Interesting article in the New York Times says that urban high schools are centered on preparing all of their students for college. The article says that many urban high schools have abolished their multitrack curriculum that previously had pointed only a fraction of students to college and now have a program in which every student is considered to be on a college track. Excerpts from the article:
- There is a growing sense of urgency among educators that the primary goal of many large high schools serving low-income and urban populations — to move students toward graduation — is no longer enough. Now, educators say, even as they struggle to lift dismal high school graduation rates, they must also prepare the students for college, or some form of post-secondary school training, with the skills to succeed.
- In affluent suburbs, where college admission is an obsession, some educators worry that high schools, with their rigorous college preparatory curriculums, have become too academically demanding in recent years.
- By contrast, many urban and low-income districts, which also serve many immigrants, are experimenting with ways to teach more than the basic skills so that their students can not only get to college, but earn college degrees. Some states have begun to strengthen their graduation requirements.
- “This is transformational change,” said Dan Challener, the president of the Public Education Foundation, a Chattanooga group that is working with the area public schools. “It’s about the purpose of high school. It’s about reinventing what high schools do.”
- “We don’t know yet how to get everyone in our society to this level of knowledge and skills,” said Michele Cahill, a vice president at the Carnegie Corporation, which, along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is financing many of the new efforts. “We’ve never done it before.”
- Although federal studies show that most students yearn for a college degree, each year tens of thousands will not even make it through high school. In New York City, for example, roughly half the students complete high school though the new small high schools have shown substantial improvement in graduation rates.
- Of the 68 percent of high school students nationwide who go to college each year, about a third will need remedial courses, experts say. For various reasons, from financial to a lack of academic preparedness, thousands of low-income students drop out of college each year.
- Fewer than 18 percent of African-Americans and just 11 percent of Hispanics earn a bachelor’s degree, compared with almost a third of whites, ages 25 to 29, experts say. Of families making less than $25,000 a year, 19 percent complete an associate degree or higher, compared with 76 percent of families earning $76,000 per year or more.
- The innovations range from creating high schools that offer an opportunity to take college courses for credit, to devoting senior English classes to writing college application essays, and holding parties to celebrate students who complete them. New York City has a $10 million grant from the Carnegie Corporation to develop extensive college counseling and connections with higher education institutions at 70 small high schools and three redesigned large ones.
- By the 1970s, academic standards were being lowered to make it easier to move large numbers students of different abilities toward the diploma that was considered sufficient education for most, the historians say.
- Today, however, some states are putting in place more rigorous high school exit exams, and students understand that a diploma no longer provides entry to the middle class. Over the past two decades, the percentage of low-income students who say they want a four-year degree or higher has tripled, rising to 66.2 percent in 2002, from 19.4 percent in 1980, according to federal statistics. And parents are stoking their children’s hopes.
- John Deasy, superintendent of public schools in Prince George’s County, said that he wants the students in his overwhelmingly low-income and minority district to have the same academic advantages as students in, say, Greenwich, Conn.
- So the district has added eight Advanced Placement classes to all 23 high schools, including some in schools that had never offered one. The one high school that has drawn students from the upper middle class already had 26 A.P. classes.
- “For a long time we believed in the ‘some kids’ agenda,” Dr. Deasy said. “Some kids will go to college, some kids will go to the work force, some kids can go to the military. That’s garbage. We believe that every kid can learn at a high level and that college is for every child.” He added, “If a student chooses not to go to college, that is O.K.”
- Many of the new efforts involve building close relationships with local higher education institutions. North Carolina, for example, is creating 70 new “early college” high schools, where students can take college classes.
- In 2005, 74.2 percent of the graduating seniors went on to post-secondary education: of those, 56 percent went to four-year colleges, 33 percent to two-year schools and 11 percent to advanced training, Mr. Travers said. The colleges at the top of the list: Bunker Hill Community College, the University of Massachusetts at Boston and Massachusetts Bay Community College.
From The New York Times, Urban Schools Aiming Higher Than Diploma, written by Sara Rimer
This sounds crazy. Many students will not go to college, have no interest in it. So we are going to force them to take courses that are not relevant? I can see many of them will drop out. Thus, this policy will have the opposite effect intended.
Rick, the research showed that most students who drop out claim boredom, not difficulty. So giving them more challenging courses should encourage them.
Moreover, this sort of curriculum was common back in the prewar years–when it was considered just decent education, not necessarily college-track. None of the “greatest generation” scoffed about how Shakespeare, geography, or trigonometry was “not relevant”.
You see, we are considering education as the development of the whole mind. It’s a full-workout mental regimen, not spot training. Brain research has shown that people who regularly exercise their minds in a variety of ways and subjects are less susceptible to age-related mental decline–their rate of Alzheimer’s and similar diseases is greatly reduced.
