Alcohol Misuse Prevention in Adolescents

Abstract

Students’ experiences and performance in high school define their academic success during adolescence and impact their education and employment during adulthood. Recent critiques of the American educational system focus on the low level of academic success among many of today’s adolescents, particularly the high percentage of adolescents who drop out of high school and the inadequate preparation for postsecondary education or training of many of those who do graduate. Graduation from high school, the most widely used measure of academic success during adoles- cence, signifies students’ satisfactory completion of a set of required courses and, increasingly, passing scores on state graduation exams. A high school diploma implies that the graduate possess the content knowledge and reading, writing, and mathematical skills necessary for postsecondary schooling or training.Yet states vary in the specific courses required for graduation as well as in the benchmarks set for passing graduation examina- tions (Dounay, 2006). Educational reformers and business leaders argue that the current graduation requirements do not ensure adolescents leave high school with the abilities needed to succeed in the twenty-first century, including sufficient content knowledge, particularly in math and science, or those skills that go beyond content knowledge, such as effective communication, critical thinking, and problem solving (Achieve, 2011). Definitions