You don't have to go to school after 9th grade.
The last few years you choose, based on GPA and possible tests, whether to be vocational or academic. You can go to college if you do the vocational track, but it's less common and a bit harder. If you want college, you do the academic track.
And guess what? Vocational schools don't count for most surveys dealing with "high schools." So try this in the US, as a thought experiment: Let all the kids who want to drop out at age 15 drop out; let those who remain choose to be vocational or academic students.
What would happen? Well, the majority of (academic) high school students would go to college. You'd find that the difference between the lowest and highest achieving (academic) high school students would greatly diminish. You'd have to fight far less to get students to be motivated--most SpEd, most assistants, most if the instructional specialists would suddenly vanish.
Since most students would easily pass the standardized tests, there'd be little use for them. There'd be fewer demands for making sure that even the weakest students meet all the Common Core standards at a sufficient level of rigor past 9th grade. That's the data-driven craze, trying to find out what works with the bottom 25% or bottom 40% of students. We look at "low SES" and "at risk" students, those with "LEP indicators" or racial/ethnic minorities--and we only look at those categories because they're low achieving with high drop-out rates.
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