Posted on 05/23/2007 2:59:55 PM PDT by george76
Remedial classes await.
Thousands of Colorado high schoolers are graduating this month with plans to go to college in the fall.
Hundreds of them will be academically unprepared when they get there.
Those students will take — and pay for — remedial classes that don’t count toward a degree.
Educators say the need for remedial work is fueled largely by a lack of communication between high schools and colleges about what’s important to know. They also say high school students need to pay closer attention to class selection and grades, especially in the senior year when many coast toward graduation day. And, some say, high school should be more rigorous.
About 30 percent of recent high school graduates who went to Colorado’s public colleges last year were assigned to remedial courses in at least one subject, the report said. The number rose to about 56 percent at two-year colleges.
Nearly 61 percent of students were assigned to remedial classes at Pikes Peak Community College.
Even in the Pikes Peak region’s top-performing high schools, as many as 20 to 30 percent of graduates needed remedial help in college.
(Excerpt) Read more at gazette.com ...
I say it's less than 30%.
Anyone who chooses to pay for the AP exam may take it, not just those enrolled in the classes. The intent of the class is to prepare students for the AP exam that may provide varying degrees of college credit.
iHigh schools will label any course “AP” even if it bears no resemblance to the College Board’s AP course/exam requirements.
Importantly, the AP exams are written and scored by the college board (the AP people), so it is folly to name a course AP in hopes of kids earning AP credit. That doesn't happen. The only way AP credit may be earned is by achieving a particular score on AP's exam which is graded by AP. Schools can't willy nilly provide AP credit.
“Here’s what I’m saying - and I’ll use small words so you can understand.”
Thinly veiled ad hominem argument.
“Public education does not always work - there are a lot of struggling schools, and a lot of very good schools.”
There are not many “very good” government schools, and those that do exist are more often used as window dressing for the failures.
“It does homeschoolers no good to paint all public schools with the same brush, and every time a failing public school comes to attention use that as an argument against public education in general.”
As a practical matter, home education is growing by leaps and bounds. To the extent that homeschoolers “paint all public schools with the same brush”, it certainly isn’t hurting them.
“Instead, individual parents should examine their own circumstances - are the schools around them very good? Can they afford private schools? Do they have the time, abilities, and inclination to educate the children themselves? “
Agreed.
“That decision is an individual one - and you should never second-guess a parent who made his decision.”
Of course the decision is individual, and people who actually look at it objectively will usually come to the conclusion that the government school their child is to attend is coming up lacking. There are exceptions. People do win the lottery. As for “never” second guessing, what you’re suggesting is that parents should not be held accountable. And that’s a bunch of baloney. Decisions have consequences.
If you do those things, no one has any right to demand that you stop posting to them.
except the moderators, of course
This has happened before as well. The reason, however, is not that schools have been providing AP credit on their own (as was suggested). The reason is that fewer and fewer kids were earning sufficient scores to make AP worthwhile. That's the impetus for the audits...
Very well stated. Alas, however, there are plenty who do second-guess the decisions of others, and in a not very polite manner.
Example: I teach English Comp I & II to the freshmen -- pardon, freshPERSONS. At the end of the spring semester, I calculated and submitted grades. I had a student - M -- who was entirely lackluster. Missed 12 out of 28 classes, handed in assignments late (if at all), did not participate in class exercises or discussions and rarely brought books to class. M EARNED a "D" in my class -- the absolute bare minimum, and a guarantee that the course would have to be re-taken to graduate.
M's helicopter mommy called my house, after scamming my home phone number from the clueless departmental secretary, to blast me for not "reaching" her little snowflake. After all, M graduated from a pricey private school, and it was impossible that M wouldn't know how to write. Her rant went on and on, and she demanded a review of M's work, the grading policies, and an instant raising of M's grade to an "A-" -- comparable to what M got in HS classes.
To avoid "conflict" and "hurt feelings," the department chair and the Dean reviewed her work. Thankfully, I had everything well-documented, and the grade stood, but this mom basically bullied all of us. A prof who had not documented as well, or was in any way wishy-washy, would have caved, and M would have gotten a much better grade than was deserved.
