“Tickets to Success” and Other False Guarantees

Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Secretary of Education Gerald L. Zahorchak in a news release of March 4, 2009 described the promotion of “stronger” high school graduation requirements in the following way:

Whether or high school graduates go on to college or enter the highly competitive global workforce, they deserve the assurance that a diploma is a ticket to success.”

What is success? Is a high school diploma a ticket to it? Is such a diploma even necessary for success, much less a guarantee of it?

Certainly no one outside of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Department of Education imagines that a bachelor’s diploma is a ticket to success; so how can a high school diploma be one?

By what kind of hocus-pocus does raising standards bring about success in the world?

To examine these issues further, see Illogic and Dissimulation in School Reform

Cordially
-- EGR