The American high school has been a remarkably resilient institution, maintaining its basic structure even as its mission and the world around it have experienced dramatic transformations. One hundred years ago, only about 10 percent of adolescents enrolled in high school, which served then as a direct pathway to improved social and economic standing. In the succeeding decades, as states enacted compulsory attendance laws, the proportion of students enrolled in high schools grew. As the American population collected in urban areas, progressives endorsed education as the key to the advancement of civilization and high school completion as the best avenue to success in the industrial economy. By 1940, the percentage of adolescents enrolled in high schools had reached 70 percent, an unprecedented explosion in enrollment. Mass high school enrollment had profound effects on the education establishment. First, the high school emerged as a centerpiece in the development of a literate citizenry and a burgeoning middle class. Unlike European high schools, which had their origins as institutions designed to prepare students for university admission, the American high school was a major force in the country's transition from an agrarian society to a more industrial one, centered first in the cities and then in the suburbs. At the same time, however, high schools began to feel the strain of rapid enrollment growth. Thousands of students who might otherwise have dropped out of school to pursue careers suddenly became the responsibility of the high schools. The public increased its demand for more practical learning, which led to the development and rapid expansion of manual learning programs that prepared urban students for industrial trades and rural students for agriculture and rural life. An educated citizenry being thought indispensable to a healthy democracy, high schools were also called on to prepare their students for civic participation. Related to this, the influx of non-English speaking immigrants into public schools, including high schools, also gave the schools a central role in assimilating children into American life. In yet another added area of responsibility, high schools instituted the college preparatory curriculum, which remains largely intact today, although transformed within individual disciplinary areas. Seeking to balance these many competing demands and interests became the singular concern of high school educators. Either unable or unwilling to prioritize these varied and distinct missions, high schools became the repository for society's competing hopes and aspirations for the future generation. The outcome was the comprehensive high school, which addresses the multiple educational needs of students who come to its door, in part, by separating and teaching them according to their perceived intellectual abilities. Source: https://ebookschoice.com/high-schools-have-increasingly-become-college-preparatory-institutions/

1. High Schools Have Increasingly Become
College Preparatory Institutions
The American high school has been a remarkably resilient institution, maintaining
its basic structure even as its mission and the world around it have experienced
dramatic transformations. One hundred years ago, only about 10 percent of
adolescents enrolled in high school, which served then as a direct pathway to
improved social and economic standing. In the succeeding decades, as states
enacted compulsory attendance laws, the proportion of students enrolled in high
schools grew. As the American population collected in urban areas, progressives
endorsed education as the key to the advancement of civilization and high school
completion as the best avenue to success in the industrial economy. By 1940, the
percentage of adolescents enrolled in high schools had reached 70 percent, an
unprecedented explosion in enrollment.
Mass high school enrollment had profound effects on the education
establishment. First, the high school emerged as a centerpiece in the
development of a literate citizenry and a burgeoning middle class. Unlike

2. European high schools, which had their origins as institutions designed to prepare
students for university admission, the American high school was a major force in
the country's transition from an agrarian society to a more industrial one,
centered first in the cities and then in the suburbs. At the same time, however,
high schools began to feel the strain of rapid enrollment growth. Thousands of
students who might otherwise have dropped out of school to pursue careers
suddenly became the responsibility of the high schools. The public increased its
demand for more practical learning, which led to the development and rapid
expansion of manual learning programs that prepared urban students for
industrial trades and rural students for agriculture and rural life. An educated
citizenry being thought indispensable to a healthy democracy, high schools were
also called on to prepare their students for civic participation. Related to this, the
influx of non-English speaking immigrants into public schools, including high
schools, also gave the schools a central role in assimilating children into American
life. In yet another added area of responsibility, high schools instituted the college
preparatory curriculum, which remains largely intact today, although transformed
within individual disciplinary areas. Seeking to balance these many competing
demands and interests became the singular concern of high school educators.
Either unable or unwilling to prioritize these varied and distinct missions, high
schools became the repository for society's competing hopes and aspirations for
the future generation. The outcome was the comprehensive high school, which
addresses the multiple educational needs of students who come to its door, in
part, by separating and teaching them according to their perceived intellectual
abilities and postsecondary plans.
As with many institutions that arise to meet particular needs, and despite its
resilience, the comprehensive high school may not be sustainable in today's
environment. An unfortunate coincidence has conspired to make high schools
more important than ever but less able to meet their special challenges. On the
one hand, more and more jobs require at least a high school diploma, a shift that
has undoubtedly contributed to a doubling of the high school completion rate
since 1960. At the same time, important societal institutions that reinforced the
structure and goals of the comprehensive high school have eroded. Divorce rates
have nearly doubled since 1950, and birth rates for unmarried teenagers have
doubled since 1970. School enrollments are more culturally and linguistically
diverse than at any time in the nation's history. New media vie with school for
children's attention and offer them many more opportunities to explore the
world in which they live. Images of scattered but horrific violence in the schools

