PARAGRAPH 1: Being educated is one of the most powerful assets a person can acquire as education helps create a foundation for discovery. Education follows people throughout life because no one really ever stops learning. Preparing for these next stages requires a consistency of education for everyone to follow. To keep education consistent throughout the country, the education system is in place. Like any other system, the education system has problems within it that directly affect the students. There are many problems that schools face with funding or not having the most up-to-date technology. One of the major problems of the education system is students not being prepared for college because classrooms are focusing more on standardized tests (Hansen n.p.). Classrooms should focus on teaching students how to prepare themselves for learning and not how to take a test by eliminating the high dependency on the standardized tests, and turning the classroom focus on how the student is learning by analyzing their past selves to their future selves would be more beneficial for a student instead of analyzing their test scores (Zalan n.p.).

PARAGRAPH 2: Although students meet all the requirements to attend the university, most of them are not actually prepared for college (Hansen n.p.). This does include the students who have performed well in high school, not just the ones who struggled. These students may have high GPA’s and high ACT scores, but they are lacking skills to help them succeed such as writing skills, basic math skills, or techniques for handling coursework (Hansen n.p.). Public schools make a big deal out of scoring high on standardized tests such as the ACT or the state tests because of the grades the state gives the school from the performance on these tests (Evans n.p.). These grades that the state gives determines the amount of funds the school can receive, so the schools are teaching students the strategies of bubbling the right answers and completing more questions in a certain amount of time which does not help with learning or understanding the material. Testing techniques are very helpful for the important standardized test, but the school system should not make high test scores their main priority. Teaching students how to take notes from a lecture or how to study should be the main focus of education. If schools would focus on getting students to understand information or to remember and not just on getting brilliant test scores, more students may find themselves feeling better prepared.