Students who attend broad access colleges usually take light academic loads in their senior year. But more attention is being paid to not just to increasing academic loads, but also to help revamp what is in the courses. University of Oregon is designing reference courses based on what first year college instructors expect in their classes. These courses are fast paced with lots of homework and analysis. They compress 150 days of instruction in typical high school courses to 30 or more. Oregon also designs senior seminars that simulate intensive discussion and writing in college seminars. These kinds of courses should be designated as honors courses, in order to provide clear benchmarks for the flabby and undefined curriculum that now is designated for "honors" in high school.
Honors courses often seem to be a booby prize for not getting into AP. They should not have college credit like AP, but should simulate college work. Put University of Oregon, Educational Policy Improvement Center in a search engine to see more

Labels: senior year of high school

Last blog covered some aspects of this ,now some data from The High School Survey of Student Engagement- HSSSE in search engines. This is a national survey of 170,000 students grades 9-12.First year students in college spend more than twice as much time studying in college compared to their high school senior year. Half of college students spend more than 10 hours a week studying in their first year, but only 14% of high school seniors devote this much time to homework. 47% of the seniors spend three hours or less per week studying, but most get A's or B's in high school. Seniors write a few short papers and many skip math in the senior year.More on what to do about the senior year of high school in next blog, including ideas for senior seminars and reference courses based on introductory college courses.

Labels: academic preparation

I just returned from a conference in Northwest Missouri on high school college prep. One message was that the pace of college courses is so different from high school, and freshman cannot keep up. 4 year broad access colleges cover in 30 days the math that high schools cover in 155 days of instruction. The homework hours are enormous difference in college, and the instructors do not go slowly through each chapter of the textbook. Pacing was more of a college transition problem than content alignment!
First year students expected to "do over" work they made mistakes with, and thought "extra credit" could raise their college grades. 4 year colleges do not do either of these. We need to get beyond vague phrases like college ready and alignment to a deeper understanding of college transition.

Labels: academic preparation, College Readiness

Diploma to Nowhere published by Strong American Schools has some fascinating new remediation data. 4 out of 5 high school students who enrolled in college remediation had a high school grade point average of 3.0 or higher. 95% said they did all or most of their high school work that was asked of them.80% thought they were ready for college when they graduated from high school. The cost of remediation for each student is estimated at $2,000 for two year and $2,531 for 4 year public colleges- these are the high range estimates , but seem low to me.
For the report go to: http://www.edin08.com/diplomatonowhere.aspx

Labels: college costs remediation, college knowledge

This is a long blog, but puts together my analysis of our progress and integrates many components of past blogs. Revised version is in the Chronicle of Higher education on line, October 7, 2008

PROGRESS AND GAPS IN COLLEGE PREPARATION
POLICY
MICHAEL W. KIRST, STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Most of the nation’s eighth graders aspire to college. Unfortunately, however, the majority of them will not realize their ambitions to complete their higher education and gain some advantage in the job market.
In my research since 1998, I have not focused on students who seek acceptance at elite, selective institutions but rather on the 80 percent of high-school graduates who attend what I call broad-access postsecondary institutions. (Nearly half of first year students attend community colleges, and another 30 percent go to four-year schools that accept all qualified applicants.) And I look back on the last decade with some gratification and much anxiety. I have seen some, but not nearly enough, progress among high-school students when it comes to being ready to go to college and get their degrees. COLLEGE COMPLETION RATES ARE STAGNANT FOR RECENT HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES WITH ONLY TWENTY FOUR PERCENT OF COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENTS IN CALIFORNIA RECEIVING A VOCATIONAL CERTIFICATE, AN AA, OR TRANSFER TO A FOUR YEAR SCHOOL AFER SIX YEARS.
At community colleges, more than 60 percent of students who enroll after high school end up taking at least one remedial course. Four-year institutions like those in the California State University system have 56 percent of entering freshmen in remediation. Clearly, the connections between high schools and higher-education institutions are still not what they should be to help students prepare for college.
THERE ARE NO DEFINITIVE COSTS OF REMEDIATION, BUT A 2008 ESTIMATE FOR CALIFORNIA BY THE PACIFIC RESEARCH INSTITUTE INCLUDED $274 MILLION IN DIRECT COSTS FOR CALIFORNIA POSTSECONDARY INSTITUTIONS, AND SEVERAL BILLION FOR REMEDIATION COSTS OF BUSINESSES, DIMINISHED EARNINGS OF STUDENTS, TAX RECEIPTS, AND GOVERNMENT COSTS.
MEDIA ATTENTION TO POOR COLLEGE PREPARATION HAS GROWN EXPONENTIALLY IN THE LAST DECADE. The policy agendas of various states have focused increasingly on college-transition problems, and some policy makers have raised specific solutions. THIRTY SEVEN STATES HAVE ESTABLISHED P-16 COUNCILS THAT ENABLE THE MAJOR STATE DECISION MAKERS TO DELIBERATE ON COLLEGE TRANSITION ISSUES. But few of those solutions deal with the magnitude or many dimensions of the problem, PARTICULARLY FINANCIAL INCENTIVES TO INCREASE COLLEGE COMPLETION AND ALIGNED CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION. Action beyond agenda-setting and policy discussions has been shallow and limited.
Moreover, evaluation of new policies, both the successes and the failures, to determine what works has barely begun. And enhanced awareness OF INADEQUATE COLLEGE PREPARATION AND COMPLETION is largely confined to government leaders and policy elites, with little impact on teachers or administrators at the secondary or postsecondary level.
IN 2005, I and my colleagues at the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education identified four state policy levers that are necessary for true reform to occur:

