Modernized Education Systems does not help our kids learning system, but makes it worse

Pro said "in his or her school system, where for students to graduate, they are required to have five or less excuses for absences in order to pass the quarter". No, to reluctantly clarify, the students can have more than 5 absences, as long as they are excused. So they could have well over 5 excuses because, by law, any absence's excuse confirmed by a parent at the phone number/e-mail given to the district, must be excused. Once students begin reaching the 20% of school days missed for the quarter, excused or unexcused, they fail the quarter. Health catastrophes are exceptions, because they qualify for home and hospital. Basically Pro said that everything that my particular public school system is doing "is great and all, but only for Maryland; where the given debate is in discussion about the whole country." As I suspected, Pro didn't bother researching whether or not Maryland was unique, so I did. https://nces.ed.gov... If you don't want to go the site, it says that all 50 states' and Washington DC's school systems align with Common Core State Standards/College and Career-Ready Standards, When Federal money pays for public schools in your state, the federal laws and standards travel with the money. Uniformity is not an issue with the MES. Looking around the site provided, you see a lot of standardization among state school districts. Pro says "For the simple fact of attempting to keep the schools popularity rate up. Because if we consider the funding for a school, it is achieved through popularity rating of how good or bad the school is," Please explain what a popularity rate is, and how this is what determines if schools receive money. Whether or not your school is hated or liked has nothing to do with the funding it receives. Whether or not your school is Title I has way more to do with the funding it receives; this is across the country. Pro says "if all of a sudden students failed to graduate for loads of absences; the school would be hated." No ifs about it! Every year in America, students fail to graduate for loads of absences....except no one is hating the school. They are hating the school system for their policies that seem to limit otherwise potentially productive citizens' futures. The complaints we hear as teachers, even those in the National Education Association of which I am apart, are these rules are too stringent. Pro continues "because if most schools, besides Maryland, are all "tweaking" the true grades (Through test curves); than no true responsibility is given." These curves do not happen on the standardized tests. You either meet a standardized number or you don't; there is no curve. Loads of students fail every year in America, because they can't reach these numbers. What's interesting is that schools who are under-performing actually get more funding in the long run with an infuse of money, highly qualified teachers, and resources. Pro further says "For the standardized tests, we can both come to agreement that they are at times "silly"; however, they truly do add more stress to a students life. And, stated under the website 'Demo-List-Ic", it states: "A student who has stress, will lack motivation". I would agree that adding stress to a student's life decreases their motivation, but if Pro is arguing that this doesn't--as Pro said--"make a student more well-prepared for the future" then Pro has to agree that being stressed and unmotivated isn't part of having a real job in the future. Pro says "As a teacher yourself, at times you must be surprised on how some students you expected to fail; pass?" Yes, this is when I credit teachers for getting the kid prepared correctly...what's interesting is the converse is rarely true...I rarely see kids fail that should have passed. When we get the failure list, there are very few surprises. Also because there is no curve on standardized tests, there really isn't much "tweaking" of standardized data. The schools merely administer the test, and the state grades everything. If Pro is claiming that the states behave in this manner, then Pro has the burden of proof to demonstrate that as well. I reject the claim that the MES does not help our kids' retention or makes our kids' retention worse, because the retention tests are not curved, schools don't receive money for "popularity" that motivates them to tweak scores and be liked, and Maryland is not unique with regards to standards of which Pro approves.