Bill Cotterell: Lawmakers should be careful relaxing school rules

I can’t begin to tell you how often, in my career of more than a half century, the algebra course I took in high school has helped me figure out some challenging equations on the job.

Nor can I say how frequently I’ve deciphered some arcane passage of great literature – or instructions on a TV remote clicker – as a necessary job skill.

But if either of those brain teasers ever occurs, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Meanwhile, mediocre math and rudimentary reading skills have kept me employable in a few none-too-choosy newsrooms since Cokes were a nickel and Tallahassee had only one state Capitol building.

As a long-ago product of Florida public schools, it concerns me to see state legislators readying a rollback in graduation and advancement requirements for students in the 2024 legislative session. If the traditional Three Rs are long out of date, that’s fine – but the politicians should tread lightly.

Across the nation, there seems to be a desire to make schools more relevant, to emphasize more everyday practical skills that kids can use in real life, in addition to all that snooty intellectual stuff college admissions officers like to see. And if a kid is going to join the Army or work at some cyber job, meaning no disrespect to those trades, what does he or she need with the square of a hypotenuse or ruminations on the motives of Macbeth?

State Sen. Corey Simon, R-Tallahassee, has sponsored a bill which would remove the high school graduation requirement that students pass an Algebra 1 exam and a 10th grade English assessment. Simon said neither employers nor college admissions authorities look at those markers – preferring a student’s grade average, course choices and SAT scores.

His bill also allows parents greater voice in deciding whether their third graders should move up, if they don’t read well enough. Kids who lag in reading could opt for an individualized intervention plan, rather than passing the test.

Simon said removing the requirements would benefit the student who isn’t bound for college.

“Let’s stop dancing behind this facade as if folks are looking at this temporary test,” he said at a Senate committee hearing. “We’re holding back a whole generation of kids that can enter the workforce that have no intention of going into our traditional post-secondary institutions.”

Yes, but …

Making standards more real-world practical in some ways is lowering standards in other ways. As Gov. Jeb Bush used to say, “If you don’t measure, you don’t care.”

Simon was a dominating lineman for Florida State University and went on to the NFL for a few years before getting into politics. Perhaps more than any other state lawmaker, he knows the value and purpose of a tough workout, mentally as well as physically.

Players don’t spend all that time in the weight room because they might have to press huge iron discs off their chests during a game. There are very few jobs requiring you to pull yourself up to touch a bar with your chin. Players don’t run wind sprints to get from one yard line to another, but to strengthen legs and lungs for those sudden bursts of speed on the field.

They’re working on mental toughness and the discipline of doing something they really don’t like doing.

It’s the same in the classroom. Unless they become engineers or teachers, very few high school students will ever make a buck calculating the circumference of a circle or the square root of anything. Those third-grade kids might never need to read much in their jobs, or even want the escape of a John Grisham novel, but the ability to do it is more important than doing it. Everything else they learn starts with reading.

Florida isn’t alone in moving the academic goal posts.

Oregon just postponed until 2029 its requirement that high school students show basic competency in reading, writing or math before graduating – a rule which had already been put on hold since 2020. In Chicago, authorities decided to phase out some elite “selective enrollment” schools, which require high test scores to get into. They want to help the most disadvantaged kids who are struggling, but meanwhile they’ll hold back the ones who work hard and excel.

Education is the most important and expensive thing the state does. Legislators ought to be very skittish about relaxing measurements of student achievement.

Bill Cotterell is a retired Capitol reporter for United Press International and the Tallahassee Democrat. He writes a weekly column for The News Service of Florida and City & State Florida. He can be reached at bcotterell@cityandstatefl.com.

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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Bill Cotterell: Lawmakers should be careful relaxing school rules