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 ...
When I started working at a Burger King as a high school senior back when LBJ was still in the White House, not only did we have to count change, we had to write the orders on a ticket, manually add up the total, and shout the order to the cooks and drink makers.
They put me on the front counter because, of all the seniors, I had the best grades in math and a loud mouth.
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A disclaimer:
None of what I have to say refers to anyone specifically posting currently on this board.
I need some help. Is there an etiquette page for this board? I honestly do **not** wished to be banned from the board, and fully wish to comply with all rules and regulations.
I’ve recently been attaching a disclaimer to my posts because some very touchy government school defenders have threatened, and actually have, pushed the abuse button.
Can posters demand that I not post in response to them? If they do make this demand ( some with the explicit and implied threat to push the abuse button) is it an eternal request or merely for that thread only? I ask this because one poster ( some weeks ago) went utterly ballistic when I had posted to her. It had been several months and thousands of posts later, and I simply had forgotten her request not to post to her.
On 2 separate occasions ( different posters) I have suggested to those threatening to push the abuse button that we jointly ask the moderator for advice. They both immediately backed down. These posters were feeling **personally** insulted because I had criticized the government schools in a **general** manner.
On several occasions, the government school defender has insisted that they were posting to someone else ( on this public board) and that I had no right to comment on their post to someone else. Can they do this?
One poster asked that I not mention ( with threats to push the abuse button) a family member that she freely and frequently uses as an example in her many posts. When I suggested that we jointly contact the moderator, she too immediately backed down. As a courtesy to her, and also because I feel intimidated and threatened, I have never again made any reference to this family member, even though she continues to use this example to support her arguments.
What are the consequences of this manipulative behavior:
1) Threats and demands like these shuts down their opponent while they freely publish their opinions.
2) The government school defender gets to control the language and with whom he will have discourse.
Your theory about fears of discrimination charges being leveled at disciplined minority kids holds true to a point.
Yet why are the BLACK administrators also running scared?When I started working part time in the schools back in 1970,black VP’s and principals were holy terrors.Now the attitude seems to be,”Oh,well,its all good.Y’all have fun,Ha Ha Ha”
I don’t think it’s laxity as much as an acknowledgement that the risk of discrimination based litigation is running matters. For someone to discipline a minority student or staff member is to accept the risk of discrimination complaints and/or litigation. ( Riverman)
What do other professionals do in these cases? Does a surgeon commit malpractice and harm the patient merely because the patient threatens him with a law suit?
Other professionals ( let's use CPAs or physicians) are held to a professional standard by their colleagues and by their licensing board. If a client or patient demands action that would be harmful, then the professional is required to refuse the case. If it is a company or hospital, the CPA or physician would quit the job.
Let's contrast the above to the excuses made by teachers and principals. They say parents, administrators, and school boards make demands upon them. They claim they are helpless. Well...if a physician or CPA would quit the job, why aren't they?
To force children into government schools by threats of police action and imprisonment, and then deliberately fail to discipline them is child abuse. It is similar to locking a child in a closet for years on end. When these feral children emerge from these government indoctrination camps ( mis-named "schools") they are utterly incapable of functioning in normal society.
Yes, we should blame the teachers and principals. They are not behaving in the manner of every other professional in this world. Instead of refusing the case, or quitting, they are knowingly ( or worse, unknowingly) harming these children. These are the people with the keys to these camps and they willing open the doors on a system that locks children in an emotionally, socially, and educationally dark closet.
He certainly shocked me..I have considered him an Ol' Chip on the Shoulder type for years....Seems he 'fell into' the real world and is having great difficulty facing it?
Something odd in the full article.
It seems that the students with average grades in average classes are the ones needing the most help!
Thank you, Captain Obvious!
The ones I teach on a daily basis are the ones who are not necessarily college material, but vocational prep students. The ones who will work on your car, change oil, dig ditches, etc. The ones you will need more frequently than not. Sorry, but I don’t need a physician every day, but I do need a road to drive on since I do drive every day.
