K-12 schools are loaded with testing and federal and state accountability, but not for post high school outcomes. According to Achieve Inc only 7 states hold high schools acountable for completing a college or career ready curriculum. Student Attainment of a statewide college and career ready test score is not used in any state, but Texas is implementing this soon. Only 2 states have any high school accountability for placemnt in college remediation.
Many states are working on k-16 aligned curriculum content standards , but these will have little impact if there is no accountability to back them up.

Labels: College Readiness, curriculum alignment

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

>
>
>Eight Leading States Selected to Develop Cutting
>Edge College- and Career-Ready Assessment and Accountability Policies
>
>
>WASHINGTON, D.C. - September 10, 2008 - Today
>Achieve, the Data Quality Campaign, the
>EducationCounsel, Jobs for the Future and the
>National Governors Association Center for Best
>Practices announced an unprecedented partnership
>to provide guidance, advice and support to
>states through the "College & Career-Ready
>Policy Institute" ("Institute"). The Institute
>is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
>
>The Institute is designed to help states put
>K-12 assessment and accountability systems in
>place that will ensure that all students
>graduate from high school college- and
>career-ready. In addition, the Institute will
>also assist states in developing strategies for
>building the capacity of districts and schools
>so that all students successfully reach higher
>standards. The support to states by the partners
>will include multi-state gatherings where state
>teams will participate in cross-state leadership
>sessions, the first of which begins today in
>Washington D.C., as well as in-state, customized technical assistance.
>
>The eight Institute states, all participants in
>Achieve's American Diploma Project Network, are
>Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana,
>Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio and Tennessee. The
>Institute states were chosen through a
>competitive selection process based on the
>states' strong leadership and commitment to a
>college- and career-readiness agenda as
>demonstrated by their success in raising
>academic standards and graduation requirements
>for all students. These states are now well
>positioned to tackle the difficult, but
>essential, task of ensuring that their
>assessment and accountability systems are
>likewise anchored in college- and
>career-readiness and that state education
>policies cohesively support this critical goal.
>
>Specifically, the Institute will assist states in:
> * Developing goals for improving high school
> graduation, college- and career-readiness and postsecondary attainment rates;
> * Putting in place a comprehensive state
> assessment system that is aligned with college-
> and career-ready standards and that measures student progress over time;
> * Establishing a coherent system of
> accountability that makes college- and
> career-readiness a central priority and that
> "incentivizes" proper actions, promotes
> accurate judgments, and drives effective supports and interventions;
> * Designing a statewide system of supports
> and interventions to assist low performing
> districts and schools and ensure continuous
> improvement for all schools and districts around the state; and
> * Providing educational options and supports
> to boost the achievement of low-income students
> and other groups at high-risk of not achieving
> college-ready standards and college success.
>In addition to assisting the eight states in
>developing and implementing a comprehensive
>college- and career-ready policy, it is hoped
>that the lessons learned from these Institute
>states can assist other states also committed to
>the college- and career-ready agenda, therefore
>boosting the academic prospects for even more U.S. students.

Labels: College Readiness

>"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

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

The California State Board of Education has required that all grade 8 students must be tested on a statewide high stakes exam in Algebra 1. Education Week has an article on how controversial all this is, but everyone agrees it is not the course label that counts for student achievement, but what is in the course. Algebra 1 is one gateway to college success, but Algerbra 2 is also necessary.ACT published a detailed prescription for Algebra 1 in its 2006 report, On Course for Success that has the specifics a good algebra 1 and 2 program needs- see pages 37ff. The whole publication has other college readiness attributes such as notetaking that math students need for college prep. View it on www.act.org

Labels: College Readiness, college sucess

Most students who enter Ca. Community Colleges lack basic skills and are in remediation- remediation estimates are 70% to 80% for those who enter from high school. Most of these students never overcome these basic skills defeciencies during their cc enrollment.The California Legislative Analyst reocmmends several policies that will help prevent remediation and make it more successful. See report at http://www.lao.ca.gov/laoapp/PubDetails.aspx?id=1847