• Standards alignment between high school and college for courses, content, and assessment;
• Student financial support and incentives for higher-education institutions to provide better student-support services;
• A data system that tracks the progress of individual students from pre-K through college; and
• Accountability measures that link secondary and postsecondary institutions to student outcomes, like the completion of college.

How far along are most states in putting such policies and programs in place?
The most progress has been made in aligning high school and college standards, LED BY groups like Achieve Inc., an organization established by governors and business leaders. More states SUCH AS GEORGIA AND TEXAS are using, or considering the use of, assessments at the end of high school and other means of aligning curricula WITH COLLEGE COURSES. Achieve has also worked to help establish high-school graduation requirements and develop other programs to ease the school-college transition in 31 states.
But broad-access postsecondary institutions rely on placement tests more than admissions scores like ACT or SAT, and few statewide secondary-school assessments are aligned with those placement tests or the content of first-year college courses. Colleges use many different types of placement assessments, and most high-school students do not know what those assessments will cover.
Meanwhile, Education Week’s “Quality Counts 2008,” which grades states’ policies and outcomes, has found that just 15 states have a definition of college readiness, and only three (NEW YORK, RHODE ISLAND, TEXAS) require all students to finish a college-preparatory curriculum to graduate. Many state governments have chosen the easy route of simply specifying course labels to be taken—like geometry or BIOLOGY, or three years of math— without doing much more. Further, the hard work of getting secondary-school teachers to work with their higher-education counterparts on subject-matter course articulation between the 10th grade and sophomore year in college has barely begun.
The lack of headway on financial policies is even more discouraging. Although more states are focusing student aid on needy students who complete college-preparation courses, too much federal and state money still goes to STUDENTS WHO ARE SO UNPREPARED THAT THEY HAVE LITTLE CHANCE OF COLLEGE SUCCESS. Meanwhile, financial-aid applications are so complicated that they make the standard income-tax form look easy.
Financial aid is not designed well for 75 percent of the community-college students who attend part time and live off campus. Financial aid is insufficient, complex, and hard for part-time community-college students to obtain. FEDERAL FINANCIAL AID IS LESS FOR PART-TIME STUDENTS, AID FORMS MUST BE FILED BEFORE STUDENTS DECIDE TO GO TO COMMUNITY COLLEGE, AND THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH COUNSELORS FOR EVENING STUDENTS.
In addition, the use of state financial incentives to encourage college and universities to improve student outcomes has been largely unexplored. IT IS LESS EXPENSIVE FOR MOST BROAD ACCESS PUBLIC COLLEGES TO RECRUIT A NEW STUDENT RATHER THAN PROVIDE SERVICES TO RETAIN A STRUGGLING STUDENT. AN Unlike elementary and secondary education, the spending patterns within postsecondary systems and institutions is mostly a black box, so we do not even know where to start. IT IS EXTREMELY DIFFICULT TO FIND OUT HOW MUCH MONEY IS SPENT ON REMEDIATION, ADJUNCT VERSUS FULL TIME TEACHERS, AND COUNSELORS. For example, the California legislature appropriates money to the state’s community colleges for keeping students through the third week of a class, but it requires no other student outcomes. How can we devise a K-16 state-finance system that supports efforts to lessen the need for student remediation and stimulates higher-education institutions to help more students obtain their degrees? Theoretically, high schools and colleges could work together to design outcomes to meet outcome accountability targets, like the need for less student remediation. THEN BOTH HIGH SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES COULD BE REWARDED FINANCIALLY FOR OUTCOMES THEY PRODUCE BY WORKING TOGETHER.
FLORIDA HAS A COMPLETE K-16 DATA SYSTEM THAT FOLLOWS STUDENTS FROM KINDERGARTEN THROUGH GRADUATE SCHOOL. MOST STATES ARE MAKING SIGNIFICANT DATA IMPROVEMENTS (PARTLY WITH FEDERAL MONEY), BUT ARE NOT CLOSE TO FLORIDA.
Underlying all these difficulties, are the deeply rooted policy differences between the secondary and postsecondary systems. Meanwhile, there are few deliberative forums or interest groups that can bring together representatives from both educational levels to sustain momentum.
The future is murky, with both good and bad scenarios possible. A MORE POSITIVE FUTURE WOULD INCLUDE WORKING SIMULTANEOUSLY ON ALL FOUR POLICY LEVERS, AND A COMMITMENT TO BUILD TEACHER CAPACITY TO ALIGN INSTRUCTION ACROSS THE K-16 SYSTEM. A MORE NEGATIVE SCENARIO WOULD BE SLOW INCREMENTALISM THAT ADDRESSES PARTS OF THE PROBLEM IN AN INCOHERENT MANNER.
Perhaps a secondary-school-improvement focus in the No Child Left Behind reauthorization will galvanize faster and more inclusive improvement. NOW STATES HAVE AN INCENTIVE TO KEEP SECONDARY SCHOOL ASSESSMENTS BELOW COLLEGE LEVEL BECAUSE MORE STUDENTS WILL BE ABLE TO BECOME PROFICIENT BY 2014. A DIFFERENTIAL FEDERAL POLICY COULD REWARD STATES WITH COLLEGE LEVEL ASSESSMENTS BY EXTENDING THE FEDERAL PROFICIENCY DEADLINE BEYOND THE REQUIRED DATE OF 2014.

