Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Schools need to prepare students
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Shanna Flowers is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
Shanna Flowers
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In June, thousands of Roanoke-area high school seniors adorned themselves in colorful caps and gowns and reveled in the pageantry of pomp and circumstance.
At commencements or other ceremonies for graduates, school administrators and principals saluted their students and waved many of them off to colleges and universities across the country.
But as some of those high school students settle into college life, a disappointing reality will wash over them. They'll realize they may not be as ready for college as they thought.
According to a national study released Monday called "Diploma to Nowhere," one-third of U.S. college students have to enroll in remedial classes to get up to speed on subjects they should have learned in high school.
Bringing the students up to snuff costs colleges and taxpayers between $2.3 billion and $2.9 billion a year, the study found.
The report, issued by the group Strong American Schools, analyzed federal data. What it showed is that 43 percent of community college students require remedial work, as do 29 percent of students enrolled at four-year public universities.
Education officials have a responsibility to ensure that teens going on to college have met the academic requirements that will provide them a successful transition into the rigors of higher learning.
In Virginia, the Governor's P-16 Education Council last year discussed aligning high school graduation and college entrance requirements at Virginia colleges.
Judging from the minutes of a council meeting last year, reconciling the high school and college requirements merits more than discussion.
It demands action.
An analysis conducted for the P-16 panel indicated that a Virginia high school student can graduate with a standard diploma without taking the courses recommended for admission to 15 of 16 public colleges and 18 to 20 of 22 private institutions. The main reason, according to the minutes, was that Virginia students can earn a standard diploma without taking a foreign language. Yet most Virginia colleges require or recommend two or more years of a foreign language.
The state has at least four different graduation diplomas, said attorney Angela Ciolfi, who works with children's issues for the Legal Aid Justice Center in Charlottesville.
But of the 78,500 Virginia students who graduated in 2007, 43 percent earned a standard diploma, and 51 percent received an advanced studies diploma, said the attorney, who follows state education issues.
Virginia has an obligation to its high school seniors to make a seamless transition from high school to college. The best way to do that is to make sure students are ready when they get there.
