Essay graders?

Test Preparation ACT Preparation
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<p>I have about four practice test essays that I'll be posting on here between now and Saturday. I would really appreciate any quick comments and scores. Thanks :)</p>

<p>Prompt: To save money, should schools reduce the athletic programs or should they eliminate humanities and art electives?</p>

<pre><code> Across the nation, schoolboards struggle to maintain funding for extracurricular activities.Because of our country's current recession, thousands of distracts have had to favor textbooks and calculators at the expense of paintbrushes and basketballs. Inevitably, either arts or sports must be cut to meet fiscal restraints, but the arguments remains as to which activity.
Both athletics and humanities face extinction at American schools. Proponents of arts stress that fewer than half of all students participate in sports, and,thus, interscholastic athletics should lose funding. However, in a nation plagued by obecity and diseases like diabetes in children, excersize should remain a key part of schools. Instead, arts and humanities should eb sacrificed since they are not an integral part of the core curriculum anyway.
Although the loss of an arts program at schools would affectsome of the population, it would not be entirely devastating. At my school, I participate in a challenging ceramics course, but if it were to be cut, I could continue art classes at my church or community art center. Similarly, students at schools across the nation facing limited resources at school could find other outlets in their communities to pursue the arts. Consequently, a loss of humanities at school would not lead to students being entirely devoid of artistic expression.
Unlike the arts, however, athletics cannot merely be replaced by community resources. For instance, football players at my school depend on the school's team for because no community team exists. Community teams do not exist because they know that varsity athletics provide that an excersize outlet for students. Thus, if the school cut funding for sports, dozens of athletic teams would have members lose out on the invaluable experience of learning teamwork, persistance, and sportsmanship - values which cannot be found in a school curriculum.
Unfortunately, many schools will have no choice but to cut back on their funding of certain activities. Two such activities are art and sports. Because sports provide students with healthy excersize and vital leadership skills, they should continue being funded. Moreover, athletics oftentimes do not exist outside of schools whereas, art can be practiced at many centers throughout at the community. As a result, art programs can be cut without significantly disturbing the expression of students.
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<p>And another question, how many pages do we have for the ACT essay? I keep reading that there's four but my Barron's Review book only gives me 1.75 :/</p>

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<p>b u m p</p>

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<p>Essay #2</p>

<p>Prompt: Should libraries be required to remove controversial material (so teenagers cannot access it)?</p>

<pre><code> Sex, drugs, and rock and roll are romanticized evils thrust into the view of American adolescents every day. At a time when young minds are most vulnerable to impression, these notions are most of learning and slef improvement, allow teenagers to obtain movies and books with this obscene material. Unsuprisingly, communities across the nation are up in armsat the prospect of their youth being tainted by these visuals. The only way to quell these concerns is the most extreme option: censorship.
Those offended by a teenager’s ability to access adult content material at a public library advocate removing all seemingly provocative material from a collection. Proponents of this endeavour find it to be the only sound avenue in protecting children from matters beyond their maturity level. However, such action is clear use of censorship. When libraries serve as communal fountains of knowledge, why turn off the faucet?
Undoubtedly, a problem exists when teenagers can freely access books on drugs, violence, or sex but to remove those materials from an entire population is pure deprivation. Instead, minors under eighteen years old should need parental permission to access R-rated DVDs or novels created for readers above their age group. This way, teenagers could no longer access questionable material without parent conset, yet adult members of a community would not be deprived of content suitable for their age group.
The selective censorship proposed above ensures a productive learning environment in my school library. There, school computers have an internet block against all website considered “adult content”. This block enables students to focus on school research instead of racy topics of videos. However, if a student ever needed to study a topic of adult content, he or she merely needs a note signed by a parent giving consent to access. In this system, parents rest assured knowing their children are nto exposed to edgy information in schools. Moreover, teachers wishing to access adult content websites are not devoid of doing so because they, unlike children, are not blocked.
In essence, total censorship is not condusive to a learning environment. Instead, it robs much of a population of what they are mature enough to view. Therefore, selective censorship acts as a more practical alternative. When only a portion of a community cannot access materials, those elligible of doing so do not suffer. Furthermore, this branch of censorship enables parents to become more involved in their child’s learning process by deciding what is suitable for their children to be exposed to.
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