Michael Kirst is a professor emeritus of education at Stanford University and a senior scholar at the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

Two of the nations leading experts on college student aid have a new report suggests big changes and not just tinkering around the edges. Sandy Baum of the College Board and Michael McPherson of Spencer Foundation attack the roots of our current aid limitations. They want to get rid of the complex Fafsa application, combine a confusing host of current grant programs, provide subsides during loan repayments, create savings accounts for college through government funds, and create a tax credit that includes living costs. There is much more covered than these ideas- well worth the time of people who want a major overhaul fo financial aid.
See report at www.collegeboard.com/rethinkingstudentaid.

The University of Texas admits almost all students under the top 10% of the class for each high school criteria. UT is struggling with equity and quality issues in applying the top 10%, UT is considering eliminating grades in music, career education, and many electives from the class rank calculation, but faces resistance from these subject matter lobbies. Wealthy suburban schools claim their top 10% is much harder than the average school to attain, so UT should admit the top 15% from some schools.
UT does not know how to consider what content is in courses at different high schools and relies on similar course labels, But UT is carefully tracking the college success of students from various types of high schools.
Class rank admissions is a continual trade off among conflicting objectives, and no policy will satisfy everyone.

Labels: College Admissions, college sucess

Madison, Wisconsin
>Academic Fitness
>
>Will Fitzhugh, The Concord Review
>
>
>
>The NACAC Testing Commission has just released
>its report on the benefits of, and problems
>with, current standardized admission tests. The
>Commission says that "a 'one-size-fits-all'
>approach for the use of standardized tests in
>undergraduate admission does not reflect the
>realities facing our nation's many and varied colleges and universities."
>
>It might be pointed out, by an outside observer,
>that standardized tests not only do not reflect
>the realities of acceptance for high school
>students receiving athletic scholarships, but
>such tests have nothing whatever to do with
>whether high school athletes are recruited or
>not and nothing to do with whether they receive
>college athletic scholarships or not.
>
>Athletic scholarships are based on athletic
>performance in particular athletic activities,
>not on tests of the athletic or physical fitness
>of high school athletes. The cost of failure for
>college coaches is too high for them to think of
>relying on any standardized test of sports
>knowledge or of anything else in their efforts
>to recruit the best high school athletes they can.
>
>The NACAC Testing Commission also says that
>standardized tests may not do a good enough job
>of telling whether applicants to college are
>academically fit. They recommend the development
>and use of good subject matter tests which are
>"more closely linked to the high school curriculum" than the SAT and ACT exams.
>
>This suggestion begins to approach the rigor of
>assessment in the recruiting and selection of
>high school athletes, but there are still
>important differences. The high school athletic
>curriculum includes such subjects as football,
>basketball, soccer, baseball, etc., but college
>coaches do not rely on tests of athletes'
>knowledge of these sports as determined by
>sport-specific tests. They need to know a lot
>about the actual performance of candidates in
>those sports in which they have competed.
>
>The parallel is not perfect, because of course
>students who can demonstrate knowledge of
>history, biology, literature, math, chemistry,
>and so on, are clearly more likely to manage the
>demands of college history, biology, literature,
>math and chemistry courses when they get there,
>while athletes who know a lot about their sport may still perform poorly in it.
>
>But college academic work does not just consist
>of taking courses and passing tests. In math
>there are problem sets. In biology, chemistry,
>etc., there is lab work to do. And in history
>courses there are history books to read and
>research papers to write. Such performance tasks
>are not yet part of the recommended tests for college admission.
>
>It is now possible, for example, for a student
>who can do well on a subject matter test in
>history to graduate from high school without
>ever having read a complete history book or
>written a real history research paper in high
>school. That student may indeed do well in
>history courses in college, but it seems likely
>that they will have a steep learning curve in
