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Could public preschool benefit your children? The school districts in Georgia and New York do, and they subsequently have created a universal preschool curriculum for four-year-old students.

While many parents, teachers, and communities debate the benefits of a public-wide preschool, many states are considering mandated and/or government-supported programs for young children and families.

Why the Public Preschool is Gaining Attention

Political Base states:

“State-funded public preschool is usually a means-tested program that provides early education to 3 and 4-year-olds. The goal in providing subsidized public preschool for low-income families is to provide a stable environment for young children during a crucial age of development.” Essentially, since lower-income families cannot always provide sufficient child care, “their children would be left at home. For many, this means unstable environments and T.V.s instead of teachers. It may also force single parents to stay home to raise children instead of work.”

As a result of these struggles, many states are implementing government-funded schools and educational programs to provide lower-income families with added assistance. Building on this framework, the state-mandated preschool programs are also ideally intended to provide families of all financial backgrounds with more supportive educational options for children of a younger age.

The Benefits of Preschool

One of the most significant benefits of publicly mandated preschool programs is ensuring that lower-income families have opportunities to enroll their children in early education programs while saving on the often expensive costs of preschool and childcare programs. As policy

As the demands and requirements for high school students are shifted towards core classes, such as English, math, and science, high schools across the country are losing money and funds for elective courses. As a result, programs in the arts, music, and other creative realms are dwindling. This not only stimulates a loss of opportunities for students, but it also stimulates a loss of jobs for teachers across the country. Specifically, according to the National Education Association, in New York City alone, over 233 elective teachers of athletics, music, and the arts were laid off due to issues of funding, testing, and a dwindling social respect for the arts and creative courses.

Causes of a Loss of Electives

School Funding

According to research from PBS, to understand why some schools are dropping specific programs, one must first understand how schools are funded. As PBS explains, “Expenditures on schooling are not equal from state to state. Some of the disparity can be explained by differing costs of educational input costs such as real estate and teacher salaries. However, when the numbers are adjusted to reflect regional wages and prices, there is still a large gap between state spending.”

As the costs of schooling and education vary across the country, some students are provided with higher budgets and opportunities to pay for elective programs. PBS provided a great example of this financial disparity: “accounting for the cost of living and price differences, New Jersey spent about twice as

Currently, over 22 states require that high school students pass an exit exam before graduating. Part of this trend towards exit exams is due to legislation and mandates, such as those influenced by the educational act “No Child Left Behind.” The intent of these exams is to ensure that students are being held accountable for their own learning while in school. To extend on this accountability, however, some states and schools are now requiring that students complete a graduation project, often either to replace or supplement an exit exam.

What is a Graduation Project?

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To help students learn different strategies of research and writing, many graduation projects focus on a study of inquiry, where students can research a topic, theory, or question for which they find personal interest. Some of these projects require that students write and cite an essay correctly, present their ideas and theories to a panel, prove that they can write an essay cohesively and using an organized sequence, while also showing their overall ability to speak and write convincingly. In this sense, it can be compared to a high school version of defending one’s master’s thesis.

One of the benefits of a graduation project is that students are actually engaging in work that is intended to prepare them for the “real world” after graduation. As students engage in projects of inquiry, they are able to explore different modes of support while also learning how to articulate their own thoughts

As teens transition through middle and high school, many parents witness their children exhibiting problematic behaviors as students try to assert more freedom and independence. Behaviors such as lying, stealing, not performing well in school, skipping class, or exhibiting general disruptive actions are common among teens.

Despite these issues, however, the vast majority of students struggling with troubling behaviors can improve and advance within one year if they receive early intervention. Early intervention strategies may be the key to solving issues and problems exhibited by teens. Public schools have developed action plans to improve teen behavior to achieve this early intervention. Paired with this, parents can implement specific strategies to help their teens work through some common issues and struggles during the middle and high school years.

Teens and Troubling Behavior

The Common Behavioral Issues

While many teens in middle and high school fall prey to the temptations of peer pressure, fitting in, and the lure of popularity, these pressures can often pull teens towards disruptive and negative behaviors that are evident both in and outside of school.

According to Parenting Teens, “Struggling t"ens (and even those not struggling) tend to project their smoke screens for various reasons. You may see them behaving with studied indifference to virtually everything. They may prefer not to be seen with the family. They may be withdrawn, irritable, difficult, and downright unpleasant.”

Often, "these attitudes are simply a developmental “phase” that "teens "exhibit as they move through puberty; however, schools and