The Futures of America's Future

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Yearly, millions of students graduate from high school in the United States. A large majority of these students will graduate from public high schools, with less than ten percent graduating from private high schools. The education system in America has been on the hot seat for some time now, and the pressure to compete with countries such as China, India, and Germany is extremely intense. However, the race to stay – or rather, get back to – the top of the totem pole has to begin with how our students compete inside our own country. The question of whether or not the majority of students graduating from high school in the United States are academically ready for college seems to have a unanimous answer: no. Because of this, the question morphs away from “Are high school students prepared,” to “How do we prepare high school students for college?” The two most popular solutions to this particular issue are teaching to a standardized test and teaching to national education standards. Standardized tests, such as the ACT, SAT, and end-of-course exams are tests that gauge how proficient a student is in specific subjects. Many educators believe that if schools across the country focused more on preparing their students for these tests, they would in turn prepare them for college. National education standards are benchmarks that the government defines. Educators in favor of teaching to these benchmarks believe that it would be more beneficial to students’ learning experiences, and also more effective in preparing students for college. If this route were taken, aligning our national education standards with those of China, India, and Germany would also help us begin to compete on an international level again. Many educators also believe tha...

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...y and a strong desire to go to college should be put on an advanced curriculum path so that they can participate in exceptionally rigorous classes that appeal to college admissions boards, as well as precollege programs that prepare them for a university. Students with medium ability and low ability, regardless of their desire to go to college or not, will need to be more nurtured through the core classes – Science, English, Reading, Math – once they have completed these classes, they should then be allowed to choose a career path or a college-prep path. Aside from holding teachers more accountable, the only way the government will ever be able to reform the education system will have to be to make the reform nation wide. The results are too inconsistent when left up to each state, and it is causing the United States to fall behind drastically on the global scale.

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