The concept of high-school graduates “being ready for college” has had many meanings over the years.
In terms of preparedness for college reading and math courses, a growing percentage of Maricopa County graduates are not ready for those rigors when they move up to Maricopa County community colleges or Arizona universities, an Arizona Community Foundation report suggests. That’s 59% of high school grads in the county. Among the class of 2008, an average 70 percent of county students were college-ready in English, 42 percent in math. Those figures are down from 77 percent and 51 percent in 2006.
Among the Class of 2008, an average 70 percent of county students were college-ready in English, 42 percent in math. Those figures are down from 77 percent and 51 percent in 2006.
David Garcia, assistant professor of educational leadership and policy studies at Arizona State University, said that the numbers should advance the discussion of what it means to be prepared for college amid constantly changing global economics and technology.
“For years, it was a standardized test and a set of skills you were expected to do,” Garcia said. “But what can you do with the set of skills? That’s a question that has been lingering for some time, and there is more of an expectation that students who graduate should be ready for college. …
“It’s not a standardized test score. It’s a real-world indicator of how schools are doing that matters to students.”
Tracey Benson, spokeswoman for the Maricopa County Superintendent of Schools office, said that college readiness is high on every local school district’s priority list.
Readiness is one of the criteria that the federal government is using to determine which states will receive Race to the Top program grants. Arizona is among 18 finalists.
“The class of 2007 and ’08 started school in the mid-1990s,” Benson said. “That’s the time in a student’s career that is so important to a student’s success, and that’s where the conversation should start.
“Early interventions and solid foundations are critical if we want our high-school graduates to be career-ready.”
The Apache Junction Unified School District has implemented a College Readiness For All program, based on technology and project-based learning, superintendent Chad Wilson said. The district is aiming to supply each student, beginning at the junior-high level, with a laptop computer.
The A.J. model replaces the traditional three Rs of education — “reading, ’riting and ’rithmetic” — with coursework that Wilson calls rigorous, relevant to real-world disciplines and based on a solid teacher-student relationship.
“What college readiness means to us is kids learning in a robust, project-based environment, where they are not just learning standards they regurgitate through memorization, but learning material in a real-world application way,” Wilson said. “So, when they go on past the 12th grade — whether it’s to college or in the workforce — they can use what they’ve learned. Our teachers need the kind of classrooms that will facilitate that.”
Standardized testing has played an issue in the readiness decrease, Garcia said, with the unintended consequence of student complacency. To graduate, students must pass the state’s AIMS test — which is a measure of student progress at the 10th-grade level, not college readiness.
“I’m seeing schools run into this struggle all the time,” Garcia said. “They struggle with getting students to take advanced course work to get them ready for college, because they are under the impression that, because they passed the standardized AIMS test, they are ready to graduate, ready to go to college.”
Wilson said schools and districts must be more proactive in informing students that there is still much room to grow, then challenging them.
“If (complacency) is a problem with the kid, it’s a problem with the adult as well,” Wilson said.
A breakdown of readiness percentages among schools and districts is available at http://arizonaindicators.org/pages/education/readiness/college-readiness.html.
“A district doesn’t have a choice to not focus on (college readiness) right now,” Benson said. “It has become the topic of conversation, at the local and national level.”
coyote posted at 8:59 am on Mon, Aug 23, 2010.
We have to start getting tougher with our young people. We have had a lot of grade inflation over the past 10 years. Everyone is concerned about their student's grade rather than what they learn. We still have a large number of high performing students. However, the average students are performing at a lower level than 10 years ago.
ofuque2 posted at 12:39 pm on Mon, Aug 23, 2010.
I just know that I'm going to catch a lot of flak for this, but here goes.....I think that one of the biggest problems is the charter school fiasco. My granddaughters were not doing well in high school. It was their fault. They were not motivated and would not listen to reason. They begged their mother to let them go to a charter high school that some of their friend had enrolled in. It offered 4-day weeks and easier classes. They won the argument. My oldest granddaughter went from a -D- student to an -A- student overnight. She was thrilled with the lack of homework. She graduated as the class salutatorian and received a "Presidential" scholarship for junior college. The only problem was that she could not pass the placement exams at MCC. With my help and tutoring she finally made it (barely). She went 2 semesters and declared that "College was not for her". She now works part-time at Walgreens. My second oldest granddaughter just graduated at the top of her class - Valedictorian, and received a "Presidential Gold" scholarship. She, too, could not pass the placement exams at MCC. I helped her and she is not enrolled for the fall semester. We will see how this works out. I bought her a new computer for school and she sent me a text thanking me for the new "labtop" computer. I found out it was NOT a misspelling. She actually thought that's what it was. I can't wait to see what happens to the other 2 girls. Personally, I think that charter schools stink, in general. I'm sure that there must be some good ones out there. They're just few and far between.