School's out for mailbag

West Point for cops, cynical strategies for higher education, and an answer to last week's question

My kid had his last day of school this week and we got what I thought was an interesting answer to last week’s question about year-end slacking in American schools, so I thought I’d start by quoting it:

Stephen: Not a question, but a professional secondary educator here chiming in about learning nothing in the last weeks of school, from a prior week. I've taught in public schools in multiple states and in private schools, and this varies significantly in my experience. In NY, public high school students take regents exams required to graduate at the very end of the school year in June. This means that the end of the school year is, in many NY schools where graduation is not an automatic assumption, crunch time, complete with optional Saturday study sessions.

In other places without this timing of exams, however, the gradebook locks often a week or more before the last day of class, I believe in order for administrators to flag who needs to attend summer school to make up courses for st…