I am a liberal. I have been a civil rights supporter since the 60’s. Now, however, we as a country must step back and look at what liberals have done to America’s high schools.  The liberals have meant well, but the unintended consequences are terrible for the country. It made sense that they looked to education to create a more equitable society. They thought education would allow poor children to achieve a place in American society.

 Lyndon Johnson, as part of his War on Poverty, sent billions of dollars to poverty schools in America. Schools hired additional teachers, paraprofessionals, and bought new materials. This compensatory education program began in 1966. Bush rewrote it with more testing accountability and Obama essentially continued the same type program.  This federally funded pu...

The high schools in America are directly responsible for putting a disproportionate proportion of young people in prison. Seventy percent of the 2.5 million people in American prisons are high school dropouts as are the additional 4.5 million on probation and parole. The high schools force students to take college prep courses that many are not capable of mastering. This inappropriate education forces many students into hating high school and they do not see any relevance of education in their lives. These students respond by dropping out either in or out of high school. Some are sorted into GED, diploma mills, or charter schools, none of which offer career technical education sequences of courses. The problem is much larger than the almost million high school dropouts every year. With no employme...

Imagine a different America. Imagine a country with no poverty. Imagine a country with no gangs and little crime. Imagine a country with no costs of poverty or crime.  This vision of a different society means devising a plan that eliminates poverty. It is possible to create a different America with no poverty and no crime and not having to pay for these societal problems. We have the power to eliminate poverty in America and it really isn’t very difficult.

Putting our young people to work and paying them reasonably for their efforts are the keys to creating this utopian society. The structural change of getting all capable people working can create an immense incremental enhancement to the American economy. We know that our lowest paid workers spend all of their compensation. These additional wor...

It used to be the primary purpose of public education in America was to create a literate population in order to prepare them to vote intelligently. Public education was seen as a fundamental underpinning of democracy. That is still a good basis for providing public education in America.

 This basic purpose was extended to college preparation and employment preparation in America’s high schools. Recently however, the college preparation portion of the curriculum has taken over exclusively as the purpose for high school in America. This elitist rationale for the existence of public education is fundamentally flawed. Since only thirty percent of American high school students go on to graduate from college, this reason for existence is too narrowly construed. It completely ignores the supermajority of...

This blog was written specifically for San Diego, however the concepts apply to many high schools across America.

 San Diego City Schools has raised high school graduation requirements to be essentially college entrance requirements. On the face of it, this sounds impossible, and it is. The experienced education research community decried this policy saying it will drive up the high school dropout rate. The school board created a hoax by putting a variety of programs in place to make the dropout rate appear to be better than it really is.

What do I mean by a hoax? It means the school system has played with the definition of the dropout rate by fiddling with its method of calculation. They don’t count special-education students. They don’t count students who move to another country. Leaving out these...

It undoubtedly comes as a shock to learn that America’s high schools purposely bully low achieving students. The reason most people don’t understand this widespread educational practice is because it has been slowly and quietly implemented over the past thirty years. Almost no one presently in the educational field remembers the high school curriculum of thirty years ago. What has occurred over this long time period is a transformation from American comprehensive high schools to exclusively college prep high schools. High schools no longer value low achieving students. Much of America’s once proud and extensive vocational education program, now called career technical education, is gone.

Since only thirty percent of today’s high school students go on to graduate from college, this elitist approach...

What is Wrong with American High Schools?

James C. Wilson, Ed.D.

The American High School is a wonderful conduit for the thirty percent of youth who go on to graduate from college. It provides preparation to get into and survive a university education for this elite thirty percent. However, for the remaining supermajority seventy percent, this bastion of American education is a disaster. This nasty reality is demonstrated in nine different aspects of today’s high schools.

The first and overwhelming thing wrong with America’s high schools is the college prep curriculum. It has become the only high school curriculum. We must come to a clear understanding that this curriculum is not for all students. It is not appropriate for the supermajority of students. A university education is by its very academic...

Revolutionary Reform of Traditional High Schools Essential

Reforming high schools around the edges has not accomplished anything. In order to create substantive change, it will take revolutionary reform. This revolution involves a radical restructuring of the high school curriculum that is overdue by decades. The ongoing inertia of the traditional American high school cannot be altered without making severe changes.

The present system works well for the top 30 percent of students who go on to graduate from universities. The understated problem that is widely misunderstood is that the other 70 percent of high school students are receiving an inadequate education. This 70 percent group is going to have to work for a living and today’s technological work world requires substantial...

U.S. Education Policy Keeps Poor People in Poverty

The United States has a national policy of keeping poor people poor. This policy isn’t a sinister capitalist plot. It is, however, a purposeful ongoing national policy that has the effect of keeping people poor. We know people living in poverty in America are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic-American. Thus, the inaction of policymakers to rectify this policy must be seen as racist. Since women are also disproportionately represented in poverty, this policy is sexist as well.

What is this policy and where was it written? It exists in almost every part of our country. It is, however, a hidden policy. No one comes out and admits that we are supporting a racist and misogynist policy. Quite the opposite, this policy...

The Hidden Impact of High School Dropouts
James C. Wilson, Ed.D.

Note: I wrote this blog about five years ago and the official dropout rates in California have dropped precipitously. The reality is the state, in concert with school districts, have colluded in hiding the real dropout rate by including GED, High School Diploma, and strip mall charter school students as graduates and left out special education and students from other countries. Some districts also allow “D” grades to count as passing when that grade actually is defined as failing. This process masks the real dropout rate, which is about what it was before making the projections below still generally accurate.

Most San Diegans do not realize the enormous impact high school dropouts have on our city. The California Dropout Research P...