Are High-schools failing their Students?

Are High-schools failing their Students?

In a recent article on the web, “Are High-schools failing their students” they question does getting a high-school diploma guarantee you’re ready for work or college? Are the teachers at our school preparing us correctly and in all the right areas? They should be.

“Employers expect more, the students must be able to communicate effectively, think critically, analyze and interpret data and evaluate a variety of materials.” I agree with this statement, the educational system that the young adults are learning at, should prepare us to enter the real world. It should have us set to be independent and only count on ourselves. Do they do it? To me, in all honesty, I see them trying. The subjects that we get taught aren’t easy, their about hard as they come. It’s up to the teachers to get into the lesson plan, and get inside our brains, and hold our attention the whole class period to get us educated and informed.

“ According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), at least 28 percent of students entering four-year public colleges in the fall of 2000 were required to take remedial courses when they started, especially in mathematics and language arts, as did 42 percent of those enrolled in two-year public colleges (NCES, 2004).” Does this tell us something? 28% of all students entering college for their four-year degrees have to go to remedial classes when they started. Seems to me as the educators that are suppose to be educating us aren’t doing a very good job at it. We have all heard the teachers say “My job is to teach you all you need too know, and have you college/career ready.” Well, with that being said it doesn’t seem  that they are following that statement very well.

According to some critics, “ETS found that 84% of highly paid professionals had taken algebra 2 or higher level of mathematic courses as where only 30% of low-to-moderately skilled and low-paid workers had done so.” So, with this being said, I guess you could say there is a pretty big difference in ‘College Prep’ and ‘Smart Core’. But for a well-educated, handsome, intelligent, young man, like myself. I think that I will do fine with only taking ‘Smart Core’ I took my full 4 years of mathematics in High-school to get my diploma. Yes, Math is one of my weak spot, BUT that does not mean that I won’t get a good paying job and make something of myself.

My connection I have to this article is really a connection with my school. Our school is a very good school when it comes up education and the way our educators do things. Do I think they could do better? Of course! You can always do better at what you’re doing when you put you’re mind to it. I can connect this to myself, and my school because I’m not taking any math classes this year, I’ve decided to wait and take college algebra whenever I start college, and take a break from mathematics for my senior year. As I said earlier, mathematics isn’t my best subject, in-fact it’s my weakest. I have to keep my head in the game, and stay focused on making good grades to get accepted to college. But our educators do a good job at pushing us by I guess you could say “scaring” us and saying things to make us want to get our head out of our bottoms and DO WORK. All education systems are different because all the teachers who are teaching are different. If you’re a teacher and you don’t absolutely love you’re job….chances are you’re students aren’t going to love that subject you’re teaching them.

As you can see, I have my personal opinions on my educators and how they do their jobs. But just like everyone else in this world, I’m not the only one. You see, it’s all up to you as an educator (teacher) to actually make that student “College and Career ready” when they receive that diploma and step out into the real world. You can either love you’re job and make class fun, not only for you but for you’re students as well…OR you can not love you’re job and just be there because you HAVE to be in order to make money for yourself and the student not love the subject either. In my opinion, If you don’t love being a teacher and you are… GO FIND A NEW JOB. The teachers attitude towards the students have A LOT to do with what kind of grades the students make, and what they’ll learn when they leave the school.