That said, take for instance, my sister, who graduated 3rd in her class and won a FULL RIDE scholarship to the top pubic research school in the state. She will not need remediation, but the kids who have squeaked by with C grades in regular classes may, simply because they do not have what it takes. Bad thing? No, it is what it is.
As far as the homeschool bunch: again, I am 100% for you. You have a right to do what is best for you and your child. More power to you and yours for what ever reason you decide. If your children excel in college from a homeschool curriculum, I salute you, and certainly do not see a point in belittling you for choices you make given a situation I know nothing about.
Again, as one of my aces in the hole, the young man on a thread post here recently, born to a crack mother, who was raised in foster care, public schools and is now *suprise!* a lawyer, working against the same people he was born into. What chances would he had had there been no public school for him? Would he been able to achieve such results? Dunno.
But wouldn't that lead to exceptionalism, and some students feeling left out just because they were stupid?
What chances would he had had there been no public school for him?
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What chances would orphan have if there were no orphanages or foster care?
Yes,,,,some children ( this youth is one) must have institutional settings for their education. We need orphanages too, but no one is arguing that orphanages are the best way to raise up a child.
I would argue that in more cases than not an orphange would be the best way, considering the abysmmal state of the foster care system.
I know a number of people who were raised in the orphanage that still exists in Dover, DE.............including a former Police chief and Mayor of Dover.
Yes,I cringed at Maxwell’s article because I have personally recommended black colleges to some of the youngsters I work with.I think the top of the line schools like Spelman,Morehouse,Fisk and Howard are probably pretty high quality but many of the state and small private schools seem to be mired in a murky situation.
I read that thread. You think it was the public schools that saved him? It was his very loving foster/adoptive parents who took him in as a baby and raised him themselves.
Point out a kid who was born to the same crack mom, raised by her, and his only positive influence was his public school teachers, who did the same thing, and you’ll have a point.
This is one of the reasons why community colleges are popular. After twelve years of public school, diploma in hand, students go to college without the ability to write a complete sentence or complete equations beyond plus, minus, and a little multiplication.
Awesome links - thank you so much.
I'm not a big fan of collecting a lot of change and small bills. So, when I have a bill that is say $17.83 and I survey my available funds, I may end up handing the cashier $23.08. They're always seem a bit perplexed until they punch it in the register. In this case my change would be a nice tidy $5.25.
Home schooled scores
568-V
532-Q
1100 total
Public schooles scores
505-V
534-Q
1019 total
The standard deviation is a bit over 100 points - I think 113 to be exact. Public school pools include all students. The weaker students pull down the scores of the high achievers. Because I am not in the home schooling community, I don't know if the home schooled scores are representative or if they are pulled down by a specific subgroup. The difference between the two is about 3/5ths of a standard deviation. Having not taken a stats course, that may be more significant than it looks. However, I was surprised when I saw the scores. I expected home schooling students to have an average in the high 1200's.
ah....public school, not schoole - no e on school or potato :)
Well, if you’re talking SATs, the truth is that usually only college bound public high schoolers take SATs, and therefore the “weaker” students, probably wouldn’t be any “weaker” in public school versus the homeschool. Not every homeschooler excels...and I don’t think that claim has ever been made. Homeschoolers do escape lots of pitfalls, indoctrination, and peer issues that the normal high school student has to face.
Many homeschooled kids we know aren’t even taking SATs because they go the dual credit route, and get their AA during high school, in which case you just become a transfer student at the University, and don’t need SATs or ACTs.
The SAT norms have been compromised, IMHO, by courses especially designed to teach kids how to take the test. If you google “SAT prep” you’ll be surprised at the number of programs, and the parents are forking over a thousand bucks so the kid scores higher on the SAT. It’s “fair” in the free market sense of the word, but do the SAT scores truly reflect the actual skills of the student, or just the learning of a test taking strategy...and from what I’ve read the strategies they teach do work and will raise your SAT score.
As far as the SAT prep courses go - those of course would be open to anyone who wished to take them, no matter how they are schooled.
Still, I was surprised the number was 1100. From the anecdotes posted here I expected 150 to 200 points higher. Maybe the cream of the homeschooling crop are all Freepers!
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