What costs $30,000, and has a 30% product defect rate?

[i]Photo above - Ferris? Is Ferris Buehler here today? If your public high school looked like "Ferris Buehler's Day Off" (Chicago), please reply to this thread.[/i]

Okay – the post title is a trick question. Anyone who answered “VW Golf” gets second prize – it has THE WORST quality score by JC Power. (The Tesla Model S is right behind).

The correct answer: A public high school diploma in America. The links below are to various DC school data sites. DC might be the worst, but probably any urban school district in the US has spiraling costs and astonishing dropout rates (Chicago, Detroit, NYC, I’m looking at you). Ignore administrators’ claims that their graduation rate is 92%+. The number of diplomas issued is about half the number of enrolled 9th graders in many urban schools. School administrators should admit “math is hard” because they can’t concoct a convincing explanation about their claims vs the actual data.

But the purpose of today’s column is NOT to bash DC public schools. Their result is exactly what you’d expect from a municipal city which sees its mission as answering to congress, rather than to parents and students. A bad outcome is pre-ordained, even though many teachers do have good intentions.

Okay, let’s pivot to Trump’s scheme to bring jobs back to America. Are these going to be jobs for dropouts, or even for those who did get a diploma, but read at the 5th grade level? This is the premise of “The Hill” (link below), which correctly deduces that factory jobs are about the only thing some kids could ever do. The rest of us might not want to use a screwdriver and pair of pliers as our professional tool set. Unless you’re a UAW assembly line worker making $140,000 a year. And producing VW Golf cars with the worst JD Power reliability score. Watch out, here come those darn robots!

There could be no safe haven as automation continues its relentless assault. Not for car assembly. Not Starbucks baristas. Not Uber drivers. If you’re a pharmacist, look out: Amazon is going to have some warehouse robot fill that prescription, and deliver it by drone. Instead of porch pirates, thieves may start using butterfly nets to score airborne narcotics.

Can we agree that the future is limited for someone functionally illiterate? No, I’m not bashing urban schools - I already explained that. The 5th grade reading comprehension thing cuts across all school districts, races, and genders. The biggest predictor of someone's future reading scores appears to be how good their parents’ reading skills were. So, it’s a combination of ancestry (DNA) and whether your parents read to you enough at bedtime. By kindergarten lots of kids could already be doomed.

Trump, here’s your workforce. Now what?

America succeeds partly by attracting foreign born, foreign educated brainiacs who invent stuff or start their own businesses. These immigrants do not include MS13 gang members, or Islamists seeking to have the US courts recognize Sharia (Muslim law) and honor killings. The White House apparently can’t distinguish between helpful immigrants and dangerous ones. America is now starting to have an exodus of scientists, college professors, grad students, and entrepreneurs. We could end up looking like Russia. Which might appeal to someone with a 5th grade reading level, no?

I’m just sayin’ . . .

Washington, D.C., Public Schools Spend $30K Per Student; 23% of 8th Graders Proficient in Reading

Rising Graduation Rates and Falling SAT Scores for D.C. Students - D.C. Policy Center

Opinion: Factory jobs aren’t the future working Americans want