Picture this: it is a beautiful day in August. You are sitting on the beach, and your school schedule comes out. You eagerly open Genesis, but when you open your schedule, you see the name of the teacher people warned you about—the one notorious for giving a lot of work and being a harsh grader, the one you did not want. Your beautiful summer day is now cloudy as you think of the dreadful school year ahead of you. And jealousy fills your head as you imagine the ease felt by students who got the easy teacher.
But what if I told you there was a solution to fix the issue of hard versus easy teachers? Well, there is a solution. If THS could successfully standardize its course curricula, students would have equal grades and opportunities.
First, teachers of the same course should give the same tests and classwork so that the students are graded on the same things and have the same amount of points in Genesis. As for essays, when there are multiple teachers for a course, the essays should be submitted blindly and graded at random by one of the teachers of the course, not necessarily the one you have. Writing is highly subjective, unlike math or science, where there is one correct answer. If essays are graded at random and with no name revealed, every student will have equal opportunity for the grade they receive.
Additionally, whether an AP, Honors, or CP class, you will be taking some sort of final exam at the end of the school year, and the final you will be taking is the same one everyone in that course will take. If teachers teach different information at different times and use various teaching methods, then the students will not be standardized. If students are faced with unfamiliar materials or question format, they cannot live up to their full potential. For students in AP classes, this could be detrimental to their chances of receiving college credit, and for the high school level classes, the final makes up 10% of final grades, which could impact their final grades.
To add on to why we should standardize our curricula is GPAs. Most students at THS take 32 classes, which go towards their GPAs. Although this sounds like many classes, every grade matters because it impacts students’ GPAs. GPAs are extremely important, as they are viewed by the colleges you are applying to.
Though a GPA may not determine whether or not you get into your dream school, it is definitely a significant factor. And, if a school only wants to take a certain number of students from Tenafly, they may see a kid with a higher GPA and choose him or her over other students who took the same classes. That kid with a higher GPA may not necessarily deserve it, but because her or she was graded more leniently, he or she had a higher GPA.
Some may argue that standardizing the curriculum removes the personalized aspect of a class, but I do not believe this to be fair. A student is placed in a course level because that’s what they are most fit for. If a student is placed in AP US History, it is because teachers deem their academic intelligence worthy of being in the class. Everyone in the class is there because they are fit for it, meaning there should be no need for personalization of the material; they are on an equal level of intelligence.
Furthermore, there is a curriculum for teachers to follow, but it is not specific, which leaves things up for interpretation. The curriculum lists topics a teacher must teach but does not list how to instruct it or the specifics of the topic. If teachers of the same subject are not communicating with each other, their students may learn entirely different information about the same topics.
It may sound like an impossible task, but it’s not, and standardizing classes would relieve students’ minds when they receive their schedules on that sunny August day. By THS unifying the courses, students will have fair grades, making Tenafly a better, more equal school. So, THS, do us a favor and standardize course curricula.
