My high school and former middle school are in the same building: the downstairs floor is the middle school/nurse's office/guidance office, and the upstairs is the high school, so all of us kids in middle school knew what to look forward to when we got up there.
When I was in eighth grade, the high school had soda machines, a salad bar in the cafeteria, students could leave their study halls whenever to go wherever, you could bring drinks and food to class, have mp3 players and cell phones (in study halls), have lunch outside, and various other exciting luxuries unavailable to middle schoolers.
Four years later we have none of those things, for these respective reasons: too unhealthy, kids were spitting in it, death/bomb threat induced lockdowns increasing security, students bringing alcohol in non-alcoholic bottles, learning distractions and students sending naked pictures around, and students leaving the premises/smoking.
Basically, every cool thing has been systematically removed each year. A couple years ago we opened a "school store", which sold stuff like chips and candy bars, to raise money for the yearbook. We have to shut it down next week because everything we sell has too much sugar/too many calories, including the likes of NutriGrain Bars. We (yearbook staff) were told we had to close it down with a week's notice. The teacher who runs the yearbook staff buys the food from Sam's Club, i.e. in bulk. So now we have A) our second-biggest source of Yearbook revenue gone, B) tons of unsold food we won't be able to make a profit or even break even on, and C) the yearbook, already in superduper debt, even more so.
Our Principles of Democracy/Government text books are quite out of date, to the point that the teacher has to supply us with answers to at least a couple questions per chapter because the answers in the textbook have been rendered incorrect. Also, tons of classes don't have enough text books/novels (in english class) for all of the students).
Pretty much everything academic revolves around 1) State Standardized tests (the Pennsylvania State Assessment Tests, in which our scores have declined every year despite increased focus on it) and 2) an incredibly inane system of "Goals and Portfolios". The explanation for the latter: years ago, the superintendent latched on to this system, where every class has certain "goals" that need to be completed for a student to pass. For example, a goal for an English class might be "Student must present an oral presentation on a classic novel." These "goals" are then put into portfolios which follow you throughout your entire school career, the idea being that colleges would look at these portfolios and use them to help determine acceptance. He was convinced it would catch on with most schools in the country and wanted to get our school in the door early. The problems with this system being: A) It never caught on. Ever. and B) The individual "goals" have not changed in decades, despite teacher and curriculum changes, meaning that most of them have no place in the lesson plan and teachers just hand them out and give the students the answers so they everyone gets them completed and they're out of the way.
Also, the faculty is made up of 1) Young teachers who openly despise the administration and the sorry state of the school and B) teachers on the verge of retiring who have stopped giving a
.
Also, roughly a quarter of my senior class had dropped out over the last two years. We don't even fill one bleacher in the gym for pep assemblies/the like.
I really dislike my high school.
[/QUOTE]
