Methinks the lady doth protest too much

A joint Toronto Star/Ryerson School of Journalism investigation has found that an increasing number of Ontario private “diploma mills” are selling inflated high school graduation marks to enable their students to gain university admission. A companion piece from the Our Kids blog elaborates on this.

First of all, let me be clear. I don’t approve of the diploma mills, full stop.

On the other hand, when it comes to some public educators’ rather shrill accusations, for some reason I get this mental image of a bunch of people throwing stones at glass houses. For example, “There are kids who would be failing but are instead getting 80s in these schools” - like there’s no grade inflation in public schools. Or, how about the complaints that some diploma mills teachers are not well qualified or even competent - when the number of tenured incompetent public school teachers is the 500-pound gorilla in the education reform room. And then there’s the implication that some below-standard students are graduating from high school - when the Ontario government has lowered graduation requirements to the point that they are virtually meaningless (as per this KW Record article about students earning four high school credits for helping build a house). H/T to AS

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