Applying Student Opinion to High School Curriculum 

Hannah Lewandowski

Class of 2019

How can current secondary schooling guidelines, such as Washington state's Common Core, include what enrolled students feel necessary to succeed after high school so they acquire more than a certificate of completion, such as a diploma?

The significance of this study will relate to students throughout high school, as many don’t feel fully satisfied with their figuratively "endless" time they spend on the school grounds day in and day out. So if student desire can be applied to the guidelines used across all high schools, then students will be able to get more from their experience, thus making it more meaningful. 

Curriculum can be defined as totality of student experiences that occur in the educational process

Upon starting my research project, I hypothesized that students must be polled in order to have their opinion applied to curriculum, and I thought that students would want things relating to finances, such as paying bills, for college, and filing for taxes. 

In order to bridge the gap between current conditions and desired conditions, 78 consenting respondents took a 9 question survey via Survey Monkey; thus replicating a variation of a 'needs assessment'. 

Although the survey did display common trends in desires from students, it is limited by the lack of ability it had to verify that 100% of respondents partaking were a high school students, let alone from Washington state. 

• 92.5% say to be prepared for their post-secondary school desires, they must attend a four year college or university 

• 58.2% responded with an answer other than ‘yes’ to feeling heard by the adults in their school

• 87.8% of respondents said they would like their education to entail "Life Skills" and "Financial Aid/Managing Skills" 

• The WA state CCS have a preexisting "Financial Education" pdf, however if this was being used in the classroom, students wouldn't still be asking for it. 

Schools could hold a yearly survey where students express their opinions and each school could take this data and apply it to the curriculum they use, in a personalized, tailored manner.

Secondly, we could adopt a similar graduation requirement that the Chicago School District had where seniors had to show a letter of acceptance to a college, internship, job, trade school, or the military in order to receive their diploma. This sets students up for a productive future beyond their senior year. 

In the future I hope to include more Washington state secondary school students in my survey, thus creating a more accurate representative population. 

On top of this, student opinion could be applied to other countries secondary schooling standards to see if they are addressing student opinion in a more effective and efficient manner.