Only 53 percent of high school students put a “great deal of effort” into their school work, and more than a third have not written a paper more than five pages long the entire school year, according to a recent survey of more than 80,000 high school students conducted by Indiana University Bloomington. Martha M. McCarthy, director of the High School Survey of Student Engagement said, “I think our data give a wake-up call to high schools to say we need to make our courses more challenging.”
Does this survey reflect the trend in your district? Why don’t high schoolers feel challenged by their courses? What can be done to effectively engage students?