Blan Jarkasi
Mrs. Whittemore
English 3
January 28, 2008
Is High School Challenging Enough?
	Why are so many high school students unprepared for their futures after graduation? High school diplomas are just too easy to earn.  Very few students leave high school with the life skills they need for the future. Graduates are going to college and entering the business world unprepared and unaware of the fierce competition coming from all over the world. The high school curriculum is also not demanding enough and doesn’t challenge students. These are a few of many reasons why educators all over the country feel that high school isn’t providing student’s with a challenging enough education to prepare them for their futures.
	High school is not preparing students for college because students are not being challenged in the first place. In New Jersey, 40 percent of 4-year college students and 78 percent of community college students take remedial courses, which can be taken care of in high school and are time consuming and costly. Executive director of the New Jersey Commission of Higher Education said “In some high schools, the rigor is not there,” This is very true in my personal experience. A research paper entitled “Rigor at Risk”, from ACT, Inc. suggests that children are lacking the skills to handle college material and even lose momentum in their academics after the first two years of high school.  By not introducing material that doesn’t stimulate and challenge students, we are ensuring that students are graduating without the essential knowledge they need to work on a college level.
	Just in the same way, students are also not prepared to take on the business world. Students are lacking the basic skills to function in simple entry-level jobs. Business leaders say over two-thirds of the new jobs created will require a bachelor’s degree or some post-secondary college work.  45 percent of high school graduates are not skilled enough to advance beyond an entry-level job according to a national survey. Even jobs that don’t require a college education such as a machine operator require trigonometry skill and advanced reading when operating and maintaining complex machinery. Furthermore, high schools are not preparing students for the business world where they have to go against intense competition and going against cheaper labor provided by off shoring. 
	Lastly, schools aren’t pushing their students to be able to work on a college level.  By raising the standards and forcing students to take more challenging classes to obtain a diploma, the New Jersey Education Association believes students will be more prepared to take on college level education. This also can mean that a student’s electives might not be able to fit in their schedule and the classes that interest them the most may not be available to them. The curriculum should cover material in school to the colleges and businesses’ standards. This is the exact problem that the state’s High School Redesign Steering Committee is trying to take care of. The committee is trying to up the standard by forcing students into more demanding classes.  Students who work on a simple level often take remedial classes in college. Also, high schools usually don’t educate their student’s in basic business concepts and time management, which many educators believe can help students grasp some understanding of how the business world they are going to enter works and how to properly manage their time, a skill that many believe isn’t very focused on through a student’s school career.
	In short, high schools are not providing the necessary skills required for after graduation. Student’s are rarely challenged or even introduced to college level material in high school, makin