New Push Seeks to End Need for Remedial Classes Before College - NYTimes.com

• New Push Seeks to End Need for Remedial Classes Before College - NYTimes.com - Annotated

  Explores disconnect between high school instruction and college readiness. This story is from New York, but it could just as easily have been here in Mississippi or anywhere else around the country.

  tags: remediation

  This recent article in NYT, profiles one community college freshman faced with the now common problem of being placed in remediation for basic English even though she has just graduated with a diploma from high school. It highligts many important and disturbing issues about the lack of consistency in our educational system. Here are a few highlights from the article: 
  
  
  
  "The two systems don’t communicate well at all.” --What an understatement.
  
  

  "Even some high school honors students failed college placement exams and were assigned to her developmental courses, she said.
  

  “Boy, were they surprised,” Ms. Manchin said."

  I had a niece in this situation. She had been a member of the high school honor society, and had taken honors English courses all the way through high school. Yet the state college wanted to put her in remedial English based on her ACT subscore for the English section of the test. This is disturbing when we have considerable documentation that these college entrance tests (ACT, SAT) are not good predictors of the performance of African American students in college settings. So why are colleges still making these decisions based on flawed information?
  
  

  "Three English teachers and five math teachers were uncertified, she

  Anybody else see a connection between the high percentage of uncertified persons in this school and the dismal performance of its graduates who attempted college? Why do they even refer to these people as "teachers"? They're just sitters.

How did it get like this and what should really be done about it?

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Comments

[Cossondra George]

It disturbs me each year when we graduate, and honor several valedictorians at our school. Of 61 graduating seniors this year, we had 5 valedictorians. Don't get me wrong. How wonderful for these students to receive this honor... if indeed it is an honor. Often, these are students who score poorly on ACT and college placement tests, and find themselves lost in their freshmen year of college. Why? Because high school grades are not truly reflective of what students learn in the classroom. Until teachers learn to assess students accurately, and use these findings to remediate and prepare students, our colleges will be inundated with ill-prepared students each fall. The disconnect between high school content and college expectations must be eliminated before the problem will be solved.