Peter D. Hart has conducted a national poll of students in grades 9-12 on a number of topics including education. The poll found that 21% of students grades 9-12 said they spent more than 10 hours a week on homework, up from 9% in 2005. This caught my eye because other homework polls have been flat or down in the past. UCLA has reported declining homework among high school seniors going to 4 year colleges over the past 15 years. Maybe something is happening out there that will improve college preparation and college completion. But the Hart poll reports that 64% OF TEENAGERS REPORT AN AVERAGE OF 10.3 HOURS PER WEEK PLAYING OR PRACTICING A SPORT. So homework is still not much of a priority for teens.
See the poll at www.horatioalger.org

Labels: academic preparation College Completion

>"Windows on College Readiness"
>Will Fitzhugh, The Concord Review
>
>
>
>
>The Bridgespan Group, working for the Bill &
>Melinda Gates Foundation, has just released a
>report called "Reclaiming the American Dream."
>The study was intended to find out how to get
>more U.S. high school students prepared for and through college.
>
>Much of the report is about getting kids to go
>to college, and it finds that if there is enough
>money provided, and if parents, peers,
>counselors and teachers say going to college is
>important, more high school students are likely to go.
>
>The major weakness of the report, in my view, is
>its suggestions for the kind of high school work
>that will help students to do college work and to graduate.
>
>One of the concluding statements is that
>"Inertia is particularly difficult to overcome
>when people are unaware that a problem exists or
>that the potential for solving it is real." What
>a useful insight. What they recommend for high
>school students is "a rigorous college
>preparatory curriculum." What could be wrong with that?
>
>Two very simple and basic things are wrong with
>that. Current "college preparatory" curricula,
>including AP courses, do not include the reading
>of complete nonfiction books or the writing of serious research papers.
>
>That is almost as if we had a crisis in
>preparing high school football players for
>success in college and recommended a standard
>preparation program which did not give them
>practice in running, blocking and tackling. ACT
>found last spring that 49 percent of the high
>school students it tested could not read at the
>level of college freshman texts. And the
>Chronicle of Higher Education reported on a
>survey in which 90 percent of college professors
>thought high school students were not well
>prepared in reading, writing and doing research.
>A true college education requires reading
>serious books and writing substantial papers
>although many schools have watered their
>requirements down. High school students should be ready for in-depth study.
>
>If high school football players haven't done
>much blocking or tackling in high school, no one
>would expect them to play well in college, but
>somehow we expect high school students in a
>college preparatory program which includes no
>nonfiction books and no real research papers to
>do well with college reading lists and with college term paper assignments.
>
>In my state, Massachusetts, 34 percent of the
>students who go to state four-year colleges are
>in remedial classes, according to The Boston
>Globe. Those students had the expectations,
>support, access and aspiration for the college
>dream, but when they got there, they were not ready to do the work.
>
>The Gates report says that "the high school
>environment needs to provide students with high
>expectations and strong teaching..." but without
>any real focus on students' independent academic
>reading and writing, that environment doesn't do
>the job of preparing students for college work.
>
>If we want students to be able to read and
>understand college books and to write research
>papers there, then we must give students a
>chance to learn how to do that in a "rigorous
>college preparatory program" in high school. But
>that is not happening, and just about no one is
>paying attention to the fact that it is not happening.
>
>The inertia in this case that is "particularly
>difficult to overcome" is the exclusive focus on
>what teachers do and what courses cover in
>textbooks. There must be more attention to the
>actual academic work that students are required
>to do-at least in the humanities. Perhaps in
>mathematics and the sciences, some students are
>really doing the kind of academic work that
>prepares them, but in the world of academic
>reading (nonfiction books) and academic writing
>(serious research papers), most schools badly
>serve their students. This report, like so many others, completely misses that.
>
>The Business Roundtable reported in 2004 that
>their member companies were spending more than
>$3 billion each year on remedial writing courses
>for both salaried and hourly employees, so even
>many of our college graduates may not have
>achieved a very satisfactory level of academic
>competence in reading and writing these days.
>With so many ill-prepared students coming into
>college, many professors have taken the path of
>least resistance and watered down their courses.
>
>Our high school programs for students who hope
>to succeed in college and beyond should require
>them to write extended essays and papers which
>are rigorously graded. They should also require
>students to read at least one serious complete
>nonfiction book every year. While this may be
>beyond the prevailing and generally feeble
>educational standards of the moment, if we don't
>do it, most U.S. high school students will
>continue to be unprepared for higher education.
>
>
>
>Will Fitzhugh
>(fitzhugh@tcr.org) is
>the founder of The Concord Review; http://www.tcr.org

