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 ...
It was my understanding that the SAT courses might raise your score 50 or so points. That's just not that much. Most of the benefit from the classes was familiarization with the format of the test.
I don't know when you home schooled so I can only share what I know to be true in our area at this particular time. That said, in the past 8 years a student could be 14 and attend junior college. Last year it changed to age 16,in this particular college system. Cal State Sacramento accepted 3 of 'my'* students to take classes while in high school, based on SAT's and an interview process.
I say 'my' students because I'm an area administrator for a private school for home educated students. While I have 30 high schoolers in my campus (14 campuses in all), 10 of which are taking classes (primarily science related) at junior college. As a school we have 1,300 high school students - 550 of which are graduating high school June 1. So, my sampling is a bit larger than others.
These days there *is* opportunity for home educated students to take 'advanced' courses..via the college system. Additionally, there are a number of parents in various professional fields who give of their time..anything from tutoring higher level math, honors science, composition, art history, CLEP study groups, fitness, and more. The current homeschool community is not w/o opportunity.
I take it you don’t work in women’s studies?
My nephew took one of the couses, but this was a few years ago. The claim, at the time, was 100 points difference. He did well, I think he scored in the 1400 range. But he’s a smart kid and I wonder if he would have done just as well without the thousand buck course.
My son, didn’t take the SAT. He did the AA during high school, and then went to the University as a Junior transfer student. (in order to qualify for the merit scholarship he did take the ACT...but he just needed a certain score, so we sent him to take the test with no prep whatsoever, just to see how he’d do and he scored high enough for the scholarship.) But I don’t think the ACT is as rigorous as the SAT.
He has to take the GMAT in the fall, so I did buy books for him to review his skills (they were relatively inexpensive.) I think part of the book works on the same premise as you mentioned, to familiarize the student with how the test is laid out and what to expect.
That's how I prepared for the LSAT. You can't learn the material for the LSAT, but you can learn how to think like they do.
Our daughter took a basic writing course at the Community College first, because on her Assessment exam, she missed the cut off by one point to get into the next level. That was fine, she needed the writing practice. After that she took the first level Engl. Comp and Lit course. She had done well enough on the assessment test to get into Pre-Calc, then Trig. Since she hadn't had high school Chem yet, she had to take a basic Chemistry course, without a lab, but after that, she took a Physics course with a lab. She was able to transfer 16 credits to the four year college she now attends. We had begun homeschooling her in 8th grade, and gave her the choice to return to school the following year, but she figured she'd just be bored, and she was right.
Sure homeshoolers respresent a random cross section of the population. Anyone can homeschool and they do. The families in the three homeschool groups that I've been part of over the years are average middle class families who don't have a tremendously high income. Some of the career fields I've seen represented are public school teachers, engineers, private self-employed contrators, local dollar store manager, heavy equipment operator, nurse, one lawyer, a mail carrier,.... I've yet to meet a doctor who homeschools their children.
The idea that it's a cream of the crop, elite, super-smart cross-section of the population is only a stereotype and does not have any validity. It only appears to be used to excuse the disparity between public school kids and homeschooled kids.
Homeschooling your kids can give you the opportunity to pick up on what your kids know and don't know and make sure they have mastered the material before moving on, which any involved public school parent can also do.
We homeschooled for a variety of reasons and academics played a part but was not the sole factor. The lice, incest, drug use, teen pregnancy, and school curriculum were all contributing factors.
Universities sure seem to be impressed with the homeschoolers SAT scores, BTW, despite your trying to downplay it as meaningless. I'm sure if public school kids were getting higher SAT scores, it would be used as proof of the failure of homeschooling instead of being blown off as being meaningless.
A friend went to a high school musical, paid for himself, his wife and two children. The girl couldn't figure out how much to charge them (different rates for the little kids) so he finally told her and she still had trouble making change from a 20. And this was about 10 years ago.
But not all public school kids take the SAT. It’s not mandatory like standardized testing. Likely, the group that would pull it down the most wouldn’t bother because they either drop out of high school or know they aren’t heading for college.
If you don’t mind telling me (a private mail would be fine) what’s the name of your organization? I’d like to do some research into groups like you’re talking about that “oversee” homeschoolers. Not because I plan to use one, but because it could give me some ideas about the potential for doing similar things or offering homeschooler classes.
Universities are impressed by SAT scores, whether or not they are homeschoolers’ scores. I have no argument with the motives of parents who choose to home-school their children nor with the many accomplishments of these children. My argument is with those who point to differences in the average SAT scores of home-schooled children and non-home-scholled children as evidence of the superiority of home-schooling. Mrs. riverdawg and I share the concerns you mentioned about the academic and social environment in many government-run schools, and choose to send our daughter to Catholic school, even though we are not Catholic.
Actually, for all the promo about fancy courses to prepare for the SAT, just buying a $15 dollar practice book at any bookstore helps. We did that for my daughter.
We had heard that taking the SAT more than once, read 2 or 3 times, didn’t raise your score much, and for her it didn’t. What helped was that she’d plop herself down and time herself and take the test. Then she’d GRADE herself. After about the fifth test, she said to me, “They don’t want the correct answer. They want the POLITICALLY correct answer. I’m taking another test.” Her verbal score went up 100 points and stayed there.
Good point - as I said before, I was just surprised that the average for the home schooled students wasn’t in the 1200’s. I was also surprised the scores were as close as they are - although without a doubt the homeschoolers scores were better. Again, I’m thinking that Freeper home schooled students must be in the top percentile!
We certainly considered private education, but between the expense, the mandatory parental participation (lunch room and janitorial duty weekly), the horrendously long bus ride in Lake Ontario’s snow belt, well, that pushed us to homeschooling.
Indeed - show a university a 1400+ SAT and doors open all over the place no matter where the education took place. A 1400 places the student in the top 5% of test takers and that is indeed impressive.
PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT
That is all that is needed to get a good education, even in today’s dumbed down, run by Dumocrat schools. There are magnet schools, IB programs and AP classes galore in most communities. And they are free (except to taxpayers) And if you don’t like the public schools the Catholic schools offer a great education and most do so on an ability to pay basis. The biggest problem is most kids don’t give a sh**. And their parents haven’t sufficiently inculcated the value of education.
I just met a girl from Honduras whose Dad works in a toll booth but she got accepted to BOTH Harvard and MIT (with full scholarship offers to both). Her education didn’t cost her folks a dime. She just wanted it badly and worked hard enough to finish at the top of her class. The kids themselves and their self-absorbed boomer parents are to blame. Anyone that wants a good education and is willing to work for it can get one in this country.
Full ride to Harvard AND MIT? well, dayum, that's better than impressive! Which one did she chose?
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