One student, ten decisions, and nobody in charge of the path
This is what a child in North Carolina actually walks through between fifth grade and a college
mathematics class. Read down the left for when it happens, across for who decides it, and note the
right-hand column for what it costs. The colours are the only thing you need to hold in your head: who
the decision belongs to.
The argument of this whole piece is the shape of that picture rather than any single row of it. Every
body named here is applying its own rule correctly. The teacher is following the recommendation process. The
State Board is setting a defensible cut score. The UNC System is entitled to ask for a fourth level of
mathematics. The community college is entitled to use grades. No two consecutive rows use the same
definition of ready, no row is accountable for the row beneath it, and the last row belongs to
nobody.
The red bracket is the one to look at twice. A student can satisfy the graduation
requirement exactly as written and still fail to meet the admission requirement of the state's own
universities, because the two rows use different definitions of a mathematics course. Nobody has to tell
the student that, and nobody does.