United States

The US education system of secondary school is not the same across the country, the courses vary by content and level.

In the United States, secondary education covers ages from 11 or 12 years old to 18 or 19 years old, and is divided into two levels: lower and upper secondary. The United States has defined lower secondary education or middle school as grades 7 through 9, and upper secondary educatior or high school as grades 10 through 12. 

Teachers

All the teachers in the United States have had to get a teaching certificate after their bachelorette degree to be able to work in a school. 

Curriculum

The curriculum in the United States has a wide variety of courses, each one is classified into four elements.

1. The description of the course. Each course is classified into one of the 22 categories of subject areas like history, science, mathematics, arts, etc.

2. The level of the course

The course levels classify the course’s level of rigour. There are four options:

• B for basic: A course focusing primarily on skills development.

• G for general: A course focused on providing general concepts.

• E for enriched: A course that increases the content and/or rigour of a general course, but does not carry an honours designation.

• H for honours: An advanced level course designed for students who have earned honours status. These courses include additional content not found in general courses. 

3. The available credit

To graduate from high school a student will need between 22 and 26 credits, depending on the state. When a student successfully completes a course for a term or a school year, obtains the amount of credit for that course value.

4. Sequence 

The sequence describes how each school system may break down the information on the different courses. For example, Accounting may be broken into two different courses that together make up a complete Accounting course, one Carnegie credit.

5. Additional Notes on the Content and Structure of School Codes for the Exchange of Data (SCED)

• AP and IB courses: The College Board and International Baccalaureate Organization define the content and set the performance standards for Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) courses.

• Foreign language courses: US schools do not include every language other than English that could be taught in secondary schools. The languages for which there are course descriptions are found in each high school course catalogue. For each language that is taught, five course descriptions progress from introductory to higher levels of fluency.

School fees

Education in the US can be public or private. Public schools are funded by the US government a 13,6%, meaning that the students still pay high school fees. Furthermore, private schools have an annual average tuition cost of 13.731,35 € nationally.

Other information

• Schools offer a lot of after school programs such as sports and clubs. 

• All schools offer school transportation.

• Most of public schools do not require wearing uniform but the majority of private schools do.