The people of the United States will never open the Space Frontier unless we improve the quality of our public schools. For over a decade, the federal government has tried to do this by demanding accountability from the schools for their students’ scores on standardized testing. Forget this reliance on testing. A better way to judge the effectiveness of each high school is to look at their graduates. If 20% of each year’s graduates are admitted to 4-year colleges, and if 95% of that group earns a bachelor’s degree within five years, that high school’s faculty is doing an adequate job.
To increase that percentage of college admissions, we need to give K-8 students an incentive to put their best effort into learning. Congress could provide that incentive by passing a mandatory US Job Corps requirement for all high school students who drop out or who graduate but are unemployed and not admitted to college within six months of graduation. This US Job Corps would be a government-sponsored, military-style program with gender-separate facilities that provide the following:
- Barracks accommodation
- Government-issue clothing
- Mess hall food service
- Military medical care
- Daily physical, but weapon-free, non-combat training
- Forty-hour workweek in yard or building maintenance or in food service at US government properties.
Job Corps members would have access to remedial academic classes during their free time. They remain in the program until their work experience and reputation allows them to be hired by private contractors and they earn enough money to rent an apartment with access to mass transit to get to their jobs. Then they “graduate” from Job Corps.
When students know that putting in just seat time for twelve years to receive a high school diploma will result in being “drafted” into the mandatory Job Corps, they will probably put good effort into learning. Student effort and competent teachers equal good schools.
