, yes, there was a dramatic increase in attendance and graduation from ~1900, when the graduation rate was about 6%.
US Department of Education, 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait, p 55, "Table 18 --- High school graduates, by sex and control of institution: 1869--70 to 1991--92"
A hundred years ago graduating high school was rare. My grandfather made it all the way to 6th grade before he had to start working. And if you look at what a high school graduate applying to one of the Ivies was expected to know a century ago, it was considerably closer to today's bachelor's degree than today's high school diploma.
Primary and secondary educational standards have dropped precipitously in the USA.
the high school era in ones' life has a lot of opportunity for personal hardship; in many ways it's the beginning of personal responsibility for a lot of people.
in other words : it's less likely that an elementary school student has to juggle an unwanted pregnancy, an estranged family, and a job at McDonalds; it's not that uncommon later on.
I do get that. I knew people who had a kid, family issues, substance issues, etc and still managed to graduate. I know there are probably others who wouldn't graduate in similar situations or worse ones. It still shocks me that the dropout rate is so high.
As someone who was homeless in high school (but still graduated thanks to some incredible non-familial adults), it's very easy to think, "fuck it, I'm out, I don't need this extra stress". Doing homework is real fucking hard when you don't have anywhere that's home.
I feel shocked too. But not surprised. The shock is more of a reminder that the world for many is so unlike the world for me. It’s so easy to assume everyone has approximately my experience. But it’s just so not true. So many are dealing with such an unfair hand to begin with.
If intelligence is distributed on a bell curve there are going to be some that can't graduate no matter how hard they work, and some more that can only graduate with a lot of hard work. Then throw in some more people that have some difficult life circumstances: parents dying, depression or other health issues, drug or alcohol problems, etc.
This number is including the fact that we already lower standards for those on the left side of the bell curve. It's entirely the difficult life situations at play.
In my experience they just stop attending, not hit a class they can't pass. There is no standard of achievement required to graduate high school besides participation.
