Nila Priyambodo
Managing Editor

Last week Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates told the nation’s governors that high schools in the United States are “obsolete,” that they don’t prepare students for college and that they don’t prepare students in getting jobs after they graduate.

To be honest, I would have to agree with him. I don’t think I was quite prepared to meet the demands of college after I graduated high school. I also know a lot of people that have trouble in the nation’s top schools because they were not prepared in high school.

The trouble with most schools is that while one area or subject is accelerating, the others are lacking. In my school, while the English department was excellent, the science and foreign language departments were appalling.

After taking four years of Spanish I still had trouble speaking the language. I had to re-learn everything in college. I learned more in one semester of Spanish at the University of La Verne than I did in the four years of high school.

I think that the teachers in high school were under the pressure of giving their students a good grade, sometimes even a better grade than they should have gotten. Students and their parents can pressure the teachers to give out “A’s” because if they don’t, that student won’t be able to get into a good college or university.

Not wanting their students to be rejected by colleges and universities, teachers will often succumb to these pressures.

In addition, Gates said that many students would be more prepared if they took more rigorous courses in their school.

Again, I would have to agree with Gates. I think the honors and Advanced Placement classes in high school were very helpful. If I didn’t have to take the AP tests, I probably would not have learned so much. I had to learn more than what I learned in class in order to pass the tests. It was an incentive.

It’s just unfortunate that there is usually only one AP class for each subject in high school. There should be more opportunities for students to excel. Why is there a limit in the number of students allowed to be prepared for college?

President Bush has attempted to improve the nation’s schools with his No Child Left Behind law.

With this law, schools are required to test students in reading and math every year. If the students do not pass, the schools are penalized. Schools with students failing ultimately lose their federal funding.

This law has only made schools lower their standards, not improve their students education. Schools that are afraid of being penalized would pass their students even if the students did not meet the standards.

Also, since no extra money was given by Bush to help fund this law, schools spend the majority of their budget on these tests and barely have enough to provide students with trained teachers.

With this law, schools are no longer worrying about preparing their students for college. They are more worried about not having to pay for being penalized, even if it means risking a student’s future.

Instead of having to pay for being penalized, I think the money can be used to better prepare students for college. For instance, the money can be used to hire well trained teachers and provide more college prep classes.

Yes, we can improve the nation’s high schools, but Bush’s No Child Left Behind law is not the answer.

However, if we don’t immediately improve our school system, high schools in the United States will become “obsolete.” Just like Bill Gates said.

Nila Priyambodo, a sophomore journalism major, is managing editor of the Campus Times. She can be reached by e-mail at npriyambodo@ulv.edu.