Boston students who flunk ninth-grade English or math become “freshmores” or “sophmen.” They repeat the classes they failed while going on in other classes. Most will need five years to complete high school.
Clustered in tiny English classes, students who struggled with reading during their freshman year thoughtfully dissect Shakespeare and the autobiography of Frederick Douglass.
These 15- and 16-year-olds, students of Another Course to College, a Boston public high school, are a new breed of students in the city. They have been placed in a special transitional year between ninth and tenth grade because they flunked freshman math or English.
At some schools, half the students who should be sophomores are freshmores.
An article in USA Today in 2002 indicated that Massachusetts was spending $8444 per student yearly. Today, Massachusetts must be spending over $9,000 per student (plus unspecified costs for capital spending). Keeping these kids around for another year will increase the costs of their education by about $10,000 per year for what purpose?
Oh… maybe ensuring that they are educated?
If the program successfully remediates a significant portion of the freshmen who failed, then I’m all for it.
I would argue that this should be done earlier once their low performance s first observed, but it’s never too late to remediate.
In college, many of us took five years to complete our rigorous education program (AP credit was much less common in such ancient times). We preferred to alter the upper-class nomenclature: juniors, seniors, super-seniors.
Just to follow up on J’s comment, I believe the trend is now for students to average close to 5 years to a degree. Stats. often show degree attainment in 6 years. I’d rather have a student spend 5 years in high school than come to college unprepared and need a year of remedial work. Of course, if the high school simply can’t do its job, we’ll continue to “complete high school in college”.
Prof210 - I think that you are on to something here. When I was in high school, and I can’t imagine it has changed very much since I was in high school over 1 and 1/2 decades ago - the emphasis everywhere was “going to college”. American educators feel they have that luxury, I suppose, because the American university system is a world-beater. Where’s the incentive to improve high school education when the teachers can just pass the students down the assembly line and dump all the problems they just as easily could have fixed right on YOU, and hope and pray YOU and other professors really, truly educate the students?
I posted somewhere else on here before on another thread about a mission statement that went something like this: imagine if every teacher/principal/whoever is involved in the educational process went to work every morning with the assumption that NONE of their students would ever drive by a college or university, let alone see the inside of one? To put it another way: what if teachers/principals/whoever always thought to themselves, “This is the LAST CHANCE for these children to get an education; I better do it right, and GOOD!!!”
I don’t think there are many teachers out there who really believe that the kids who graduate with 800 SAT scores and c averages from schools where Bs actually are the average grade (or who took five or six years to graduate from high school) ARE ready for college. There’s nobody saying, “it’s okay; they will learn it in college.”
So why do colleges take these kids anyway?
If colleges only accepted students who had grades and tests scores that indicated they were ready to do the work, we could do away with college remedial courses. Why not try that?
Here’s the thing with freshmores: if a kid didn’t learn enough to earn a passing grade, usually there are only two choices: make him or her take the class again or give them credit for a class that they haven’t actually passed. Neither one seems to do the kid much good. (Think of the earlier story about students taking Algebra for the fifth time and showing up without materials or a book or not showing up at all.)
Failing the kid, in my opinion, does some good because at least then it might eventually rightly be assumed that if a student passed the class, he or she is ready for the next educational step.
That assumption is missing right now, and it’s only getting worse because evaluations of graduation rates will regard the fifth year senior as a drop out. A great deal of external pressure is put on schools and teachers to give the kids credit so they can graduate on time. There’s no counterbalancing pressure to only give passing grades to students who have actually learned the material. Perverse, isn’t it?
What seems to be missing in many condemnations of k-12 schools is that the many of the kids who fail a lot of classes in high school aren’t willing to work at learning.
The students need to have a sense of urgency too. Maybe your last sentence should read “This is the last chance I have to get an education; I better do it right and good!” That change alone would do more to reform American public education than any other component, in my opinion. As long as students are entitled to have the taxpayers pick up the bill to repeat classes until they are 21, there’s not much incentive for them to work hard.
(From various comments):
> Oh… maybe ensuring that they are educated?
If the public schools were ensuring that kids were being “educated”, then they would have taught them to read at a proficient level by grade 4, or so. Waiting until high school to begin to remediate is too late.
