"Time to raise the bar in high schools"

"Raise the bar" literally refers to athletes pushing their bodies to jump or pole vault higher. Jack O'Connell uses the expression figuratively in his editorial to persuade California to raise the academic standards so that all students can climb higher.

Here are all the word lists to support the reading of Grade 11 Unit 3's texts from SpringBoard's Common Core ELA series: Media in a Democracy, Daily Me, The Newspaper Is Dying, Facebook Photos Sting, Abolish high school football, Facing Consequences, Time to raise the bar, New Michigan Graduation Requirements, Why I Hate Cell Phones, Editorial Cartoons, Let's Hear It for the Cheerleaders, Girl Moved to Tears, In Depth, but Shallowly, Advice to Youth, The War Prayer, Gambling in Schools, How to Poison the Earth
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. remediation
    act of correcting an error or a fault or an evil
    More than half of students entering California State University need remediation in reading or math.
  2. rigor
    something hard to endure
    It is clearly time for us to re-examine high school in California, to raise the level of rigor we expect of all of our students and begin preparing every high school student to reach higher expectations.
  3. lag
    hang or fall in movement, progress, development, etc.
    Our high schools today struggle with an achievement gap that leaves African-American, Latino and socioeconomically disadvantaged students lagging behind their peers.
  4. minimum
    the least possible
    Many students are not aware that the "minimum requirement" courses they are taking aren't providing the rigorous foundation that will prepare them to fulfill their dreams after high school.
  5. trend
    a general direction in which something tends to move
    To reverse this trend, we must make rigorous courses available to all of our students.
  6. bound
    headed or intending to head in a certain direction
    We must redefine high schools as institutions that provide all students with a strong academic foundation, whether they are bound for college or the workplace after graduation.
  7. initiative
    the first of a series of actions
    I am proposing a High Performing High Schools Initiative that will raise expectations for our high schools and high school students.
  8. align
    bring into proper or desirable coordination correlation
    And it will establish a state "seal of approval" process for high school instructional materials, giving districts guidance in choosing materials that are standards-aligned, and therefore more rigorous than many used in high schools today.
  9. advocate
    speak, plead, or argue in favor of
    By advocating for tougher curriculum in high schools, I am not in any way suggesting vocational education programs should be eliminated.
  10. collaborate
    work together on a common enterprise or project
    In fact, legislation I introduced to improve high school achievement would reward schools that collaborate with businesses or labor unions to expand such successful programs as career-partnership academies.
Created on Fri Nov 14 16:02:42 EST 2014 (updated Sun Nov 16 00:37:06 EST 2014)

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