Length for issue essay?

[tomjonesy517]

Hi there, I've been looking on this forum for an answer to this, but I was wondering around how long the issue gre response should be. I just did a practice test and managed 582 words in 30 minutes. I added the essay below (whether or not nations should standardize curricula). I am wondering if this length would be considered enough for a good score, since I understand that longer essays tend to do better. If the length should be greater, do you have any strategies for writing faster? I tend to think while I write, and I find it a bit difficult to realize points upon first glance. Thanks! (And any opinions on the essay below would be good. I didn't get to write a conclusion because I ran out of time! Still practicing...)

 

 

 

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The standardization of secondary education is a contentious issue because it raises questions of what to include and exclude in curricula taught to a heterogeneous student population. The heterogeneity of the student population comes in two significant forms: background identity and personal interests. The imposition of educational standardization thus threatens to negate essential differences of both interest and need for a population brimming with difference. As such, a nation should not require all of its students to study the same national curricula if it imposes on the students’ ability to exercise personal autonomy in making educational choices that will affect their futures. Indeed, different skills are required for different vocations, while standardization in no way guarantees the equalization of educational quality for students with learning disabilities or other hardships.

 

Firstly, students subjected to standardized curricula may bemoan learning from this model if it does not allow for freedom to explore personal interests through class selections. Over recent years, a variety of charter schools have developed across the country. While many adhere to traditional pedagogical methodology, a number of them promote and foster the individual interests of students to create personal plans of study. If a standardization curricula demands full attention to a set of predetermined learning objectives, there remains a risk that individual student interests will be effaced, or that students will not have the opportunity to find their passion in learning. Basic skills needed to function in society, whether the ability to read and analyze, or the ability to use mathematics in daily operations, could still be fostered under these individual-focused methods, but they could be applied to a variety of curricula that piques student interest. For instance, if a student is interested in carpentry, the use of mathematics as applied to carpentry could foster interest in the subject, that standardized curricula could otherwise squash.

 

Secondly, the standardization of curricula may presume, spuriously, to equalize educational opportunities, when teaching quality is not necessarily improved through standardization. In Massachusetts, my home state, the standardized MCAS test demands students to learn from fixed curricula. However, results from such exams show time and again that students from wealthier communities fare better than students from urban or poor areas. As such, the standardization of curricula threatens to impose educational objectives onto students of lower educational backgrounds that do not match their material needs in the classroom.

 

Finally, the standardization of curricula is a problematically “ableist” institution for threatening the needs for students with learning disabilities and behavioral problems. In the United States, a variety of specialized high schools exist to cater to these underperforming students, whose social worth would be unfairly measured with measures used to judge the “average” student. For instance, the Higashi School of Boston serves deaf students who may experience difficulties adhering to standardized pedagogy. Indeed, the issue of standardized education might also assume that teachers teach their lessons to “average” students, when in reality there exist a number of students who cannot adhere to such instruction.

 

Rebuttals to these points may be that the standardized curricula could include technical skills, or perhaps athletic pursuits. Additionally, rebuttals could argue that the curricula could be flexible or amenable depending on community results. However, these points fail to show why curricula that are focused on individual community and individual student needs are no less equipped to foster educational excitement and basic skills needed for social survival. In admitting the need for amendment, proponents of standardized education reveal that one curriculum for all cannot fit.