Labels: College Readiness, College Success

Jobs for the Future published "On Ramp to College" which has a fine overview of state policies and barriers to provide high school dual enrollment in college. The 52 pages are filled with good advice and data on state programs that reach nontraditional dual enrollment students. There are specific state examples for each section such as: access, quality, academic support,finance , data, and governance-see www.jff.org

Labels: dual enrollment, Student Success

In my last blog , I covered the Pacific Research Institue estimate that college remediation costs California 3.9 billion annually. Bob Wise in his new book, Raising the Grade, estimates 3.7 billion annually for the entire country-1.4 billion in direct education costs, and 2.3 billion in economic losses. Wise must be too low becasue he uses the NCES 2004 estimate of 42% remediation in community colleges that is the most widely cited source. But Cliff Adelman in his book Answers in the Toolbox demonstrated through student transcript data that community college remediation is 61%. This figure is out of date and is probably closer to 70%. So, we have no good estimate of remdiation costs, and NCES should provide better data soon.

Labels: college costs remediation

The Pacific Research Institute a right of center think tank in California estimates the total cost of remediation for a single cohort of college freshman at 2 and 4 year California colleges at between $3.9 billion and $13.9 billion annually, driven largely by lost individual earnings and related social costs. The direct remediation costs for Ca postsecondary institutions is $247 million. But there are high and low estimates for many other costs such as lost earnings, crime, and reduced tax receipts. The study is provocative, but hardly definitive. Yet it is good for discussion because older studies only use direct costs to colleges and are way out of date. See the study at http:liberty.pacificresearch.org. The study is titled The High Price of Failure in California.

Labels: academic preparation College Completion, college costs

The best new site I have seen to assist students parents, and counselors for college planning is http://www.collegegrazing.com-
It has 13 interactive self discovery surveys for immediate feedback concerning college planning and focus. It contains information on all kinds of colleges at home and abroad. Included is a complete application essay writing guide and other college search tools. It is free and creative. As someone who tried to build one of these sites, I appreciate how hard this is to creat this one.

Labels: college information

A new nationwide poll by The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education reveals that concern is growing about college costs and availability. 78% of Americans believe students have to borrow too much money to pay for college, 62% believe many qualified students do not have access to college,59% say college prices are rising as fast or faster than health care.
But this poll also shows what all recent polls have found : higher education gets much higher public approval marks than k-12 -51% grade higher education good or excellent compared to 37% for k-12. So there still is not much public pressure to overhaul higher ed. As long as the public myth continues that USA higher ed is the best in the world not much is likely to happen to change it. See the poll at www.highereducation.org

Labels: college costs

USC has established a Center for Enrollment Research, Policy, and Practice. I spoke at the opening conference August 5. There are a number of new papers on the website at the core of this blog.Sandy Baum did a comprehensive paper on student aid. There is a debate on testing between Wayne Camara of College Board and Saul Geiser of University of California.
My favorites were on the lack of college policy, central leadership, and initiatives on college persistence and college completion by Don Hossler of the University of Indiana and David Kalsbeek at Depaul. No one is in charge of retention at colleges and staff resources minimal. See it all at www.usc.edu/cerpp.

Labels: academic preparation College Completion, college costs

Achieve,s new report, "One Among Many" www.achieve.org analyzed college ready k-12 standards in 12 states for English and !6 for math. The key finding is that A critical mass of states has arrived separately at a common core of standards for college as a byproduct of their alignment deliberations. We may not need national college prepardness standards if the states converge on their own. The report then details this standards convergence for each subject.
All this is encouraging but what about assessment agreement? Tests drive k-12 curriculum more than subject matter content standards, Here the news is bleak. Studies by AFT and Fordham Foundation find state tests are all over the map partly in order to comply with NCLB. Some states have challenging tests and performance standards, others are low level in order to avoid NCLB sanctions. Of course, what really determines whether college content is covered is what teachers teach every day. And states have scant assessments for grade 11 and 12 that matter if they exist at all. NCLB testing usually ends at grade 10.

