More School May Be the Answer

In the past, one of the many advantages of your senior year of high school was the option to take half a day. For a senior, a half day means you have extra time for schoolwork, for leisure or for a job. However, faced with dropping test scores and graduation rates, the Vail School District has made a mandatory policy in which all seniors are required to take six classes, a full day. At first glance, this policy may seem to be extremely rash, limiting the opportunities that students have outside of school, but within the reasoning lies a harsh reality.

Here in the Vail School District, the average ACT score is a 22.1, which is .2 points above the Arizona state average. In comparison, the average score of students at the University of Arizona is 23.5, University of Arkansas is 25.5, and Stanford is 30. As is painfully evident, being above the state average does not mean success. In fact, most students chose not to take either the ACT or SAT and instead choose to enroll at Pima Community College, where these tests are not used as an entrance standard.

At Pima Community College, they offer a placement test that students take to determine whether they should be enrolling in college level courses. Should a student score low enough, they must take a remedial class before beginning the standard college material. Those remedial classes do not count as credits.

In the Vail School District, 29 percent of students take remedial reading, 45 percent take remedial writing, and 85 percent take remedial math. These statistics bring to our attention the severity of the problem at hand: High school as an institution is meant to prepare you for college, which in turn prepares you for the real world. If high school is not doing its job, then we will see a sharp decline in individuals with the capability to work the high level jobs that make our country the economic and political superpower that it is today.

In the near future, it is predicted that 75 percent of jobs within the United States will require a post secondary degree or a certificate, meaning that if we are to be successful in the real world, we need to push our students to a higher level.

As a senior myself, I know many other members of my class think of their last year of high school as a well-deserved year to relax; a year where they can loosen the slack and wind down with a half-day of school. Is it fair for district administration to let this happen? I think not. College is a rigorous process, and to be successful requires rigorous preparation. My parents have made this readily apparent to me, and as a result, I chose to take a full day of school my senior year. By taking a full schedule, I believe myself to be exponentially more prepared for college than if I had done otherwise.

Making it mandatory for seniors to take a full day of school seems to be a step in the right direction. School should not be made easy, because doing so is cheating its students out of a future college education and successful career. In addition, the district is also providing Career and Technical Education (CTE) classes, which typically pertain to a certain job in fields such as architecture or photography and provide students with more opportunities to learn about different career options. Students with both a full day of school and additional CTE courses will be more adequately prepared for receiving a college education, and in turn, more prepared for life.

About the author: CJ Nieto is a student at Empire High School who enjoys heavy metal and classical music.