Labels: College Readiness, College Success

I visited an Early College high school in Los Angeles that is part of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation network of high schools. This school is in a low income area with very few parents who attended college. High school teachers with appropriate degrees teach college credit courses at the high school campus in introductory first year college classes ,that are crdit level for Cal State U - LA. But one of the most interesting things was how teachers convey a college culture through direct and indirect communication in all there classes.
The high school teachers view themselves "as an extension of college" and treat students as college bound. Teachers emphasize to students that what is being taught is because colleges will expect it-"you will need this concept in college". Content is presented along with skills that teachers know are needed in college. Students are encouraged and prodded to take 4 years of math and other senior classes aligned with college.Students are enrolled in extra curricular activities that 4 year colleges look for.
The dual credit arrangement is touted as a way to save college expenses while in high school. Students take PSAT or SAT each year from grades 7-12, and visit local colleges.
This just one dimension of creating a college going high school culture, but it is gratifying to hear how well some teachers grasp what they need to do for college readiness

Labels: College Readiness

What is “College-Going Culture” in a Secondary School?

Professor Patricia McDonough at UCLA (mcdonough@gseis.ucla.edu) has visited many low-income high schools to discover the key elements of a school culture that creates better college preparation and enrollment.

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 Principles of a College Culture:

College Talk: Clear, ongoing communication among students, teachers, administrators, and families about what it takes to get to college

Clear Expectations: Explicit, clear-defined goals, communicated in ways that make them part of the culture of the school

Information and Resources: Comprehensive, up-to-date college information and resources, easily accessible by all students, families, and school personnel

Comprehensive Counseling Model: View of counseling that makes all 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 among all schools in a feeder group

Schools that want to change their college-going rates can work to balance their delivery of all nine of these principles. Start with an honest inventory, then move to change.

Labels: College Readiness

I attended a conference on early college high schools that enable
average students to take college courses in high school up to 60
credits. These schools are spreading through Gates foundation grants,
and are impressive. They utilize lots of innovative practices
starting in the middle grades to prepare and nurture students for
college. Most of them are in low income areas and admit by lottery.
But they require students to attend longer hours, and to pursue a
college prep curriculum. But early college high schools have many
supports for students such as mentors, counselors, parent outreach,
and stimulating curriculum. They are smaller and more personalized
than typical big city high schools.

The costs are higher for early college schools and I wonder what
will happen after the foundation money runs out. However, the results
may be worth the extra money, and I was impressed with the energetic
staff and some preliminary outcomes for students. gates is evaluating
these schools so we will know more in a few years. For an overview,
check the major technical assistance provider for early college - www.jff.org

Labels: academic preparation College Completion, college costs, college information, college knowledge, College Preparation, College Readiness, College Success, curriculum alignment, ready for college

Professor John Braxton at Vanderbilt has reframed the discussion about college success. He examined thousands of references to the words college success and found no consistent defintion. So he has provided eight dimensions of college success that expand the defintion well beyond college completion. These dimensions are: academic attainment, aquisition of general education, development of academic competence, development of intellectual dispositions, employment after graduation, preparation for adulthood and citizenship, extracurricular accomplishments, and personal development. he defines each of these at nces.ed.gov/npec/symposium.asp
College success like college readiness are important concepts that are undergoing much deeper thought than in the past. Right now these are vague slogans that mean very different things to different people. While I think Braxton's defintions are too expansive, he has made a major contribution in the discussion.

Labels: College Readiness, College Success

Texas will implement end of course exams in subjects like Biology and World History. But the lone star state is going way beyond facts and skills to include in these new tests college readiness attributes like probing why historians have competing views, and how to write research papers. The end of course tests are much more complex than the multiple choice tests they will replace. Texas is rare in that the tests were devised by both the k-12 state board and the coordinating board for higher education in a collborative manner. Texas is concerned about its high remediation rates and determined to use a k-20 approach to do something about it. They brought in college readiness guru David T. Conley to help them. The Southern Regional Education Board in Atlanta is a proponent of end of course tests, and spreading the concept throughout the Southeast.

Labels: College Readiness

The College Board just reported that the average price for a college education once again rose faster than the inflation rate this year, particularly at public four-year institutions.

