“As a nation, we need more college graduates in order to stay competitive in the global economy,” Duncan said. “But if the costs keep on rising, especially at a time when family incomes are hurting, college will become increasingly unaffordable for the middle class.”
Society depends on the current and next generation to become scientists, doctors, accountants, etc, to continue all the work and discovery people are contributing to today.
Indeed, as tuition costs continue to rise and the national student loan debt hits $1 trillion, some people have been left wondering if college is even worth it anymore.
Because college is becoming too expensive for some people they are starting to wondering if attending is even worth it when they could just be working.
The increasing prices aren’t just due to the rising cost of tuition, but also thanks to higher fees for room and board. In-state students at public four-year colleges paid more for housing and food last year than tuition, although both increased substantially.
Housing expenses when colleges require freshman to live on campus.
The costs have also gone up 24 percent at community colleges and 13 percent at private universities.
Community college was always cheaper than private universities so it makes sense for the costs of community college to rise more than private institutions.
The price of attending a public four-year college has risen 27 percent beyond inflation over the past five years,
27 percent will eventually rise to 50 percent and so on.
wo-thirds of students who earn four-year bachelor’s degrees are graduating with an average student loan debt of more than $25,000, and 1 in 10 borrowers now owe more than $54,000 in loans.
For some people, they could be paying off this debt for the rest of their life.
Furthermore, the escalation of college costs has resulted in many students and families barely scraping by, having to turn down admissions to their top-choice schools they couldn’t afford, or delaying college altogether. Worse still, some students leave school with debt and no degree.
Regardless of having all the characteristics that an institution seeks in a student and high GPA,if a student afford the tuition, such as an Ivy League, their only option is to find a more affordable school. Colleges with low tuition often can't offer as much resources as more pricer colleges, which is a disadvantage.
student debt in America now exceeds $1 trillion.
This is ridiculous
40 percent: The share of households headed by someone under 35 that owed college debt in 2010.
While 40 percent are under the age of 35, 60 percent are over the age of 35.
$1.3 trillion: The amount of outstanding student loan debt, which first exceeded $1 trillion in March 2012.
The debt in student loan has increased severely which is why most people are still paying it off even in their 40's, 50's, etc.
."We need to recognize that the most serious domestic problem in the United States today is the widening gap between the children of the rich and the children of the poor," Lawrence H. Summers, the president of Harvard, said last year when announcing that Harvard would give full scholarships to all its lowest-income students. "And education is the most powerful weapon we have to address that problem."
Finance is the cause of preservation of the gap pertaining to socioeconomic status.
He became a college dropout, though nongraduate may be the more precise term.
Not having a degree does not guarantee an individual a reliable job during their adult years.
"I enjoyed working hard, getting the job done, getting a paycheck," Mr. Blevins recalled. "I just knew I didn't want to quit." Advertisement Continue reading the main story So he quit college instead
Money is always the center of almost everything.
Maybe he would take a break from college and keep working.
Students tend to take a break to work in order to earn money to pay for school
Students will be offered multiple opportunities to take the Keystones throughout their high school careers.
Student aren't just given one opportunity to take the exams but multiple. So say if an individual isn't satisfied with their first score, they can retake it during their high school years to see if they have improved or not with a high score.
The Keystone Exams areend-of-course assessments designed to evaluate proficiency in academic content.
Keystone Exams are exams which students take at the end of the course to evaluate themselves on their academic level.
This can also lead to better teaching skills, as teachers will be held accountable to help their students meet these standards.
The test gives teachers a better understanding of what they need to focus more on when teaching students and shows if the material is helping them at all.
The key to good standardized testing is to test twice a year, both spring and fall, to prepare children and to communicate to them that this is just one vehicle to help assess their achievement.
Testing in the fall, which is right when we start school, will show where we are academically. Then when tested again in the spring (the following year) it will show how much students have improved and what level they have jumped to.
The multiple-choice format used on standardized tests is an inadequate assessment tool.
Knowledge isn't based on whether students are good on multiple choices and memory.
