By Robert Luebke
The following appeared as an op-ed in the Fayetteville Observer on Sunday, December 3, 2017
Every public school student will graduate ready for post-secondary education and work, prepared to be a globally engaged and productive citizen.”
Those lofty words are from the vision statement of the State Board of Education of North Carolina. With the adoption of Common Core State Standards in 2010, college and career readiness became the stated outcome of our public schools.
According to the Department of Public Instruction, in 2015, 82 percent of North Carolina high school graduates intended to enroll in a public or private four-year college or two-year community college.
Education officials trumpet that North Carolina’s four-year high school graduation rate is at an all-time high; 86.5 percent.
If we seek to enroll more graduates into college, high school graduates need to be ready for college. Are they?
In 2016-17 the percentage of 11th grade students in North Carolina taking the ACT test — an exam that gauges college readiness — who met ACT benchmarks in all subject areas was 30.8 percent. The concerns aren’t limited to high school. The percentage of K-12 students who met or exceeded college or career ready proficiency standards on all EOG/EOC subjects was less than half of all students (49.2 percent).
Today children receive nonstop messages about the benefits of higher education. Couple that with pressure from Washington and Raleigh to not only increase the number of high school graduates and get students into colleges, but to also increase the number of minority and disadvantaged students and you have significant forces working to open college doors. It’s a mix where strange things begin to happen.
North Carolina’s rising graduation rate was supposed to be good news. Until you realize it has been aided by an online credit recovery program that allows students to retake parts of classes for credit that students failed to gain credit for the first time. In 2015-16, over 18,600 students enrolled in credit-recovery programs and 64 percent of students passed. The unusually high numbers of students gaining diplomas through the program has raised questions and recently caught the attention of the State Board of Education.
In North Carolina, students are considered career and college ready when they have the knowledge and academic preparation needed to enroll and succeed, without the need for remediation in college-bearing courses like English language arts and mathematics. The percentage of students taking remediation classes in many states ranges from the mid-thirties to mid-forties. Not in North Carolina.
But further reflection reveals that policy changes — not improved preparedness — have reduced the size of the remediation applicant pool.
For instance, if a student takes four years of math, has a GPA of 2.6 or better and graduated in the previous five years, they are not required to take the placement test. This significantly narrows the pool for potential remediation.
In the last several years, North Carolina has awarded performance grades to all public schools. Schools are awarded individual grades A, B, C, D and F. While we can argue about how the grades are calculated, few parents know that the grades are based not on a traditional seven or ten-point grading scale, but on a 15-point scale. The new scale makes it easier to get higher grades and lowers the floor for failing from a score of 69 to 39 and below.
Performance grading was supposed to revert to a 10-point scale a few years back but lawmakers have delayed the transition.
These factors may help to explain the myth of college readiness. None of this is easy to fix.
Parents and taxpayers should expect high school graduates to have the skills necessary to enter either higher education or the work force. That we find more students unfit for higher education points to a system where the rush to expand access has damaged educational quality and had the opposite effect. The gap between the rhetoric and reality of college readiness is a problem we have tried hard to ignore. It shouts for our attention.
Dr. Robert Luebke is Director of Policy at the Civitas Institute in Raleigh.
“The gap between the rhetoric and reality of college readiness is a problem we have tried hard to ignore.”
Ignored….? By who? Those of us with boots on the ground have not been ignoring it.
Yet another insult directed towards teachers by Civitas. Perhaps if those who are legislating and/or writing about education had a bit more practical experience more progress would be made.
If we want to fix education we must go back to the times that it worked, when students were taught what they needed to know and were required to learn it. That time was somewhere prior to about 1968.
I am 61, my two older brothers are 71 and 67. We all attended the same schools. They got twice the education that I got.
What changed? Here are a few: Everyone needs a four year degree. Ever changing curriculum. Every evolving teaching methods which have brought us to Common Core. More and more federal involvement and dictates ever expanding in to more and more aspects of education and the running of schools. A large and ever growing number of administrators(due to many of the fore mentioned causes and reasons). PC and Politics. In society, the demise of the basic family unit. Here to fore, nearly unchecked illegal immigration. And this one will draw immense ire, desegregation, I know, I lived through it and saw the results.
The everyone needs a four year degree dogma has now turned the 4 year degree into not much more than what a High School diploma was 50 years ago and academically, may not be much more than that. College is not for everyone, we need not only college grads but workers that can read and understand, do at least basic math, think, reason and have some sense of country and civic obligation. Fifty years ago we had that.
Being ready for post-secondary work does not mean college for everyone. It could mean technical college, an apprenticeship, or community college courses in career areas. I was a teacer and have a graduate degree but know several students who got certified through a community college to be radiology technicians, lab technicians, auto mechanics, plumbers, bricklayers, chefs, beauticians, and computer analysts. Some of these students started their career education in high school and continued through community college. Everyone doesn’t need a college education but I would never try to discourage a student who wants to go down that path. This article is misleading because it twists the meaning of the goal of public education.
Katherine Cagle,finally a teacher on here that has some sense.John Matthews,you are so right on your post.I have been saying the same thing for years.If college was the only answer we wouldn’t have Bill Gates who went to college long enough to drink a cup of coffee and is the world’s richest person.College is not for all as Katherine says.I know plumbers and electricians who make 6 figures and have never had a single course in diversity.I went to college,don’t think I got a whole lot out of it,but I did better financially than 90% of people.Thats not a brag it’s just a way of saying that’s what school should be for,teaching you to make a living.I went to business school in my business.You learn or go out of business.
Look to Germany and Switzerland for answers, where 70% of all careers start with a 3-4 year apprenticeship around age 16. There are some terrific similar examples in NC, for instance Apprenticeship 2000 in the Charlotte area. I run a manufacturing business in the Sandhills. I had recently 130+ applicants for a position of office manager. Most were ridiculously under-qualified. Many had shocking spelling errors in their resumes. I hired a young German woman who had apprenticed in business admin, gained business experience and then a BA and MBA. No American applicant even came close.