According to the College Board's annual tuition survey, the increase in tuition and fees this year at the nation's public four-year institutions sustained the trend that has persisted for three decades. The College Board's tuition survey, "Trends in College Pricing," and the survey on financial aid, "Trends in Student Aid," are both available on its website.

Importantly, no one who is considering attending college should do so without a clear understanding of the financial implications. Too many students – prospective or existing—suffer not only sticker shock AFTER they’ve committed, but angst with the whole process of securing aid and making timely payments.

A student cannot be college-ready, if they are not ready financially. We offer prospective students very basic, yet helpful tools at our partner website -- MyCollegePuzzle.

Labels: College Readiness, College Success, support for college

There are many complex dimensions for assessing college readiness of secondary school students. This is a follow up to my last blog concerning David T Conley's paper for Gates Foundation. Many students consider their personal beliefs sufficient justification for their opinions, and view any challenge as a personal attack. Unprepared students resist solving problems with ambiguous or multiple solutions. They look for the right answer among two conflicting conculsions , rather than analyzing the clues in the text about the authors motivations or historical context. In short, their high school work displays no deep understanding of complex technical reading.
States have been trying to ameliorate these problems by merely requiring more years of English and social studies. But this will not solve the proble. Research has shown that what is in the courses matters more than the label. Recent studies of huge samples of high school seniors by ACT confirms this view.

Labels: College Readiness

How do we know whether high school students are ready for college? This is a complex subject with many dimensions. For example, according to a paper by Davit T. Conley for the Gates Foundation, college instructors expect students to draw inferences, interpret results, analyze conflicting source documents, support arguements with evidence, solve complex problems that have no obvious answer, and conduct research. This is a lot more than just memorizing facts and being able to answer multiple choice questions. Many secondary school students have no idea that colleges expect these types of skills. Colleges expect students to be independent , self reliant learners that can write multiple 3-5 page papers that are well reasoned and documented with credible sources.
Conley"s full paper is at epiconline.org

Labels: College Readiness

David Conley of the University of Oregon has published a new conceptual paper on college readiness for the Gates Foundation.

He uses major facets- habits of mind, academic knowledge and skills and academic behaviors.

• Habits of mind include intellectual openness, inquisitiveness, analysis, reasoning etc.
  
• Academic knowledge and skills include writing research, and subject matters like math.
  
• Academic behaviors include study skills, time management, note taking etc., and contextual skills include concepts that embody college knowledge like admissions and financial aid information.
  

Each of these facets is covered in depth with specific examples.

A key finding is how an expansive definition of college readiness greatly enhances the possibility of college completion.

Labels: academic preparation, College Readiness, College Success

Career Education is getting attention as a way to better prepare community college students in secondary school. But the concepts and definitions of carrer education are unclear. Moreover, high school programs do not link to post secondary curriculum in many cases.

The disjuncture also has a deleterious effect on career education college completion. Career pathways, so vital to a volatile information-based economy, suffer from a lack of direction and commitment to career and technical education. Control is frequently diffused between and among institutions in both K-12 and higher education. Higher education generally is uninterested in vocational education issues with relatively little prestige. The secondary schools, for their part, are preoccupied with traditional academics and pressures to increase test scores in the current high-stakes assessment environment. Without coordinated policy, vocational/technical education will continue to float between K-12 and postsecondary levels, largely ignored except for turf battles between the sectors over which level should get most federal and state vocational categorical funds.

ConnectEd is a good website to find good concepts and designs for career education that provides both vocational skills and solid college preparation.

Labels: College Completion, College Readiness, College Success

There are many obstacles to more aggressive policy to stimulate higher college success and college completion rates. An important policy is the public’s high approval rating for the current performance of postsecondary education, and its satisfaction with the higher education status quo.

Colleges and universities earned a respectable “B” in a 2001 nationwide random sample, while secondary schools were a full grade or more lower (Immerwahr, 1999, http://www.highereducation.org/). The public’s collective advice is that colleges and universities continue to focus on what they do best. Only 12 percent of the public would raise entrance standards to postsecondary education.

