By Jerry Dancis
1. My summary of
Dr. Ronald Williams, President, Prince George's Community College [PGCC]
presentation, at the September 6, 2006 meeting of the Prince George's County
Council's Blue Ribbon Committee on High Stakes Testing [State of Maryland
HSAs]:
The numbers of students needing
remediation went from 63% in 1999 to 71%
today. One eighth of the
PGCC budget is allocated to remediation.
Specifically, there is a remedial
math problem. Many students collect 40 credits at PGCC, but avoid the remedial
math courses and then drop out.
Many other students just take remedial courses and then drop out. There is a chasm between what students
are learning in high school math and what PGCC demands.
The bulk of the students at PGCC
were in the middle half of their high school graduation class, not the best and
not the worst.
2. At the Greenbelt Labor Day parade, I
was told that future plumbers and steel workers need instruction in Arithmetic.
3. Excerpts from:
The New York Times September 2, 2006
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/diana_jean_sch
emo/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
Mr. Walton is not unusual. As the
new school year begins, the nation’s 1,200 community colleges are being
deluged with hundreds of thousands of students unprepared for college-level
work.
Nearly half the 14.7 million
undergraduates at two- and four-year institutions never receive degrees. The
deficiencies turn up not just in math, science and engineering, areas in which
a growing chorus warns of difficulties in the face of global competition, but
also in the basics of reading and writing.
According to scores on the 2006
ACT college entrance exam, 21 percent of students applying to four-year
institutions are ready for college-level work in all four areas tested,
reading, writing, math and biology.
The unyielding statistics showcase
a deep disconnection between what high school teachers think that their
students need to know and what professors, even at two-year colleges, expect
them to know.
At Cal State, the system admits
only students with at least a B average in high school. Nevertheless, 37
percent of the incoming class last year needed remedial math, and 45 percent
needed remedial English.
“Students are still shocked
when they’re told they need developmental courses,’’ said
Donna McKusik, the senior director of developmental, or remedial, education at
the Community College of Baltimore County. “They think they graduated
from a high school, they should be ready for college.’’
Most of the students expect the
transition to community college to be seamless. But the first, and sometimes
last, stop for many are remedial math classes.
“It’s the math
that’s killing us,’’ Dr. McKusik said.
More than one in four remedial
students work on elementary and middle school arithmetic. Math is where
students often lose confidence and give up.
Along a wall [of the tutoring
center at the Community College of Baltimore County Dundalk’s campus] is
a rack of handouts explaining points of grammar that might have last been
explicitly taught in middle school, a measure of the immense ground to be made
up. One covers comparative adjectives, explaining “more” vs. “most”
or “smarter” vs. “smartest.” Another discusses using
pronouns and verb tenses.
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Note: The Community College of
Baltimore County is for Baltimore County, the suburbs of Baltimore; not to be
confused with Baltimore City Community College, wherein the remedial problem is
much worse.
4. Excerpts from:
"Gains in Houston Schools: How Real Are They?"
NY Times Front page December 3, 2003
Ezxcerpts:
"… Rosa Arevelo seemed the "Texas
miracle" in motion. …
she passed the high school exam required for graduation on her first try. A
program of college prep courses earned her the designation "Texas
scholar."
"Rosa Arevelo graduated from Davis High with a B
average."
"At the University of Houston, though, Ms. Arevelo
discovered the distance between what Texas public schools called success and
what she needed to know. ... She failed the college entrance exam in math
twice, even with a year of remedial algebra. At 19, she gave up and went to
trade school."