Grand Canyon Diploma a White Flag

2010

ARIZONA REPUBLIC
Opinions

Grand Canyon Diploma a White Flag

The Arizona House has approved the Grand Canyon Diploma, a test that encourages 14- and 15-year-olds to leave school and save the state about $6,000 per student per year.

Such a program would dump hordes of unemployable bodies onto the unemployment roles. The plan, being pushed by the Center for the Future of Arizona, wins the approval of state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne, who says, "They may as well move on."

Move on, indeed. Having destroyed the secondary-school curriculum with decades of high-stakes testing, Horne and his predecessors concede that there is nothing much worth learning in Arizona's high schools.

Ostensibly proposed as a means of combating student boredom, the Grand Canyon Test would become just another pressure point turning true education into deadening drill-and-kill test cramming.

The Center for the Future of Arizona waits on the sidelines along with the test publishers and scoring-company lobbyists hoping "to be asked to lead the Arizona effort."

And those who once dreamed of an education beyond prepping for paper-and-pencil tests ask, "Just what kind of future does the center see for Arizona?"

Gene V Glass, Scottsdale