City student passes 3 classes in four years, ranks near top half of class with 0.13 GPA

The student got a B in PE, and D’s in English I and Health Ed I. Failed *everything* else. The mother was aware of this. And now that the student is approaching the date when he should have graduated high school, he’s been informed that he will have to repeat *all* of High School, straight back to 9th grade. *Hundreds* of students this school have failed worse than this one. After essentially failing English 1 (he got a D-), he was promoted to English 2. Which he failed. And was then promoted to English 3. Which he failed. He was absent or late 272 times.

The video at the link is entertainingly depressing in a “this is the future” sort of way. Shockingly, the mother claims that her lil’ scholar didn’t “deserve” to be failed. She blames the school for this. The says that her son feels like a failure… and that he *shouldn’t* feel like that. Even though… ummm… he’s a failure. How else to describe someone who got a 0.13 and basically ditched school? “Who do he turn to?” she asks, making it clear right off how someone can fail English. “Don’t he get a chance?” she ax, missing the point that he had four years worth of chances.

The former principal of the school was placed on administrative leave for 17 months while an investigation was carried out. During that time, she made $190,000.

The “city” in question is Baltimore.

The student failed.

The parent(s) failed.

The school failed.

The city government failed.

The voters who kept voting for the machine running Baltimore failed.

The political party running Baltimore is the same one that wants to have complete control over who gets to exercise Constitutional rights.

I’ve mentioned before that I have a fix for this sort of thing. To all appearances, this was a student who wads not only failed by the system and his family, he seemed to have no interest in doing any of the schoolwork himself. OK, fine. For such students, let them out at the end of, say, the 10th grade. tehn let them enter the work force. A few options:

1: Get a real job. Flip burgers, dig ditches, whatever.

2: Go in the the new Works Projects Administration. He and a few hundred thousand or million of his like-mined non-academics can receive pay and training and room and board from the government, and get a chance to see the country. They’d get loaded onto buses or trains and shipped to rural areas to work the farms, doing the jobs that illegal aliens did before the laws were finally enforced and they were all deported.

3: Do nothing. Fine, it’s a free country, can’t, shouldn’t and won’t force anyone to do anything. But also, no welfare of any kind. Ever.

4: After six months of uninterrupted employment or WPA service, they can elect to go back to school… where they will maintain at least a 2.0 GPA and a spotless behavioral record. Or back to the WPA.