Students are drowning in homework and extracurricular activities, but that doesn’t mean they’re ready to take on the challenges of college or the SAT and ACT. In fact, studies and reports conducted by the makers of the two standardized tests have found that only around 40% of test-takers demonstrate they’ve met benchmarks for college-readiness. (Sources: here and here.)
Why aren’t high schools preparing students for the SAT, ACT, college, and competitive scholarships? Let’s take a look at five reasons high school just isn’t enough.
1) Students don’t get enough individual attention
Teacher-student ratios can be troubling in many schools, particularly large public schools. Because teachers are often scrambling to cram in the required curriculum, one-on-one interaction suffers. When they feel like they’re just another face in the crowd, students check out. They ask fewer questions and become discouraged from taking charge of their own education.
2) Students are not being challenged as readers
Whether their English teachers are good, bad, or well-meaning but ineffectual, students aren’t pushing themselves (or being pushed) to read challenging texts. Frustrated teachers are even incorporating badly-written contempoary novels into their curricula in hopes that students will actually read rather than rely on SparkNotes. Spending a good deal of their time lost in their phones or browsing the Internet doesn’t help kids, either: chances are, what they’re reading there is far from literature.
3) Too much memorization and not enough application
Due to curricular requirements, teachers encourage and test memorization more than they test application. Essays aren’t graded stringently and comments are sparse. Math and science become a series of facts and formulas. History, too, a litany of names, dates, and events. Rather than foster problem-solving abilities, teachers bombard students with facts and test students’ retention of those facts. Sometimes the teachers are to blame, and in other cases, state governments and education agencies are the culprits. Teachers are often forced to squeeze too much material into too little time, and as a result, everybody loses.
4) Long-term focus isn’t cultivated
Again, because teachers are hurtling through the material and students are children of the Internet, breadth trumps depth. Students’ abilities to focus intently on a problem or topic for an extended period of time wear thin. There’s much to be said for lengthy discussions, in-depth essay writing, and multi-step problem-solving. All too often, these activities take a back seat to fact-retention and task-completion.
5) Students don’t get SAT and ACT prep
With so many flaming hoops to jump through, preparing students for the SAT and ACT is the last thing high school teachers have the time to do. Students and parents who believe the SAT and ACT measure knowledge develop the false assumption that they’re more prepared to tackle these tests than they actually are. When the scores come back and disappoint, it can sometimes be too late.
It’s no wonder that parents are sending their kids to private, local test prep companies in droves. They know that even the best schools struggle to give individual attention to students, and they worry that their kids’ careers—in college and beyond—may suffer for it.
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Additional Resources: “Winning College Scholarships for High Schoolers” Video Course