Thursday, July 7, 2011

HEEDPoll: Lowest Common Denominator

HEED recently received an email from a concerned reader. After tutoring a few college-bound high school grads in his area, our reader started to wonder about the k-12 education system in the U.S.

Yes, many people are already worried about k-12 education in the U.S. However, moving from a suburb with a successful school district to a less academically effective urban area proved to be an eye-opener to our reader.

Anyway, in his email our reader stated that he wondered what the standards were for graduation. He also asked, if the high school graduates he was tutoring didn't know their multiplication tables or how to find a lowest common denominator (for example), why had they graduated?

...which led HEED to the following poll: (feel free to leave your answers as comments)

How many high school graduates have you met that could not add fractions?

What are the expectations for the students that graduate from your high school?

What other questions/comments does this post lead you to ask?


Feel free to email your observations, questions or comments to he.edblog@gmail.com.