Then he added that the grade in question could go up or could go down. He didn't have any requests for review :)
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The American people are not stupid. They are fully capable of comparing the allotment for **normal** government child to the tuition paid for a **normal** privately schooled child. They know where the tax money is going. Answer: Down the drain.
The amount of funding that is allotted per **normal** government child for our **ordinary** local government elementary school is more than twice the tuition at our ordinary local Catholic school. This government elementary school is not handling severely retarded, blind, deaf, or horribly crippled children. In our state we have special schools for that and these kids ( deservedly) receive more. In the case of these severely handicapped children being mainstreamed, the local government school gets extra funding for that. The same **normal** kids going to the ordinary local government school are the same kinds of kids going to the Catholic school.
The amount of money going to ordinary neighborhood government schools per **normal** kid **is** a “king’s ransom”.
Remember, please, that **not** included in that per government child allotment are the generous pensions of the teachers, or payments on the capital investment on the land and property. Private schools must pay for these items out of their tuition and fund raising money.
that’s his typical routine on homeschool threads, wintertime. he isn’t worth the energy.
My first year of teaching, I had a review that went like that. The student was completely dissatisfied with his “B.” When the CHair reviewed, she thought I had been overly generous, and lowered it to a “C.” Poor kid was flabbergasted.
I think that by any objective measure, the taxpayers are paying quite a bit for government schools, and getting not so much in return. But rather than rely on conjecture, let’s look at some numbers.
I’ll pick on Fairfax county in Virginia; one relatively expensive school district in Virginia. I picked on them because they actually publish their statistics. Their calculated cost per student: $12,917. They also publish their average K-6 teacher to pupil ratio: it’s 1: 25.25 Now, Fairfax is a relatively high cost of living area, and this district is doing a good job relative to other government school districts in Virginia, but you know what? $326,154 is an awful lot to pay per classroom. I think that would qualify as a King’s Ransom when you multiply it by the number of classrooms in Fairfax county.
For comparison’s sake, here’s the tuition charged at a couple of Catholic schools in the area that I pulled up via Google: $4,147 (Corpus Christi Catholic school) $4,135-$6,365 (St. Leo the Great)
So what is so special about the government schools in Fairfax County to justify the added expense? I don’t think it’s the special education programs. Out of 239 government schools in Fairfax county, only 12 are special education centers. Surely that alone couldn’t explain a cost difference of that magnitude.
Special education is labor-intensive. There are special education students with their own full-time aides. Thus, the total spending for special education is about 21.4% of the total cost of education in the US. The total cost to educate an average special-education student is almost twice the cost of a regular student. (Source). This is a cost that can't be ignored.
I actually took a couple of these remedial class just for jollies. Very darn tedious but not at the irk level of the mesmerizing Econ 101.
We have the same problem here at the University of Nevada. I got on a local talk show and suggested that the names of the students and their high schools be published in the paper as a basic means of quality control. The president of the university thought my suggestion was “too harsh.” What a soft nation we have become!
Good Chair you had Malacoda...!
Fairfax is a more than a “relatively” expensive school district, the cost of living there is absolutely outrageous.
I don’t have the time today to dig out the cost per pupil in Accomack County, but I do know that all of the schools accomodate the handicapped, including those who need daily aides, so matter how you slice it, that will factor into the overall cost per pupil, even in Fairfax because it is most likely averaged out across the board.
And, you are correct about that. More than 10 years ago, I worked at a Hallmark store and a group of teen girls came in to buy some candy. When one of the girls put down her change, she was a nickel short, which I told her. She stared at the change unable to compute why she was a nickel short. It was a real jolt to me about the quality of the schools that are in my area. This wasn't rocket science, I didn't ask her the square root of something, she needed an extra nickel.
Now, this is not the problem of the high school. There are a lot of problems at the high school level, but making change and being able to read well, should be things taught at the elementary school level.
People seem to focus on what is going wrong at the high school level, but I think you really need to go back to the elementary school level and start fixing that. Go back to basics! Teach kids how to make change, how to add, subtract, etc. Teach them how to read well, and in a way that they can progress on to more difficult material as time goes on. This is elementary school stuff.
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