Still more: I defy you to make any reliable prediction of the future educational needs of any 14-year-old. Most college students haven’t made their final career choices–limiting a high schooler to a stripped-down curriculum based on “relevance” is about as profitable as playing the lottery.
Finally: some disciplines are best mastered young. Multiple-intelligence research has shown that math, for example, is most easily mastered prior to adulthood. And other research has shown that once a student completes an introductory calculus course, math skills do not decline very much even if they’re not practiced regularly. This data strongly suggests that all high school seniors should be completing a first-year calculus course!
Don’t misunderstand: I have great respect for job training. But the time and place for that is after one has been selected for a job. I still recall all of the money and time that went into the hot trade-school major of the 1960s–keypunch. Millions learned to create computer data cards, and those millions all needed retraining after a couple of decades passed and the floppy disk was invented.
Train ’em (like circus animals?) to do a particular job stunt, and they’ll likely need retraining after a few years. Educate them so that they can think, learn independently, and be self-motivated, and you might not need so much training and retraining.
I, on the other hand, find calculus and such classes to be a big waste of time and everything ese. Now, not necessarily for everyone, I’m all for having that class available for those who know they will need that class in the future, or just love math, but I’m in college right now, and I am so absolutely sick of all these kids who can do complicated mathmatics, but can’t carry on an intellegent, informed conversation about any issues which actually face them in their lives or current events, or anything that doesn’t have to do with britney spears or xbox it’s disgusting!
I dropped out of high school because even the honors classes are BS busy work (just a little faster-paced) and the kids were mostly idiots. Until the day where children are taught how to think critically about the world and their lives, and how to interact with the diverse people they’re around every day, and how to be responsible for their own work instead of having teachers controlling your study habits at all times, kids will still be going to college as zombies who only know how to regurgitate information, hold fast to their ignorant world views (as, those they’ve never critically analyze but only held unquestioningly because their family or friends did or just because they never thought about it!) who are suddenly forced to deal with people of different races, orientations, class, interests, and don’t know how to handle it, and who don’t know how to manage their time to deal with the teachers who aren’t spoon-feeding them every step of the way.
I’m a college student, and I’ve finally decided to take my English 101 class this quarter, and I’m in there with freshman, so I’m seeing this first hand, and it brings me physical pain. We tried to do a content analysis of some advertisements in girls magazines (which were very biased, sexist & heterosexist) and these kids, who saw those ads all the time, couldn’t find a single thing wrong with them. In fact, the add which had a girl running and was in front of one guy in the race and said “I started running to impress A boy, now I impress all the boys I pass” as a female empowerment ad, since the girl was sweaty and, as one guy put it “not hot”! The teacher and I wanted to puke.
So basically, yes, give ALL kids the equal opportunity to to get into college, but how about revising the college track to mean articulate, intelligent, open minded kids who developed a thirst for knowledge and an ability to analyze things critically. What happened to the colleges of old, people who loved learning and wanted to be brilliant went to college, while now middle and upper class high schools just dump their kids into it so they can get a job outside of mcdonalds, even though these kids have little interest in learning or much of a background to do it well – at least outside the math & science departments.
“….kids will still be going to college as zombies who only know how to regurgitate information, hold fast to their ignorant world views (as, those they’ve never critically analyze but only held unquestioningly because their family or friends did or just because they never thought about it!) who are suddenly forced to deal with people of different races, orientations, class, interests, and don’t know how to handle it…”
That’s what UD and Wright State are for.
For those kids who want to go to college where everyone is like them.
“revising the college track to mean articulate, intelligent, open minded kids who developed a thirst for knowledge and an ability to analyze things critically.”
High school graduates who vote intelligently and use credit wisely would be concrete examples of “analyzing things critically,” among others. How are schools doing? (Hint: “boneheaded” was the word some used to describe a recent endorsement that voters took to heart.)
Ameya, I hear what you are saying and I get the point of view, but every person has a place and it’s those people that recognize the talents of others and accept that those talents result in deficiencies in other areas will make the world a better place.
Your role in the environment described above would be to aid the mathematics people to provide a valuable service to the community while taking care of their lack of depth in other fields. A good coach or good manager recognizes the worth in everyone and attempts to elevate that portion of the person’s character while minimizing or managing the negative parts of the characteristics that conflict with a prosperous organization. We cannot all be stars, but we can have value. Britney can sing and the operation of an Xbox as well as breaking in to it and changing it to work for your needs are beneficial (IMHO) to society at large, because these things provide the opportunity to appreciate talents provided for the enjoyment of all that are blessed to recognize the talent. I cannot take pictures, but I can recognize people that can. Try to understand people and remember, we all make our own beds, just most whine when they have to lie in them.
Jeffery – WSU is nothing more than post High School I will admit, but its wide acceptance of personnel with handicaps taught me more than my homogeneous HS. I learned that people are all people regardless of the societal imposed labels. Greg Hunter WSU Geological Sciences 1986!
PS Ameya, write everything in a word processor and then use the spell checker.