Rahm Emanuel wants to require acceptance letters for high school graduation

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Just short of downright evil.

And, while this might be an unpopular viewpoint, I believe it pushes students in the wrong direction.  The truth is that you basically already need a college degree in order to get employment with decent conditions.  We should be making it easier for people to succeed without that "requirement," rather than taking the dastardly step of enshrining it.

If this is an unpopular viewpoint, then that fact itself is an enormous indictment of the American chattering classes' attitude towards education.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

And this was Obama's cheif of staff...

If it was Hillary's chief of staff you can bet people would use this to further castigate her but Obama largely gets a pass because he's 'likable' or something like that.

It's become startlingly clear in retrospect that Obama ran the American center-left into the ground.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What on earth is so bad about this?  Would you rather have the high schools just jettison people out into the world with no prospects for an independent future or would you want them held accountable for each and every student's advancement potential?  The options aren't limited to 4 year college acceptance.

Public education should, ideally, be on its own enough to prepare most people to strike out and have a halfway decent life. This pushes the lever hard on moving away from this ideal, all the while stripping at-risk kids of the remaining options that having a high school diploma gives one. In a sane political system it would be seen for the hard-right move it is.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

This is up there with school uniforms as bad ideas.

What's wrong with school uniforms?

They can be an undue burden on poor students and family's, and they get rid of the individuality that all students should have and need.

There's nothing individualistic about what adolescents wear.

The adolescents think there is, and self-perception is important at that age. (N.B. I've never felt and still don't feel obliged to form a strong opinion on school uniforms as such.)