> In college, many of us took five years to complete our rigorous education program
> Stats. often show degree attainment in 6 years. I’d rather
> have a student spend 5 years in high school than come to
> college unprepared and need a year of remedial work.
> Of course, if the high school simply can’t do its job,
> we’ll continue to “complete high school in college”.
There was a time that four years was the norm. The reality is that the graduation rates for most colleges/unis is now less than 30 percent. The CSU schools here in California post graduation rates less than 14%. Nationally, the graduation rates are about 50% for six years (or less). (Better school see much higher graduation rates.)
> So why do colleges take these kids anyway?
Why indeed? We have to remember that education is a business, and every one (with money) is a potential customer.
> What seems to be missing in many condemnations of
> k-12 schools is that the many of the kids who fail a lot
> of classes in high school aren’t willing to work at learning.
This is probably the bottom line here (and since it was posted by a working teacher—there is no reason not to accept the point at face value).
> As long as students are entitled to have the taxpayers pick
> up the bill to repeat classes until they are 21, there’s not
> much incentive for them to work hard.
Amen.
Wayne
“> Oh… maybe ensuring that they are educated?
If the public schools were ensuring that kids were being “educated”, then they would have taught them to read at a proficient level by grade 4, or so. Waiting until high school to begin to remediate is too late.”
As I stated before, I would prefer that such remediation occur as soon as possible. AS it is, I would also prefer that the school graduate students who can read at a 9-10 grade reading level than students who can read at 7-8 grade reading level, even if the remediation occurs during high school.
It’s a step in the right direction that hopefully will carry down to the elementary level.
If I’m in a leaky boat, I’m not going to turn down a ladle simply because it’s not a bucket… I’ll make do with what I have.
> It’s a step in the right direction that hopefully
> will carry down to the elementary level.
If there is a follow-up article on this program in a year or two, I’ll bet that the program will not have achieved very much.
the informal implementation of this plan in the Golden State (freshman who lack enough credit to reach sophomore year) gave Sac’to Bee writer Peter Schrag some cold comfort that the dropout rate in California was 1 in 4 vs. 1 in 3
http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2007/05/peter_schrag_ta.html
to his credit, he did discern from the EdSource report that more effective schools showed
effective use of student assessment data;
good teachers and resources;
curriculum aligned with state standards and
ambitious, measurable goals.
RE: “If colleges only accepted students who had grades and tests scores that indicated they were ready to do the work, we could do away with college remedial courses. Why not try that?”
Many colleges DO try that. They are considered to be “selective” or even “highly selective”. Community colleges and many four-year ones generally try the other approach — if a student is willing to register and pay what is often a nominal tuition, he or she gets multiple chances to try to get ready for actual college.
My sense is that few students are really unable to do college work. Many are unready to do college work. Not always, but often, a student who was not ready matures, has a change in circumstances or just “wakes up” and becomes ready for college. I like that we have a number of non-selective venues that give young people a chance to get ready for at least a slightly selective college — and pehaps even learn to read and analyze well enough to pass my course on the first try.
In response to NDC: sure, teachers aren’t SAYING it, but I just can’t help but think that is the approach, especially considering what I witnessed as a high school student. Not a single teacher I ran into would ever shut up about going on to college, in spite of the simple fact that it is not for everybody, and indeed, isn’t a requirement for success. Besides, I would further argue that learning is about third or perhaps even fourth on the list of priorities at the high school level: students are constantly exhorted to be “well-rounded” and “involved”, and as such, things such as athletics, extracurricular activities and social events get the emphasis.
In response to others here: back when I entered college in Texas, I was required to take the TASP test since I was going to a public institution. I had to pass all three sections of the test - reading, writing, and mathematics - before passing the 9 hour mark. Had I gotten 9 or more hours before passing all three sections or not having taken the test at all, the college would have been forced to disenroll me. I took the test and passed it; and in the case of mathematics it flagged me as needing remediation (which did nothing to stop me from eventually getting a bachelor’s.) I point this out to show that there are some steps being taken to identify students in need of remediation, or perhaps to separate the wheat from the chaff.
I have always considered it to be a disservice to the student to let him into college before he is ready.