All students should know every choice has a consequence

When you get down to it, who needs to be able to read or do math at grade level, really? Who needs a high school diploma?

Certainly not anyone who wants nothing more than to apply for Medicaid. Or Legal Aid. Or a payday loan.

An estimated one in three New Mexicans is so financially strapped that he/she qualifies for the federal government’s health care program for the poor; one in four qualifies for legal help in civil cases; and one in five has resorted to high-cost/predatory loans.

And that’s not going to change much if New Mexico’s K-12 public schools continue to churn out 51 percent of students who can’t read at grade level and 60 percent who can’t do math at grade level, if they continue to fail to graduate more than six out of every 10 students.

In fact, ignorance and poverty will continue to ascend as the state’s leading economic drivers.

That surely isn’t the goal, but it is the unintended consequence of those who urge New Mexico students to opt out of standardized testing, want students passed from grade to grade irrespective of their ability, handed diplomas without exams that show they are ready to move on, and encourage protests and vandalism rather than learning.

That dynamic has been on display front and center in Santa Fe this week, where students from Santa Fe, Capital and several charter high schools have spent the week ditching school and, in at least one case, damaging property, all under the guise of protesting new federally mandated standardized tests, known as PARCC, designed by New Mexico and other states to match Common Core education standards spearheaded by the U.S. Department of Education and the Obama administration.

But then, why try to prepare and then do well on a test named Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers if that’s not really the goal?

FYI: You can protest without abdicating responsibility for your education, and ditching class is unlikely to sway U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan into waiving the PARCC requirement. In fact, Santa Fe school board president Steven Carrillo points out “there’s nothing keeping them from doing this (protesting) after school,” and Santa Fe Public Schools Superintendent Joel Boyd has promised students he will personally deliver any letters with their concerns to Education Secretary Hanna Skandera.

Life is full of choices and subsequent consequences, and students should learn that now, before they, too, end up squandering their educational opportunities and embarking on a career path that amounts to applying for Medicaid, Legal Aid and payday loans.

— Albuquerque Journal