With graduation coming upon the seniors of Park, the yearly topic for debate of whether it is too easy to graduate at Park is being debated once again. Some argue the requirements that have to be met in order to graduate at Park are too low, and do not set students up for success as they make students do less, others argue that the requirements are what they should be to assure graduation.
To understand the level of difficulty that it takes to graduate, the requirements need to be fully understood. To graduate, each student must earn 46 semester credits, and to earn this you must have a D or higher in that class for that semester. However, these credits are divided up by each subject. You must earn eight credits in English, eight social studies credits, six math credits, six science credits, one health credits, one physical education credit, two fine arts credits, one communication literature credit, 12 elective credits and one park connection credit which stretches across all four years.
With these requirements being established, I think the difficulty of graduation is just fine at Park. The first reason for this is the amount of classes that you are required to take. With these requirements, a person that is on track to graduate will have to have almost a full schedule each year. Not having a full schedule is okay as school gets much harder as time goes on, so not being required to take a full seven classes each year does not make it too easy to graduate. Having the ability to take study halls is crucial for some who have no time to study because of activities, especially as activities become more and more crucial to being accepted into desirable colleges.
Another reason Park has an acceptable difficulty for graduation is that, compared to surrounding cities, Park has almost identical graduation requirements. Surrounding public schools such as Minnetonka, Edina and Hopkins, all have graduation rates that require near the same amount of credits per category, pending some very minor differences. Park sets up students for success just the same as surrounding schools do, and students are given many of the same opportunities as these surrounding schools. To say that Park needs to make it more difficult to graduate would also be calling upon every other public school to do the same, which would not be a fair thing to do. There are courses that fit many different interests, and more importantly, many different skill levels, so students can really choose their own difficulty when reaching these requirements.
Graduation is not too easy at Park, graduation should not be an impossible challenge, if it was, hundreds of people at Park would not graduate. However, a student’s success is greatly determined by how hard they try in school, and even if someone graduates, it doesn’t mean that they themselves have pushed themselves to their absolute limit. To reach extremely high levels in education and eventually in future careers, the absolute limit of someone’s abilities must be reached, however, not every person can go on to be a doctor or lawyer, and graduation requirements should not be reflective of the requirements to be accepted into prestigious universities such as Harvard. Graduation is not too easy at Park, and the requirements should not be made more difficult.
