Most American high school students are not ready for college, according to two reports released last week. ACT's report on The Condition of College and Career Readiness and the Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll on public education find high school students lack both the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in college and the public confidence in their readiness for higher education.
According to the ACT report on readiness, 60 percent of the students in America's spring 2012 high school graduating class who had taken the standardized test did not hit more than two of the four college readiness benchmarks. Twenty-eight percent did not hit any of the benchmarks on English, math, reading and science tests. Another 15 percent met only one; 17 percent met just two. These students are much less likely to make an A, B, or C in college courses than the 25 percent of high school graduates who did very well on all four tests.
At Gallup, we wondered whether Americans had confidence in the college readiness of today's high school students. So, this summer, we posed the following statement to a representative sample of Americans and asked them if they agree: "Today's high school graduates are ready for college." Two-thirds did not agree. These results from the 2012 PDK/Gallup poll suggest that Americans have significant doubts that today's high school graduates are ready for college.
This bad news looms large as freshmen are showing up and settling in at a college near you. Some people will say that disjointed high school curriculum is at fault for this new batch of college freshmen's lack of readiness. Others will pick on the teachers or parents who, in their opinion, did not do enough to get the students ready.
But, Gallup Student Poll data points to a more direct explanation: only half of our nation's high school students are hopeful about their future. Without hope -- a personal belief that their future will be better than their present coupled with a sense of self determination -- achievement in school and the workplace will be less than stellar.
The education pipeline in America is filled with students who are not ready for the future. High school graduates are not ready for college and college graduates are not ready for the world of work. While others rejigger curricula and complain about teachers, maybe the rest of us should get to know a student, push them to create a compelling vision of their future, and then help them take a few steps in the right direction.
Maybe we should be a little more like Yano Jones, a talent advisor at Avenue Scholars, an Omaha, Nebraska program founded to boost hope in students of talent and need. Yano's job is to help scholars realize their talent and overcome the obstacles associated with growing up impoverished and without the right kind of role models. More practically, Yano does everything he can to make sure that his 50 scholars in his care go to school every day, do their homework, stay out of trouble, finish high school, enroll in college, and earn their degree. Some mornings Yano wakes up as early as 4:30 to drive his students to football practice, stays up late to attend a school theatrical performance, and then taxies a student safely home. When Yano shuttles his "babies" he helps them figure out how to get from Point A to Point B in life. By giving them hope, Yano's scholars become more ready -- to learn, work, and achieve -- as they chase down a future that matters to them. If he can make hope happen for 50 young people, can't you do that for one?
Dr. Jonathan Gibralter: Advice for New College Students
What I want instead of these "standardized" fact-memorizing exams is something that actually reflects someone's intelligence, and specifically someone's intelligence on a single issue. That's why I praise the AP exams more highly than the SAT or the ACT; they're less based off of memorization, and more based off of understanding of the topic at hand. In fact the AP Calculus and AP Chemistry exams (which I'm taking this year) have taken this very problem into account, and have started trimming away at the need for flashcarding some arbitrary facts that, in your career, you'll be able to have just sitting there on a piece of paper.
In today's America there are so many distractions in school, out of school and at home that only the most patient, internally motivated kids are going to be successful. And regardless of socioeconomic status, parents and society provide all kids with too much instant gratification.
The solution: take your kids' phones away, keep them active and provide them with intellectually stimulating resources.
In this situation, is it any wonder that kids graduate who shouldn't? And does anybody really think anything will change, regardless of how many changes we make to schools, until we start putting the responsibility for passing or failing on the students?
Standardized college admission testing was originally used as predictors of likelihood for success in college. Most college drop-outs don't do so due to not being able to understand the information. Rather, lake of skill in time management, ability to cope with stress, no sense of direction, meaning and purpose. These are the things that most cause failure. Schools need to prepare students and we should use wellness indicators to gauge college admission.
The situation is not good, but I doubt that it was any better in the past. When I was a physics student at the University of Maryland, 40+ years ago they had open admissions - anybody could register for classes, ready or not. Those who were not ready didn't last long.
From what I can tell, the ACT college readiness exam is a pretty low bar. My 14 year old took the English readiness exam last January and walked out after 45 minutes having done and reviewed her answers. She got a perfect score - and she is a math/science person, not a literature/humanities person. She has a friend who did quite badly on the exam, but her friend is a new immigrant from Hong Kong with a level 3 English as a Second Language score. Her friend should do fine after working on her English for a year.
I won't comment on the requirements in Math and Science. They seem to be very low. They are certainly far far below what students would need to start in the STEM subjects.