Dear Future President,

In our country, our school qualities range anywhere between the best we could possibly ask for or the absolute worst environment for children/teens to be in. These varied qualities in our education systems are far from what we should strive for as a country. We should strive to achieve balance between every school we have so that every child/teenager has fair shot at gaining a bright and happy future. We need to put more money into our education, but this money shouldn't go towards already highly funded schools or to areas where we have no real significant use for it. The schools that really need more equipment and such to properly educate students should receive that money. Also, on the topic of money, there needs to be more money for education in general. Schools keep making more and more budget cuts because there simply isn't enough cash to fully support everything in that school. I've only ever seen two types of schools. The first type that has an abundance of money and gets to do all these fun and education things and the second type that can't afford to buy any new equipment and has to make due with the little that they have. There needs to be more stability between schools. Another thing I would like to address is the standardized testing and grades. I, personally, have good grades. However, I'm not sure I understand the new grading scale that we have in our district. Now, I don't know about other states and districts, but we have this rather interesting and new way of how our grading scale works. In regular classes, 40% of your final grade is based on class work, participation, homework, etc., or formative grades as they call it, while the other 60% is tests, quizzes, projects, etc., or summative grades. Now, for an honors class, 80% of your grade is based off your summative grade and 20% is based off your formative grade. In AP, 90% is based off summative while only 10% is based on formative. I find this ridiculous. I know many kids and teens that understand the subject perfectly well, do all their homework, and always plays an active part in class, but aren't good at taking tests and quizzes. From personal experience, even if you have an A in the class, the grade that you got on a quiz can significantly lower your grade. If you got a C on that quiz, you now have a C in the class. This new scale is not exactly a favorite amongst students. I merely wanted to bring this up because I'm curious to see if there are any other districts doing this or if it's just us. If there's even more schools doing this, I'd like for a little change to be made so our grades aren't completely dependent on the few test, quizzes, and projects we receive. That's all I have for you for now. I'm wondering how you will take my letter and recommendations. Either you'll take my suggestions into consideration or you'll throw this letter to the trash. Anyways, thank you for taking the time to read over my letter.

Sincerely,

A Student