This. The whole 'impossible to fail' thing is the worst thing to ever happen to education around here.
A fail frickin' encouraged me to try harder in the classes I sucked at! Course, my parents actually helped as much as they could, and encouraged me and whatnot... so as per usual a lot of it comes down to parenting too.
But otherwise... there was a number of students in my grade that generally didn't care what their test score was, or if they failed something. A few were held back, a few dropped out, etc.
Hell, those guys would have LOVED the no-fail thing. That way their parents can say their kid passed, they go into the workforce with an unearned diploma, and they didn't show up for more than 3 classes.
I just had a terrible thought. Maybe that's deliberate. Maybe that's why companies nowadays are pretty much requiring university or college degrees to hire anyone. Because the diploma is worth less than toilet paper with this 'no child left behind' system, they can't rely on a high school diploma indicating someone is capable of learning, doing math, fractions, etc, etc. Those 12 years are entirely meaning less to a company looking for someone "good", so they have to kick it up a notch to university level to filter out the useless wastes of money that will do nothing but steal from the company. So for that, kids are forced into debt further and further, because everyone and their dog has to go to college after high school.
I hope to hell I'm just being paranoid.