让纽约高中文凭变得毫无意义的努力

High school diplomas all across New York state will soon be meaningless if the Board of Regents gets away with scrapping a requirement for students that dates back more than 150 years: passing several Regents exams.

如果当政委员会取消了高中毕业考试——已实施了150多年的要求，那么纽约州所有的高中文凭将很快变得毫无意义。

Officially, the board is simply putting a blue-ribbon commission in charge of exploring alternatives to a state-certified diploma, en route to implementing new graduation standards in fall 2020.

按照官方的说法，该委员会只是成立了一个蓝丝带委员会，负责探索国家认证文凭的替代品，并在2020年秋季实施新的毕业标准。

Yet the Regents’ professed goal gives it all away: They’re out to goose graduation rates — and the easiest, fastest way to do that is to simply make it easier to graduate.

然而，当政者们公开宣称的目标暴露了一切:他们想要提高毕业率——而最简单、最快的方法就是让毕业变得更容易。

Their spokesfolks are dressing it up in noise about “providing different avenues — equally rigorous — for kids to demonstrate they are ready to graduate with a meaningful diploma.” It still comes down to not requiring students to pass objective tests so you can hand diplomas to kids who can’t pass.

他们的代言人正在为“为孩子们提供不同的途径——同样严格——来证明他们已经准备好毕业并获得一个有意义的文凭。”这仍然归结于不要求学生通过客观测试，这样你就可以把文凭发给那些不能通过的孩子。

Yes, the statewide graduation rate should be higher than last year’s 80.4%. As state Chancellor Betty Rosa wrote in February, “The system is not working for everyone and too many students — particularly our most vulnerable students — are leaving high school without a diploma.”

是的，全州的毕业率应该高于去年的80.4%。正如该州州长贝蒂•罗莎(Betty Rosa)今年2月所写的那样，“这个体系并不适用于所有人，太多的学生——尤其是我们最弱势的学生——没有毕业就离开了高中。”

But killing a key requirement for graduation doesn’t do a thing to stop the system from failing those kids — it just makes the failure less obvious.

但是，为了毕业而取消一个关键的要求，并不能阻止这个让这些孩子失败的系统——它只是让失败变得不那么明显。

And that, clearly, is all the current Regents and their political masters really care about.

显然，这是所有现任当政者和他们的政治主人真正关心的。