Dear Future President,

My name is Camryn Chase, and I am a 17 year old high school student at Minarets High School in O’neals, CA. As a proud American citizen, I feel it is my obligation to bring awareness to issues I see. One very important aspect of my life is education.

According to Megan Coleman at CNYCentral, “30 years ago, America was the leader in quantity and quality of high school diplomas. Today, our nation is ranked 36th in the world.” This is a startling statistic. What is causing these issues? I do not feel this is an issue that is easily solved with one blanket answer. One I would like to specifically address is the imbalance in test taking. As a current high school student, I have personally experienced this problem. I believe that test taking is extremely important for tracking the advancement of knowledge among students. I believe the absence of test taking is detrimental because students become lazy and teachers lose track of their students progress. However, I also believe in some circumstances there is too much emphasis put on students to do well on tests. I believe the idea that a student’s future in large part can depend on how well they take tests is unfair. There needs to be a middle ground established between these two extremes. Implementing this will better our success rate as a nation, and possibly allow students to even enjoy school.

As a student entering college in the very near future, I have also come to understand some major issues with this system. I believe the cost of tuition is extremely high. Budget cuts being made and professors salaries being lowered would contribute to a much more affordable education. Offering a middle class scholarship that truly helps the middle class students need to be made available. Having a college degree has become very important for the future of many young adults and lowering the cost of this is absolutely necessary to allow us to succeed.

Education is also very important to me because I hope to become a teacher. I want to be a teacher because I believe the school age years are very important for the development of a person. I want to be able to make a difference in young minds. I believe there should be more opportunities to teach real life skills in the classroom. I want to teach my students practical skills that they will use in the real world. Creating nation wide educational requirements that are practical life skills will greatly help our future adults.

Education is something I am very passionate about. I believe here in the US we have a strong system, but there is always room for improvement. Thank you for taking the time to read my letter and considering my opinions.

Sincerely,

Camryn Chase