College Ready Blog

Kudos to NCTM for rocking the boat with its September report calling for states to trim down “mile wide and inch deep” math standards. Schmidt, Wang and McKnight (2002) have been talking about this problem for over five years. See NYT and WaPo’s coverage.

While the number of standards is important, so is the sequencing (order) of them. Schmidt believes that coherent sequencing leads to greater student understanding, but this issue may be too esoteric for policy discussions. Hopefully the issue will gain traction as states take the next pass at their standards. Otherwise states will rewrite them again in another 5-10 years.

From a college readiness standpoint, calculus is the minimum math requirement for most colleges and universities. Yet, the K-12 system is geared toward supporting students through Algebra II/Trig at the most.

Calculus is about slope and area, concepts students are exposed to as early as elementary school. Why isn’t there a more seamless transition - especially when any middle schooler could take a derivative? I like Richard Sisley’s approach where the lesson on the first day of 9th grade math is about differentiation.

Just got back from a week in Chicago. Left very impressed with the work of Tim Knowles and Linda Wing at the University of Chicago’s Center for Urban School Improvement. They present a very interesting alternative to traditional avenues for supporting instruction. Although there is a lot of talk about moving teacher education to the medical school model, Tim and Linda are one of the few walking their talk.

Danger Will Robinson! WaPo releases an article calling for teachers to assign easier texts or potentially “dumbing down” reading instruction. Clearly texts should be accessible to students, but there are other ways to enhance accessibility without assigning comic books. Touchstone and Paideia provide alternative ways to support struggling readers without eliminating challenging content and sacrificing critical thinking opportunities. Short, profound texts are accessible to students and honor their natural intellect, even if the students lack basic literacy skills. The October 2006 issue of Educational Leadership, “Reading, Writing and Thinking,” offers several ideas for how to accelerate literacy achievement by developing the critical thinking skills of struggling students, instead of dwelling on their academic deficiencies.

WaPo trots out some familiar arguments against state standardized testing to stir the pot on school accountability:

• Results in “dreary” drill-and-kill instruction
• Dehumanizes and stresses children
• Used unfairly to punish schools: NCLB’s Adequate Yearly Progress, grade promotion, performance pay, etc.
• Encourages cheating and other moral lapses among besieged educators

While we’re at it, let’s add other favorites:

• Impossible to measure or quantify academic growth
• Demonstrates lack of trust in education professionals
• Emphasizes literacy and mathematics at the expense of other learning (e.g., art, music, civic education, character-building…)

Many of these arguments are straight from the “anti-accountability” list of talking points. The “drill-and-kill” argument (a personal favorite) is more of an indictment of the school’s teaching methods than of the state test. There are plenty of examples of effective teaching strategies that produce better academic outcomes than rote exercises; schools should not be let off the hook for implementing effective strategies. Although there is a deeper problem if all the standards seem to lend themselves to rote memorization.

But legitimate frustration over state testing has to do with the overall poor condition of state standards as well as suspect test development and scoring. As long as states let problems with state standards/tests fester, calls for national standards will continue. A rigorous set of national standards is appealing, for the same reason state standards were once appealing, but it’s hard to believe that a useful set of standards would emerge once all the various interest groups put their red pens away.

No wonder so many 90-90-90 schools re-invent the wheel by developing their own standards and assessments for student learning.

Note: the link to the Fordham Institute’s State of State Standards 2006 study does not constitute an endorsement of their methodology. Also, what’s with all the WaPo links?

A recent study of DC public schools finds that for every 100 high school freshman, only 9 go on to complete a college degree within five years of enrolling in college. DC already spends nearly $12,500 per student, the highest in the nation. The result - a district of 65,000 students only produces 400 college grads per year. That’s not even enough college grads to staff the vacancies each year in the public schools.

Another way to think about this. With an $811 million budget, DC Public Schools spends roughly $2 million per college grad each year. While less money is clearly not the answer, this is blood-in-the-water for fiscal conservatives who want to defund public schools and a cautionary tale for “throw-money-at-the-problem” Democrats.

DC is not alone here. Recent reports from Chicago show an 8% college completion rate. Our own research shows similar numbers out of Los Angeles, and there is no reason to expect other large districts are faring any better.

This is a civil rights crisis of epic proportions. It’s become trendy to say high schools are the top priority thanks to Bill and Oprah. And districts are slowly getting into the action by hiring Assistant Superintendents of Secondary Education, breaking up comprehensive high schools into small schools, creating freshmen academies, etc. But it’s hard to justify incremental change against a problem of this magnitude. Seriously. Has anyone seen Jesse?

Ohio is the most recent state to legislate more stringent high school course requirements to boost college preparation.

The Good

Aligning high school course requirements with college admission criteria is an easy win for lawmakers and simple, straightforward policy. In this economy, where it’s nearly impossible to make a living wage without a college degree, every student should have the option of attending a four-year college after high school. Jay Greene at the Manhattan Insitute estimates that only a third of students exit high school with the minimal qualifications necessary to apply to a four-year college.

The Bad

• Rigorous course requirements hardly guarantee rigorous courses.
• The “get-tough” legislators do not require a fourth year of high school mathematics, even though it is the best indicator of college readiness (and STRONGLY recommended by any college or university worth its salt).
• Broad course requirements across the subject distracts from the real goal of teaching students to read, write and think critically. Colleges lose sleep because their incoming freshmen lack skills, not because they lack content knowledge. The single subject focus in high schools, particularly in the 9th and 10th grades, only fractures efforts to teach college skills in a systematic way. More on this later.

The Ugly

While stricter course requirements have not galvanized the “low expectations” lobby to the same extent as the high school exit exam debate, critics still contend that additional requirements will result in fewer high school graduates, penalizing low-achieving students, many of whom are disadvantaged by attending low-performing schools.

Hmmm… We know low expectations don’t work (or work too well depending on your perspective)…

A favorite corollary, although often left unstated, is that not all students are college material, and that these students should not be held to strict standards.

I’m still waiting for someone to name the names of students that “deserve” lowered expectations. My experience is that most students are “college material” if exposed to great instruction over a sustained period of time. This means I had to treat every student as if they were going to Harvard, regardless of how many risk factors they were dragging around.

The low vs. high expectations debate is already moot as global competition requires more and more from our high school graduates. The bar is being raised for us - there is no need to wait for congress to pass a new law.