3. perpetrated by apathetic or disaffected teenagers are broadcast nationwide,
generating anxiety and sapping support for public high schools.
The irony of the American high school, and perhaps its greatest challenge, is that
in seeking to be all things to all students, it offers surprisingly little to many
students. The myriad demands that society has placed on schools has pulled them
in too many different directions, some of which are at odds with each other. The
consequences have been detrimental for students.
Perhaps nowhere are these deficiencies more evident than during the senior year
of high school. In many communities, especially in inner cities, at least half of the
students who enter ninth grade do not finish high school. That means that only
about half of the young people who should be high school seniors are actually in
school. Of equal concern is the substantial number of students who muddle
through four years of high school, eager just to earn their certificate of
completion so that they can get on with their lives.
Most high schools today offer parallel curricula for students pursuing different
postsecondary pathways, but in too many schools, none of those tracks
adequately prepares students to succeed beyond high school. The college-
preparatory course sequence enables students to meet college admissions
requirements, which continue to emphasize completion of particular courses
rather than evidence that students are ready to perform college work.
Unfortunately, much of the content and pedagogy of those college prep courses
do not prepare students for the analytic writing and problem-solving that are
typically required in college courses, resulting in the high remediation rates cited
earlier. Vocational/technical education courses have moved away from training
students for specific trades, but too many career-bound students continue to
enter the job market without the basic and advanced skills that employers seek.
Most schools have eliminated the general-track course sequence, which offers a
watered down version of the college prep curriculum without preparing students
for any particular education or career after high school, but some schools
continue to reserve this track for their lowest performing students. The absence
of academic rigor in every track is exacerbated during the senior year. Thus, by
the time they reach their senior year, most students have completed all but one
of the requirements for graduation, and schools have little else to offer them
except miscellaneous electives.

4. With ever-growing percentages of high school graduates enrolling in two- or four-
year colleges, high schools have increasingly become college preparatory
institutions. The path to college, however, is not a smooth one. High freshman
remediation rates suggest that colleges have done a poor job of communicating
to high schools their academic expectations for entering freshmen, and high
schools have done a poor job of teaching and certifying mastery of those skills.
The disconnect between high schools and colleges runs deeper, though. Whereas
the most selective colleges may review high school transcripts and class ranks to
identify the most talented students, most institutions of higher education have
little use for those data. In a typical arrangement, new admissions criteria for the
University rely on a Freshman Index consisting of SAT scores and grade point
averages in a core curriculum to rank students. In the states that require students
to pass an exit exam as a condition of earning a high school diploma, state
institutions of higher education do not consider the results from those tests
during the admissions process. Perhaps the most egregious example of the
irrelevance of high school performance to college admissions officers occurs
during the senior year. With more and more students applying early to selective
colleges and universities and finding out as early as November of their senior year
that they have been admitted to the college of their choice, the overwhelming
message they receive is that their senior year performance matters little to the
colleges they wish to attend.
The still-substantial number of students who pursue careers immediately after
high school also find that their performance in high school, even if stellar, has
little bearing on their ability to find a good job. Most high schools, even those
with good school-to-career programs, do not establish strong links with area
employers. What is more, few employers emphasize students' high school
performance as the key prerequisite for job placement. Most employers do not
request high school transcripts, high school exit exam results, teacher references,
or other school records of graduates they are considering for employment. During
their senior year, few career-bound students receive assistance with job searches,
résumé development, or interviewing skills, largely because high school guidance
offices are not equipped to provide that type of assistance. In contrast, college-
bound students often receive guidance on filling out college and financial aid
applications, writing essays for their college application, and interviewing for
college admissions. Thus, for students considering a career immediately after high
school, there is little incentive to excel in school because there is no clear pay-off
with respect to their immediate postsecondary plans.

