To me, the words “high school” are a euphemism for “teenage day care facility”. Parents drop their tired and exhausted teenagers off at campus each morning before the crack of dawn and expect them to learn until 2:30 or 3 in the afternoon. In fact, most high school students would much rather sleep in the extra hour or two and come to school around 8:30 or 9 am, when there is light outside, making it easier to stay awake and pay attention in class. With a block schedule, students have to sit through 4 hour and a half classes each day, causing them to grow tired and restless especially in the morning.
Sadly, there is plenty of teacher and administrative bias in the public school system. Teachers may teach their kids or their kids’ friends and give them leeway towards homework but not other kids in the class who are “unruly” or “not likable”. Another big issue in public schools is dress code, with some kids being able to get away with wearing extremely revealing clothes to school whereas some kids are called out for a shirt that looks fairly conservative compared to other scantily clad students. This bias is completely unfair and not particular to West Virginia. It happens all over the country and is not just an Appalachian education stereotype.
Coming from an honors and AP level student, I have an extremely tough time focusing in a classroom setting. It’s not that I don’t understand the material (which I do); I just can’t sit through an hour and a half monotone lecture every day. Most high schools in West Virginia are structured just like every other school in the country: students arrive around 7 or 8 am, sit through hours of classes, and then leave at either 2:30 or 3 pm. The classes are set up for students who can learn by sitting in a classroom and listen to a teacher for hours on end. They are also set up to prepare kids for college, even though most classes do not prepare you for the real world.
In almost every education system there is some sort of standardized test that is designed to measure student’s abilities. In West Virginia there is WESTEST, a four part test that is used to test student’s abilities in the core classes. The one flaw with this standardized test is that it tests kids on the material their grade level should be learning. However, with the amount of kid’s taking advanced placement classes, they most likely learned the material years before and might not remember it as well as a student who took the class that year. Therefore, the honors or AP student will not always do well on the standardized test and be forced to take a remedial course that they shouldn’t be in. The standardized tests need to be based on individual student and the courses they are taking, not on the core standards for that grade level.
One of the things I would change about Appalachian school system is create more magnet schools dedicated to each child’s personal interests and hobbies and not about what the so called “average student needs.” By having magnet schools, students interested in the arts could have their own school; students interested in the sciences could go to another school, etc. Small classroom sizes are a must as well. Consolidating two or three smaller schools into a larger school is not the answer because students do not get the one on one comfort with their teachers like they did in the smaller school. Smaller schools can cater to a child’s individual needs, whereas the larger schools will lump certain groups of students together like cattle and send them on a fast paced journey to either struggle or survive.
In the long run, Appalachian schools will lag behind the rest of the country if they continue to run on a very administrative biased school system, standardized tests, and consolidated schools. The schools need to be more catered to individual students who want to learn at their own pace instead of forcing kids to struggle in a large classroom setting where they can’t learn and will not succeed later in life.
-C
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