Not necessarily "breaking" news: High school doesn't prepare students for college
When I was the managing editor of my college campus' student newspaper back in the late 1980s, we ran a story about how many incoming freshmen - most of them recent graduates from local high schools - were having to take remedial classes in such courses as writing, reading and basic math skills. Most of us on the staff - myself included - either knew someone who had been a "great" student in elementary, junior high (what we used to school middle school back then) and high school but had failed at least one part of the Basic Skills Test required of all credit-course student applicants. (Full disclosure: I passed the basic math part - by a miracle - but found Algebra 1 so intimidating that I tried to take remedial math...twice...and failed.)
I no longer have the 1989-era issue, so I can't quote from it, but this recent article published in the Miami Herald this week covers the same topic.
13th grade: Many freshmen unprepared at community and state colleges
As the article by Sarah Gonzales, McNelly Torres and Lynn Waddell states:
I no longer have the 1989-era issue, so I can't quote from it, but this recent article published in the Miami Herald this week covers the same topic.
13th grade: Many freshmen unprepared at community and state colleges
As the article by Sarah Gonzales, McNelly Torres and Lynn Waddell states:
Shakira Lockett was a pretty good student in elementary, middle and high school. The Miami-Dade County native says she typically earned As and Bs in English classes.
Math was always something of a struggle for Lockett. Still, she got through her high school exit exam with a passing grade and went on to graduate from Coral Gables Senior High School in 2008.
She went straight to Miami Dade College. Then, something unexpected happened: She flunked the college placement exams in all three subjects — reading, writing and math. That didn’t mean she couldn’t attend the school; all state and community colleges in Florida have an open-door policy, which means everyone is accepted. But it did mean she had to take remedial courses before she could start college-level work.
According to the article, Lockett was even forced to take remedial classes in reading, a subject which had always been one of her best in her 12 years of elementary and secondary schooling.
For many of us who attended Miami-Dade (as I did back in the 1980s), having to take remedial classes was a time- and money-consuming detour on our way to earn an Associate in Arts degree. For Shakira Lockett, the detour was significant and sobering.:
Lockett, who is now 22, spent a year-and-a half taking remedial classes before she could start her first college-level class to count toward her degree in mass communication and journalism. The seven extra courses cost her $300 each.
Gonzales, Torres and Waddell also inform readers that 54% (that's more than half, folks) of Florida high school graduates fail at least one part of the state's College System placement test. These aren't underclassmen who have no diplomas yet...these are high school graduates, young men and women who should be able to read, write and solve math equations with some modicum of success. Sadly, though, the writers point out that even after 12 years of public schooling, most high school grads are simply unprepared for the academic challenges at the college level.
As the authors clearly state: Education experts say part of the problem is that a high school diploma has never been the same thing as a certificate of college readiness. There’s a gap between what high school students are taught and what they need to know going into college.
Though it's tempting to say that Florida once had a superb public school system that produced college-ready graduates until the parsimonious Republicans took over in Tallahassee over the past 20 years, this is actually a very old story. We who worked on the M-DCC (it was then called Miami-Dade Community College) student newspaper interviewed a cross-section of students for our 1989 article, and the most common quote was: Although I thought I was a good student at (name of high school), I wasn't prepared for college. Though there wasn't any apparent bitterness from any of the students we talked to, there did seem to be a sense of disillusion.
Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/12/04/3125486/13th-grade-many-freshmen-unprepared.html
Comments
Post a Comment