Labels: College Testing, curriculum alignment

The website of the Tomas Rivera Center Claremont Graduate School is the best collection of studies I have seen about why Latinos do not attend and complete college. Go to www.trpi.org and then go to publications/education.The USA latino community is from 21 nations and includes 49 million people including Puerto Rico. About 9-12 million are undocumented, and the rest legal residents. The Tomas Rivera studies are stunning about what Latino parents do not know about college, and their difficulties in using the complex fiancial aid system. Huge majorities of parents do not know the difference between a 2 and 4 year college, and thought the fees were about the same. A majority of parents got no information on student aid, and thought applying for aid might risk their immigration status.
Over 50% of California k-12 public school students are latino, and 80% who go to college attend a community college. Their completion rate is 17% including technical certificates and transfer.

Labels: College Completion, student aid

College readiness is an elusive and multi-faceted concept that has no standard definition. Consequently, there is confusion among terms like “college readiness”, “college culture”, “college preparedness”, etc. This paper will provide some arbitrary definitions based on my judgments from the most appropriate literature. The overall design starts with secondary school student readiness attributes and then moves to cultures in secondary schools that build readiness. It ends with analysis of measuring dimensions of readiness. My themes are how complex readiness is and how many dimensions need to come together in order to embody and help produce readiness.

David T. Conley has the broadest view of college readiness, so it is the best starting point (Conley, 2007). He breaks readiness down to four integrated components:

1. Habits of Mind – patterns of intellectual behavior that lead to the development of cognitive strategies and capabilities necessary for college work. Among these are: intellectual openness, inquisitiveness, analysis, reasoning, interpretation, precision and problem solving. Multiple choice tests cannot measure all these elements.
2. Overarching Academic Skills – writing, research, English, math, science, social studies, world languages, etc. These include skills such as: evaluate source material, synthesize, access information from a variety of locations, and written argumentation.
3. Academic Behavior – metacognition, mastery of study skills, time management, note taking, communication with teacher and advisers.
4. Conceptual Skills and Awareness – this is sometimes called “college knowledge” and encompasses teamwork, communication with others, understanding of college admission/placement, college options, financial aid applications, testing, college cultures, and expectations of postsecondary education.

College Culture in High Schools

It is a challenge for secondary schools to create, nurture and build student college readiness, but college culture can be an important determinant of all four components of college readiness. The Center for Educational Outreach, University of California has synthesized much of the research on college going culture (https://outreach. Berkeley.edu).

In schools where most disadvantaged students go to college, certain common factors are obvious. These schools create a college culture that all students and their families experience. Where such a culture exists, all students are prepared for a full range of postsecondary options through structural, motivational, and experiential college preparatory opportunities. In these schools…
• School leadership is committed to building a college culture
• All school personnel provide a consistent message to students that supports their quest for a college preparatory K-12 experience
• All counselors are college counselors
• Counselors, teachers and families are partners in preparing students for college.

Schools with a “college culture” usually exhibit most or all of the following Nine Critical Principals of a College Culture:

College Talk: Clear, ongoing communication among students, teachers administrators and families about what it takes to get to college
Clear Expectation: Explicit, clear-defined goals, and communication in ways that make them part of the culture of the school
Information and Resources: Comprehensive, up-to-date college information and resources that are easily accessible by all students, families and school personnel
Comprehensive Counseling Model: View of counseling that makes most student interactions with counseling staff opportunities for college counseling
Testing and curriculum: Information about and access to “gatekeeping” tests (PSAT, SAT, etc.) and courses (A-G, AP, etc. for all students
Faculty Involvement: Informed, active participation from school faculty in the creation and maintenance of a college culture
Family Involvement: Meaningful engagement on the part of family members in the process of building a college culture
College Partnerships: Active links in a variety of forms between the school and local colleges and universities
Articulation: Ongoing coordination between counselors and teachers about college access and success

Sources

Clifford Adelman, The Toolbox Revisited (U.S. Department of Education, 2006).
Consortium on Chicago School Research, From High School to the Future: Potholes on the Road to College (Chicago:University of Chicago, 2008).
David T. Conley, College Readiness (Eugene, Oregon: Educational Policy Improvement Center, 2007).
David T. Conley, “Reference Courses”, personal communication.

Labels: College Readiness, College Success Studies