>their mastery of the reading lists and paper
>requirements they will face in those courses.
>
>New standard college admissions tests in
>specific academic subjects will no doubt bring
>more emphasis on academic knowledge for the high
>school students who are preparing for them, but
>a standard independent assessment of their
>research papers would surely make it more likely
>that they would not plan to enter college
>without ever having done one in high school.
>
>The reading of complete nonfiction books is
>still an unknown for college admissions
>officers. Interviewers may ask what books
>students have read, but there is no actual
>standard expectation for the content, difficulty
>and number of nonfiction books high school
>students are expected to have read before college.
>
>The increased emphasis on subject matter tests
>is surely a good step closer to the seriousness
>routinely seen in the assessments for college
>athletic scholarships, but it seems to me that
>some regular examination of the reading of
>nonfiction books and an external assessment of
>at least one serious research paper by high
>school students would help in their preparation
>for college, as well as in the assessment of
>their actual demonstrated academic fitness
>which, as the Commission points out, is not now
>provided by the SAT and ACT tests.
>
>
>
>"Teach by Example"
>Will Fitzhugh [founder]
>Consortium for Varsity Academics® [2007]
>The Concord Review [1987]
>Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
>National Writing Board [1998]
>TCR Institute [2002]
>730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
>Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776 USA
>978-443-0022; 800-331-5007
>www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org
>Varsity Academics®
>
>
>
>

Labels: academic preparation, College Testing

From guest blogger Sarah Scrafford:

Why do College Students Drop Out?

It’s an irony of sorts – almost every high school kid dreams of going to college, but once that dream is realized, they end up crushing it beneath their feet by dropping out even before they get through their freshman year. And the surprising (and sad) part of this dropout saga is this – that most freshmen and sophomores who drop out have a history of being high achievers in high school with no problem whatsoever breezing through tests and assignments. Admitted, college is a tough ask for a kid who’s leaving home for the first time, especially for someone who’s moving far away from home or from a small town to a big city. And so we have the reasons why America is a nation of dropouts:

• Nothing in their schooling experience prepares high school graduates to handle the workload in college once they get there and see what’s expected of them.
• They are homesick and miss their parents and old friends, and as a result, tend to either withdraw into an antisocial shell or go back home to an environment that’s familiar to them.
• The price of college is too high to bear; rising tuition costs and the daunting prospect of having to repay loans are major dampeners to graduating from college.
• There’s the tendency to party till they drop and enjoy the freedom that college affords without bothering too much about the academic aspect. This leads to poor performances in the classroom and in tests, a continuation of which leads to no other option but to drop out.
• Some students make the mistake of choosing the major that’s wrong for them and pay the heavy price of having to drop out of college altogether because they’re not able to cope.
• Others are forced by circumstances beyond their control – like family emergencies – to drop out.

Institutions over the country are now waking up to the fact that something needs to be done to reduce the number of dropouts before it’s too late. An educated workforce is what this nation needs, and colleges are the starting point that helps meet that end. And so we have survival courses for freshmen that show them the ropes of adjusting to the demands of college, of learning to manage their time effectively, of managing finance and health aspects, of being responsible for themselves, of coping with homesickness, and of the importance of according priority to academic coursework. Educators are also advocating bridge programs in high school that will prepare students for college by showing them what to expect when they get there and how to cope with the various pressures they are bound to face. Time will tell if these measures succeed!


By-line

This article is contributed by Sarah Scrafford, who regularly writes on the subject for kaplan university review http://www.universityreviewsonline.com/2005/10/kaplan-universi.html. She invites your questions, comments and freelancing job inquiries at her email address: sarah.scrafford25@gmail.com