When my sister, Jennifer, graduated at 18, not a full month before her 19th birthday and one year later than she was supposed to graduate, the pride our family and friends felt for her, displayed on our faces as enormous, stupid grins, was immeasurable. From our seats near the top row, we strained our eyes to make out her blinding white high heels: the only item distinguishing her from the hundreds of other students in her high school's graduating class, and took photos in which she was barely visible due to our distance from her. Our overwhelming happiness in her graduation was beyond the typical "Congrats! You made it through." At several times, our parents and her teachers didn't expect her to graduate. Her failures (flunking her junior year twice, frustrating teachers beyong belief with late and missing assignments) weren't due to unintellegence or even laziness; she has always been an avid reader, even a dedicated scholar. Well, perhaps "dedicated" is pushing it a bit, but despite having ADD, she certainly was never the kind of kid anyone expected to have trouble in school. Not even she seemed to know why she had so much difficulty until the second time she failed 11th grade and finally decided to try summer school.
She surprised us all that summer with high grades in all of her classes. When truly analyzed, the reasons were obvious: smaller classes allow teachers to focus on each individual student; fewer classes allow students to focus time, energy, etc. in each individual class. This is common knowledge, but lawmakers and leaders in education still don't seem to have that simple concept figured out. This school year, in an attempt to catch up with European countries and stay ahead of China and other Asian countries in education and economy, incoming high school freshmen in Texas have more requirements, with the same amount of time for "on time" graduation. This policy costs students electives (classes taken because of interest, not simply requirement) and may destroy many magnet programs such as North East School of the Arts due to elimination of room in students' schedules for the two or more classes per year required.
I wonder if any of the people who decided to put these new requirements into effect live in the real world or ever attended a public high school while trying to balance school with family, work, and extracurricular activities; they definately didn't grow up in low income, minority households. The truth is, increasing graduation requirements won't help the United States compete in the world. Increasing graduation requirements is only going to increase stress among teenagers, which will increase depression and likely suicide among teenagers, and increase the high school dropout rate, putting our country even further behind Europe and Asia. MOre graduation requirements will amke it more difficult to graduate and those, like my sister, who would have barely scraped by before, won't finish school because kids from low-income families can't aford $200 per course for summer school.
More dropouts mean more uneducated people in the American workforce, more people working low paying jobs with little to no room for advancement in society for them or their families, which only worsens the vicious cycle the lower socioeconomic class has been living since the begining of societies in the human race. They'll get as much education as they can before amounting failures and frustrations force them to lose faith and dropout, causing them to spend their whole lives working themselves to death, barely getting by, barely supporting their families, and unable to aford health care, let alone invest in their children's education. An increase in dropouts will also increase the amount of Welfare dependants, costing the government and taxpayers who managed to find their way through the education Labrynth countless dollars.
Alternately, giving students more choice in their classes and curriculum may increase the graduation rate as well as the percentage of young adults who are sucessful after high school. While a minimum requirement of core classes (math, English, science, and social studies) is important, leaving room in a student's schedule for their interests insures that they are both happy while in shcool and successful in pursuing employment they will enjoy once they graduate from school. The current A/B schedule that San Antonio, Texas's North East Indipendant School District uses could be edited so that students have four classes at a time for an hour and a half each day for a sememster (or for one 9 week grading period for classes that currently last one semester) allowing students to actually take in the information that is being given to them, while making it feel like school doesn't take quite so long. If standardized tests must be administered, they can be given twice a year: once each semester to students who have taken the subject the test covers, so as not to force teachers to teach material that is not in their subject area.
While we're making these changes, maybe we should just step aside and let Europe and Asia dominate for a while. Hasn't our turn lasted long enough? We need to start focusing on the future of individuals, the small details, and not just America's place in the world. Politics shouldn't be about change for the sake of change to make voters feel like something is being done. Political decisions should be made for the better of each individual because we, as a nation, are weaker when we allow children and young adults to fall through the cracks in our education system. Rigid, unbending policies force students to adapt to the system when the system should be adaptable to each individual student and it is aobut time for polititians to figure that out.
