What Accreditation Entails: No Diploma? No Problem! (Part 4)
Categories: No Diploma? No Problem!, Léo’s Insights 2019-2020
Tags: high school diploma, diploma
Once again, a student left our organization for another, because it promised her a high school diploma. Now one needs to understand that a high school diploma is earned by following government programming, delivered by a certificated teacher, using approved resources.
Forgive me for being a bit cynical, but let’s take a closer look at this situation in order to understand just how mercenary people behave.
The particular third party agency involved in this story has had a sordid history of seemingly being willing to do whatever is in keeping with its own best interest.
It appears to offer all things, do anything, accept most any excuse and often challenge ethical boundaries. It is a provincial leader in moving entire cohorts of unwitting parents and students from one school to another, residing presently with the fourth school since its inception.
I mention this to remind you that “agencies” are made up of real people and that people can, and do, behave in ways that can advance personal ambition ahead of those they ostensibly “serve.”
We should also be reminded that those who would act in questionable ways will not likely restrict their unethical behaviour to just one thing. That is why it is important to know a bit about the agency you are getting involved with.
In any case, such an agency would have no compunction against pushing the limits by awarding credits to students for essentially NOT meeting the required criteria. Thus it convinced this young lady that she would receive a high school diploma while employing a non-certificated “teacher,” without following government curriculum and using unapproved resources.
None of this would have been understood by the student or her parents. What was also woefully misunderstood was what earning a high school diploma entailed. She did not understand that a high school diploma is earned through the successful completion of prescribed and elective five or three credit courses totaling 100 credits.
She could not have imagined that simply taking a facsimile of one five credit course per year would take her twenty years to earn her high school diploma, if she was successful! How could anyone be so mean as to lead a student to believe that a year or two of half-hearted effort would result in her earning a diploma?
One word comes to mind. Money! Whatever it takes to get more of it. Basic grant money for enrolling another unsuspecting home educating student even if she was not successful, and maybe more money if she should complete a program that could be justified as credit worthy.
Agencies such as this one perpetuate the belief that students need accreditation and diplomas for future success.
Yet the agencies that benefit from perpetuating this accreditation legend never tell students how their short-sighted, self-serving actions are actually causing students more harm than good.
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