Success in our country’s culture today is often measured by whether a person made it out of high school, attended a prestigious college, and landed a lucrative career. Solomon Oritz, the former UU.S. Representative for Texas’ 27th congressional district, once said that “education is the key to success in life,” (Roterman). Because of the availability of public education, schooling is a part of everyone’s lives, and the diploma is the light at the end of the tunnel. But looking at the lives of those who have finished high school, is it really fair to say that finishing high school is true success in our country and shows progression in education?
In order to fully justify whether education in America is progressing or not, one should focus on the aspect of education that is most applicable for one’s future, seeing as education is a broad system. Though focusing on the overall scores of several mandatory tests administered across the country does measure progression or regression by revealing how well curriculum transfers to students, this is not the best way to view education as each teacher has different methods of teaching despite the No Child Left Behind Act of 2011 requiring teachers to be “highly qualified,” meaning obtaining a full state certification as a teacher and passing the state teacher licensing examination (“No Child Left Behind Act of 2001”). The best way to measure progress within education is by tracking the students’ success or failure following the graduation of their senior year of high school.
High school graduation rates here in America have hit a new record high. According to the United States Census Bureau, in 2009, there were 3,004,600 high school graduates countrywide, which, compared to the 2,747,700 graduates in 1980, is a 9.3% increase (“Education”). This increase in graduates shows the success of high schools across the country along with the success of students after the thirteen years of schooling they have been through thus far. The U.S. Department of Education states that the graduation rate from high schools from the 2005-2006 school year, 73.4%, has increased to 78.2% in the 2009-2010 school year (Brenchley). John Gomperts, president and CEO of the America’s Promise Alliance Campaign, believes these numbers will continue increasing and eventually reach a 90% on time graduation rate by the year 2020 (“U.S. High School Graduation Rate Hits New Record High”). These numbers are reflections of how well schools prepare students for high school graduation from the early years of elementary school through when they receive their diploma.
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Following high school graduation, students will most likely go down the path of pursuing a higher education and applying for college. Because of the increasing number of high school graduates, there have been more college applicants and, in return, more rejections and Iower acceptances rate into colleges. Recently, Stanford announced their 5.07% acceptance, which is the lowest the school’s acceptance has been in their history (Carey). The acceptance rates of schools do not necessarily reflect the true chances of well-qualified students being admitted to top schools as “anyone can apply to college,” but instead magnify the chances of “students with a legitimate shot at getting” into their schools (ibid). The chance of a well-qualified student getting admitted to a good college has changed a lot since a few decades ago. Back in the 1960s, students only had to apply for one college in which they chose based on location, program offerings, cost, and difficulty of admission (Springer). Nowadays, high school students apply for seven or more colleges with the hopes of getting into at least one (Nyhan). The simple explanation for the decrease in college admissions is this: the number of high school graduates increases, these graduates are determined to get into college thus creating more competition, and they only seem to want to get into colleges that are difficult to get into.
Though it may seem like education is progressing due to the increasing number of high school graduates and college applicants, it is better to look at the success of these students post college to determine whether the education they receive is preparing them for their future or not. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 260,000 Americans with bachelor’s degrees and 200,000 with associates degrees were receiving the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour or less in the year 2013 (Pyke). After going through many years of higher level education, these people are receiving a bare minimum in income, which is not expected of someone who has dedicated enough to spend so much on the higher level education. John Schmitt, a labor economist for the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, states that over half of all 22 year old college degree holders who found jobs within the past three years were in roles that did not require a college a college diploma (Lorin). The Federal Reserve Bank in New York used data from the Census Bureau and found that in 2012, 44% of college graduates were working jobs that did not require a college degree (Desilver). Of these graduates, 36% were in what the researchers called “good non-college jobs,” or jobs that were good for those who did not attend a college. These students who went through at least two extra years of higher-level education are making the same amount as those who just have a high school diploma.
Anna Marie Smith is an example of a college graduate with a troubling post college experience. Having graduated from Davidson College in North Carolina, Smith is now buried under more than $40,000 in debt. After graduating in May 2009, she spent six months seeking employment until finding a nonprofit group in Houston that hired her, giving her no health insurance or retirement savings plan. 18 months later she was laid off and proceeded to do admissions work at Rice University in Texas before applying for graduate school in New York. Smith admitted that “some of [her] job choices [had] been more out of desperation and to pay the bills,” (Lorin). She seems to have wasted time trying to find a good paying job just to return to school a few years later with hope to find a better job afterwards that will dig herself out of the debt she was in.
Despite the deceiving increase in amount of graduates from American high schools, the lack of progress is evident when looking at the success of these graduates. The education that students receive is not directly applying to where their later lives are taking them. More people are graduating from high school with diplomas only to be turned down colleges they apply for or graduating from colleges with nothing but debt. Until schools are able to adequately prepare their students for the future waiting ahead of them, America might quickly become comprised of high school graduates with a lost sense of how to help progression in their country.