While the public believes that college readiness is inferior to a decade ago, only 11 percent hold postsecondary institutions responsible for students’ failure to persist. Half of a national sample thinks that students are to blame, and another 40 percent think that it is a failure of high schools to prepare students for college level study that causes them to drop out. Very few respondents think the presence or absence of K-16 services such as better counseling or higher education working with public schools is a primary cause of students' college success or college failure.

Moreover, a majority of the public thinks students of color have about the same opportunities as white, non-Latino students. This public opinion poll concluded, “there is no mandate for change – or even a suggestion of what kind of [higher education] change would prove necessary.” More recent polls have similar conclusions. It is unlikely that elected officials will feel much public pressure to bring postsecondary education into greater alignment with K-12. A major public information campaign highlighting the lack of college persistence and college completion in broad-access postsecondary education might help shift opinion towards closing the gap between the sectors.

Labels: College Completion, College Readiness, College Success

Jon S. Twing of Pearson Educational Measurement recently critiqued a prior Blog entry. Twing acknowledged that my January entry ("Alignment Needed to Enhance College Completion") caused him to ruminate regarding a concept that he works on everyday -- the validity of assessment systems.

My entry, according to Twing, argued that K-12 and post-secondary education systems are not integrated. He agreed with that crucial premise, but had much more to say. I respect Twing’s perspective as he has spent much of his career providing support for many large-scale, statewide assessment programs, some of which include end-of-course testing, college readiness components and consideration of school-to-work transitions.

This is the 2nd entry (the 1st entry was "Boomerang ..." dated June 23rd) in which I share Twing’s perspective.

Twing took issue with the state policy possibilities which I mentioned that may help resolve the problem. He argued that I ignored the cause of the problem, namely that policymakers have not defined what is to be accomplished by all of the testing.

Twing argues that policymakers are trying to accomplish the notion of a linked academic system, an intrinsically rational system. An intrinsically rational academic system would be required to survive the scrutiny of a rational human asking if such a linked system was valid. For example, if Algebra II skills are required for success in post-secondary efforts, an intrinsically rational system would suggest secondary school systems would prepare students by teaching them the same Algebra II enabling skills post-secondary requires. Similarly, such an intrinsically rational system would require the primary school system teach the content standards required as pre-requisites by the secondary school system such that students coming to high school would be ready to learn the information they needed to be successful when they got to college. As a result, college readiness would be elevated for many more students.

Twing acknowledged that “several obstacles appear to stand in the way of achieving an intrinsically rational ‘all encompassing’ system”. The lack of a linked system is not simply the lack of the secondary system understanding or preparing students for college success.

First, the post-secondary system may have difficulty agreeing on a single set of educational standards. Twing believes that the independence of college faculty and others in the post-secondary arena might preclude a single set of well articulated standards from being developed. He doubts that universities are inclined to prescribe curriculum for not only introductory courses but also subsequent courses that build on the skills acquired in these beginning courses. Just how likely are universities going to be in persuading all faculties who teach, say, introductory sciences courses, to ensure they cover the same big ideas, let alone the same scope and sequence? Compared to, arguably the sometimes flawed but nonetheless vertically articulated, statewide curriculum the post-secondary corpus of content seems disjointed.

I'll continue sharing Twing's perspective on my prior critique in my next entry.

Labels: College Completion, College Preparation, College Readiness, College Success

Today’s San Francisco Chronicle ran an excellent article (”College seems out of reach to most Latinos”) on the low enrollment rates of high school Latino graduates in California. For example, one in seven Latino grads enroll in a four year college.

The Chronicle presented the usual issues of inadequate counseling and lack of signals about what students must do for college preparation and college success.

Many Latino students must work in high school and this also hurts their enrollment in required four-year college courses. As a consequence, about 80 % of Latino high school grads enroll in two-year colleges where they face long odds for college completion.

All of this has an even more profound impact on California's economy than the four-year issue in the Chronicle article. I spoke on this issue recently, particularly elaborating on the community college issue and Latinos. The full text of my speech can be seen at http://www.stanford.edu/group/bridgeproject/Failure%20to%20Complete%20College1.ppt

Labels: College Completion, College Readiness, College Success