5. As the preceding review makes clear, many of the challenges related to the senior
year transition have been brought about as much by changes in society and the
lack of involvement of outside institutions as they have from problems internal to
the high schools. Certainly, high schools can do more to adapt to these changes,
but complete success may require broader approaches that engage institutions of
higher education, employers, and families. Strategies for addressing these
challenges range from direct approaches that address discrete problems to more
comprehensive changes that seek to transform the high school and its
relationships with stakeholders and other institutions, including colleges and
universities. An agenda for change may need to address at least three aspects of
the American high school:
- Making the high school curriculum more challenging and relevant for students
- Establishing a smoother pathway from high school to college
- Easing the transition from high school to career
The major problems with the current curriculum are a pervasive lack of academic
rigor and the curriculum's failure to relate academic skills to real-life applications.
An approach that targets these deficiencies might begin by eliminating the
arbitrary groupings that arose during the early stages of mass high school
enrollment, including general track and nonchallenging vocational courses.
Schools might then institute a single core curriculum for all students that merges
academic and applied learning and that incorporates high academic standards.
Additional support could be provided to low-performing students who may
struggle with the new core curriculum. A more ambitious, long-term strategy
could revise the curriculum for the final two years of high school, which currently
tends to contribute little to students' ability to make the transition from high
school to college or work. To better prepare students for the demands of college
and work, schools could offer students opportunities for monitored research or
other academically enriching projects under the tutelage of a faculty member or
structured internship opportunities, either of which could conclude with final
exhibitions of their analytic talents and skills. Such an approach would recognize
the budding maturity of upper-grade adolescents and offer a culminating learning
experience during the senior year, both of which are sorely lacking in the modern
American high school.
Virtually all efforts to create smoother pathways from high school to college
would require commitment from and collaboration with postsecondary
institutions. Targeted strategies include expanded opportunities for academically

6. motivated students to enroll in courses at nearby colleges for credit before they
finish high school, or for high schools to offer dual-credit college courses on their
campuses through cooperative agreements with postsecondary institutions.
Another option would be to use new distance-learning technology. Any of these
strategies would introduce high school students to the academic demands of
college coursework at an early stage. A more systemic approach would involve
closing the gap between the curriculum and skills that students learn in high
school and the content and skills that they need to succeed in college. This could
be accomplished by aligning high school completion and college admission
standards and assessment systems so that demonstrated mastery of the high
school curriculum guarantees that students are prepared for college-level work.
Before leaving high school, students would have to demonstrate that they had
mastered the knowledge and skills necessary to enroll in introductory college
courses, and colleges would use that information in their admissions decisions.
For students pursuing employment immediately after high school, targeted
approaches may include encouraging employers to request and consider high
school transcripts and other records as part of the job application process. A more
comprehensive approach might include the development of strong ties between
high schools and employers, such as guaranteed employment opportunities with
respected employers for the highest-performing students, as has been the
practice in Japan.
Although systemic solutions are needed to address the systemic problems of the
American high school, there remain avenues for personal success, even personal
success experienced on a large-scale basis. These pathways rely to a large degree
on the motivation of the individual learner. Recent research on youth
development confirms that schools have a significant role to play in motivating
students to succeed. This does not absolve students from being responsible for
their success, but instead recognizes the complex forces that play a part in
engaging adolescents in learning. Early research recognized only individual
influences on school engagement, such as perceptions of competence,
motivation, and interest. Even here though, schools play a role. For instance, the
personal relevance of a particular task influences the degree of interest that a
student shows in that task. Similarly, students are more likely to engage in a task
if it has a high utility value, meaning that it is useful in achieving a current or
future goal. More recent research has cast an even brighter light on the role of
schools and classrooms in motivating students to learn. It highlights the
importance of students' relationships with teachers and their peers-social

7. motivation-in encouraging students to work hard in school. Classroom practices,
and particularly a teacher's ability to run a well-structured classroom
environment, emerged as the greatest social influences on students' engagement
in school.
As currently constituted, American high schools are not organized to motivate
students to excel, and they receive precious little help from postsecondary
institutions and employers. In years past, schools relied on families and
communities to motivate their students, but today much of that responsibility has
been ceded to the schools themselves, which are poorly equipped for that task.
As this paper has shown, success in high school does not necessarily prepare
students for success beyond its walls, so for many students the utility value of
high school is quite low. Moreover, schools have made it easy for students to
coast through, if that is their inclination. Academic standards for participating in
athletics or extracurricular activities, if they exist at all, are set fairly low.
Students' bodies and minds are maturing at an earlier age than in previous
generations, yet their schools and classrooms provide little stimulation, challenge,
and support for their continued maturation. Students need to believe that there is
a direct payoff for their hard work in high school, or they may never put forth the
effort needed to ensure their own future success.
Jeff C. Palmer is a teacher, success coach, trainer, Certified Master of Web
Copywriting and founder of https://Ebookschoice.com. Jeff is a prolific writer,
Senior Research Associate and Infopreneur having written many eBooks, articles
and special reports.
Source: https://ebookschoice.com/high-schools-have-increasingly-become-
college-preparatory-institutions/