Boston Globe:Graduate Urges Tougher Pace in High School

[marite]

<p><a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2005/09/18/graduate_urges_a_tougher_pace_in_high_schools/[/url]”>http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2005/09/18/graduate_urges_a_tougher_pace_in_high_schools/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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ON SPORTS VS. ACADEMICS: I probably spent about three hours a week on homework. But for track and cross country I would spend three hours every day at practice training and every Saturday at a meet for competition. There’s no better reward in the world than overcoming a challenge you thought initially you couldn’t do. Teachers in the classroom never asked me to do anything I thought I couldn’t do.</p>

<p>ON HIGH SCHOOL WORK: I would say that I coasted. I did exactly what I knew I needed to do to get an A or an A-minus. It wasn’t very hard to get the A. I did everything that was asked of me, but not very much was asked. Writing shorter papers. Reading. Quizzes, things like that. I didn’t know what real stress was when it comes to academics. I learned that when I got to college.

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[driver]

<p>Thanks for linking that.

That way when you get to college you can have the confidence to say: ''I have done this, I know how to do it, and I’ll just do it again."

That is so true, and fortunately just how our experience worked out. The first semester of college was just high school on steroids–more challenging, but still a familiar pattern.</p>

[emeraldkity4]

<p>I think other articles have mentioned that as well.
I have been a college advisor at a community college where they don’t use SAT scores or even high school transcripts for placement, but their own placement tests.
It was awful to have to place somone who had good grades at one of the districts better high schools in a remedial class because they didnt place into the college level math or english class.
KIds need to be writing more essays not more multiple choice tests- I would love to see freshman have one essay to work on all year, handed in every month or so and critiqued but then handed back so they have a chance to utilize those corrections and handed in again so it can be seen how well they understood what they needed to do.
Some schools however, the work isn’t even corrected, just graded- how are they supposed to learn from that?</p>