And....that's exactly the point I made about lowering the goal one foot on the basketball goal. The taller people wouldn't have to jump dunk on a 10 foot goal. It's just that their ability to dunk on a 10 foot goal wouldn't mean as much. Now let's take just ONE of the proposals that has you knickers in a knot. The right to re-take tests until you get a good score. Okay. If I'm a type a parent with deep pockets I can pay a tutor to make sure my child takes a sample test over and over again before he takes the test the
first time. What's the difference? When I worked for one of those smoking hot "dot com" consulting firms back in 1999-2001 they were very big on Microsoft and Oracle certifications. How did you get certified? Take a test. How did you prepare for a test? They had practice tests that you could by (or that we made illegal copies of). The practice tests were made from people who were paid to take the REAL test and write down whatever questions they could remember immediately afterwards. I passed tests for technologies I knew NOTHING about. And....so? Some kids start taking practice ACT and SAT tests in the 8th grade. I just took the ACT once my senior year without ANY test prep. I got a 28 which is decent. I'm sure if I had practiced I could have gotten a higher school. And...so?
Yes, to a certain degree. But there is also a need for standards and being taught that meeting them is needed and necessary.
Do you watch MMA much? The only "standard" that matters is "can dude fight?" We've made a god out of standardized tests. Back in the day, doctors, lawyers etc learned their craft on the job. Then someone realized they could make a lot of money opening up medical schools and law school and nursing schools and engineering schools and you name it, there's a school for it. I was at a graduation recently and two of the grads got degrees in voice performance. I don't know if either of them can sing or not. But okay. Standards good. Like PISA? That standard? The Finns are beating WHITE Americans at PISA. And the Asians are beating everybody. Funny thing though. You don't see a lot of innovation coming out of China. And look! America is beating the pants of Finland and Singapore despite them beating the crap out of us on the PISA test!
So.....what "standards" are really important?
You and Mike make a valid point and I agree to a certain extent...but.
I quit school when I was 16 to pursue a life at sea. I can remember failing advanced math in my last year of school and saying the same thing "Why the hell do I need to learn this to catch fish?"
It was years later while working toward an advanced level Master's license that I realized I would need at least a working knowledge of algebra and spherical trig to pass tests on and utilize celestial bodies for precise navigation.
It was a lot of work to teach myself that 20 years after the fact.
Being a diesel mechanic? Having spent thousands of hours twisting wrenches on floating diesel junk, I can think of hundreds of instances where a practical knowledge of chemistry assisted me in my job and completing it safely and effectively.
Ah.
PRACTICAL knowledge of chemistry! When I was in elementary school I asked for a chemistry set for Christmas. I wanted to learn how to make explosives! (I'd be on a FEMA list for sure if they had existed back then). Alas...my chemistry set didn't have that information in it.

I thought I would learn it in high school! No dice!

College? Nope.

And then came YouTube!
Oh...but you're talking about being safe. Anyway, you're own to something. For knowledge to be practical it needs to be connected to something. So if you were teaching those inner city kids that built their own hybrid diesel car you could dust of ye old
Golden Book Of Chemistry and help them make the connection! You're average stuffy chemistry teacher couldn't do that. Same with navigation and math. Make things practical. All practical education has been taken out of schools now in favor of "standards." Take home economics. If you are making biscuits and you need 2 1/2 cups of flour for 10 servings, how much flour do you need for 30 servings? A word problem with fractions and ratios and practical application. You'd be surprised how many honors students would flub that if you asked them that question in the kitchen and didn't let them use a calculator.
Again, I could not agree more.
Maybe more "practical" math and sciences are what is needed.
Yep! We agree!
And more apprentice trades programs. I cannot remember much of anything taught in a classroom at 58 years old, but I still remember the skills that Mr. B taught me in machine shop class.
Did he have all his fingers?

This is what I learned in shop. You've GOT to be assertive! Our school didn't have enough tools and some of my more jerky classmates would hog them. Yeah...I'm still ticked off about that years later.
But here's the thing, I was still held to a standard. Mr. B used to carry around "Go-No Go" gauges in his pocket protector, and he had no problem in junking your work and making you do it again if it was out of tolerance.
I got a C in shop because of my a-hole classmates. Yeah...I'm still sore about that.
Life or death can ride on whether a machine part is one thousandth of inch out of spec.
That's why standards, and learning to meet them, are important.
The kid who hogs the tools shouldn't get a higher grade just because he got his project done first. Did I mention I'm still sore about that?
Edit: At the end of the day the only standard that matters is "Can you do the work." I've never been asked about any of my GPAs or test scores except for when I was applying for entrance into yet another academic institution. But applying for a job? Taking on a client? Nobody cares. For certain jobs tests are a barrier to
get the license, but all anyone cares about is that you
have the license and that's just for CYA. And the end of the day "Can you do the work?" A military friend of mine told me a story of when Admiral Rickover, the man who invented the nuclear submarine, actually attempted to
drive one! He almost ran it into the ground before the captain made him get off the wheel. Apocryphal? Maybe. Maybe not.