Act High School Should Be Extended to 5 Years

In order to benefit the students and to better the learning environment, the Board of Education should extend high school to five years to better prepare students for college and jobs. Some may argue that extending to five years will make students lose interest in school; however, the extra year would only benefit students giving them an additional year to think about their future careers, earn their college credits, and take additional courses.

Extending high school to five years will give students more time to think about college and its requirements. Many students go into college not knowing what they would like to major on, which does not help them in deciding what classes they want to take. Because some students just take courses that they think they will like, but end up majoring in something else, which just wastes their money in courses irrelevant to their major. Having five years of high school would offer students more time to reflect on what hobbies or activities they enjoy that might be considerable as a future career.

Five years would, also, give students time to get their credits such as enrichment credits, extracurricular activities, and community service hours. Many students struggle when trying to work on their college credits because they are being pressured by time, but if there was an additional year in high school it would provide the students more time to get their credits done. This would allow them to take more classes to earn enrichment or earn more community service hours because they only have basically three years to get these credits done with. Senior years is all about college applications; junior year is about the ACT; sophomore and freshman year is the time to get it done, and probably half of senior and junior year as well. Students are being required these things for college, but have hardly any time to complete them.

More time would offer more classes which allows students to develop a better understanding of the material being taught. For example, in addition to regular classes, students will be allowed to take additional courses that interest students such as math, science, reading, writing, foreign languages, or other extra classes that schools offer. Taking additional classes gives students advantages in taking courses to supplement classes already taken that they passed with a low grade. If the students choose, they can retake a class which they had trouble with. This course would be included in their resume for colleges to see that although he/she struggle with the subject they made up and re took it for a better understanding. Therefore, when they go into college and need to take, for example, the next level of math, calculus, the student now will have a better understanding of the material.

Five years in the high school curriculum will benefit the students with lowering the time pressure, help them in choosing courses in college, and their resumes will also look better.