Excessive testing may teach children to be good at taking tests, but does not prepare them for productive adult lives.
Most of the material on these tests, we wouldn't include in our everyday lives
Open-ended questions on standardized tests are often graded by under-paid temporary workers with no educational training. Scorers make $11-$13 per hour and need only a bachelor’s degree, not necessarily related to education. As one former test scorer stated, "all it takes to become a test scorer is a bachelor’s degree, a lack of a steady job, and a willingness to throw independent thinking out the window…” [97]
This is unfair to students who did their best.
Most parents approve of standardized tests.
Though they approve, they are not the ones who are taking it and it benefits them in no way.
And in the end, he noted, colleges are not asking a student’s PSSA score
We take tests such as SATS because colleges actually look at it. Colleges aren't as concerned with PSSAs but student's still are required to take it.
In the period from 2009 to 2012, Pennsylvania spent more than $32 million per year testing just under one million students in grades 3 through 9.
One of many reasons why school districts nowadays don't have enough money for supplies and other major necessities.
Standardized tests can be one part of a comprehensive assessment system. However, they offer just a small piece of the picture. Better methods of evaluating student needs and progress already exist. Careful observation and documentation of student work and behaviors by trained teachers is more helpful than a one-time test. Assessment based on student performance on real learning tasks is more useful and accurate for measuring achievement -- and provides more information for teaching -- than multiple-choice achievement tests.
I agree! There are people who make us believe that standardized testing is the only way to determined if improvements were made or not. When in reality, there are alternatives, better alternatives!
teaching to the test
Because of this tests, students, like myself, feel as though their only goal to to pass it rather than actually absorbing the knowledge they are receiving for every day use.
But nearly one in three blacks said using standardized tests to compare their local schools with schools in other districts and other states is “very important.” Just 15 percent of whites gave the same response.
What does race have to do with anything?
A majority also said they think test scores are “somewhat important” in judging the effectiveness of their local schools.
I agree. There are many cons to standardized testing, but without it, its hard to see what we've learned so far overall.
Many Americans also said they think students should be judged by multiple measures, including student work, written teacher observations and grades. And they overwhelmingly think teacher quality is the best way to improve education, followed by high academic standards and effective principals.
I agree. Students take at least one standardized test and test makers pin our overall knowledge on one score.
“I feel that standardized testing isn’t really useful for students. In my opinion, students take hard tests but, in the future, we won’t remember any of it.”
Usually most of what we learn, we already have forgotten so when we take a test in, we'll most likely not get the best score to our potential.
“I believe that tests are not the best way of going about seeing how smart a student is. Many students tend to freeze up on tests even when they know their work.”
There are others ways to determine our knowledge.
Teenagers say some of the most profound, and most entertaining, things you could ever imagine. A day doesn’t go by that my students don’t enlighten me with their genuine innocence or entertain me with their youthful ignorance.
I agree. Students learn from teachers, vice versa.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
These two lines could be a wakeup call of reality. Something so sharp and serious, there's no humor in this.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
This line makes me think of two lovers perhaps. if the person is gone, the mirror has nothing to reflect but darkness. Because the person is gone, the mirror is apart of the separation and could feel sad or lonely.
I have no preconceptions. Whatever I see I swallow immediately Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
Reflect everything it sees. Also it will show everything exactly the way it is, however it may feel "love or dislike," that won't cloud it's judgement.
I am not cruel, only truthful
The truth can hurt
In Criticks hands, beware thou dost not come; And take thy way where yet thou art not known,
The author does not want her book landing into a critics's hand because she is worried about he review due to the face that she does not like it herself. Because it is flawed in her eyes, she already knows for a fact she'll get a bad review most likely.
Thy blemishes amend, if so I could: I wash’d thy face, but more defects I saw, And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw.
The author tries to fix it to her liking, yet nothing she does really helps.
Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true, Who thee abroad, expos’d to publick view,
The author's friends takes the book because they like it and publishes it themselves.
Thou ill-form’d offspring of my feeble brain, Who after birth didst by my side remain,
The author wrote a book that she doesn't like.