The failure of our present system of secondary education can be seen on two equally destructive fronts: in the form of dropouts whose futures include very little hope for prosperity, and in the form of actual graduates, who put in their time in high school but nonetheless emerge unable to compete long-term in the growing economy without intensive training or additional education. By identifying struggling students early, addressing their needs, keeping them engaged, and continuously challenging those who are succeeding, we can begin to address these problems.
We know, for example, that hundreds of thousands of eighth graders will each year enter high school lacking basic literacy skills (not to mention basic math skills and a working knowledge of the scientific method, American history, civics, and so on). These students will be considered "at-risk" from the moment they set foot on the high school campus. That is, they are at risk of never making it to graduation. Many will grow frustrated with an outdated high school that doesn't feel relevant to their future lives, and many will never become engaged academically in their high school setting because they don't have the basic skills to be productive students. The sense of hopelessness and disenfranchisement they feel in high school will only be magnified when they leave school early and face the realities of modern life. Too many of these students, failed by the education system, will face bleak prospects in the future.
Even students who do graduate with a high school diploma are not necessarily guaranteed the future they may have thought awaited them. For Chris, a high school degree was not enough to sustain a viable lifestyle for him and his family. Moreover, many students who do choose to continue their education and enroll in institutions of higher learning are quickly jolted by the realization that the K – 12 education they fought so hard to complete did not adequately prepare them for the academic rigor they are soon confronted with.
College-Readiness and Remediation
All of the studies on dropouts and the hopelessness and detachment from economic and civic life that they face have the potential of diverting our attention from another problem that looms just as large. Many of our students who do make it through high school and leave with a diploma are themselves not adequately trained to be able to lead a productive life in a rapidly expanding global economy. Our nation's high school graduates do seem to understand that some sort of postsecondary education is crucial to their futures, even if they aren't adequately prepared for higher-level academic work. The U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that 65.8 percent of high school graduates from the class of 2006 nationwide enrolled in colleges or universities.13 Unfortunately, this doesn't mean they were prepared to handle college-level academic work. Far from it.
Of those American students who earn a high school diploma, only about half are up to the job of being a college student. A recent study of high school juniors and seniors taking the ACT college entrance exam, for example, showed that only about 50 percent were prepared for college-level reading assignments in core subjects such as math, history, science, and English.14
When the increased demand for postsecondary education is coupled with the poor preparation many students receive in high school, it is perhaps not surprising that higher education institutions are being forced to offer, and often require, remedial courses to large numbers of students. These classes have the sole objective of teaching precollegiate subject matter. Richard Lee Colvin, the executive director of the Hechinger Institute on Education and Media at Teachers College, wrote in a 2005 op-ed piece:
These are the students who met every high school requirement, scoring higher grades than most of their classmates in courses the academic establishment said would prepare them for the future.
That was a lie.
Yes, these students have the required credentials. But they don't have the skills. They won't comprehend what they read in college well enough to jump into classroom discussions. They can't write analytically. They'll find college-level math over their heads. The California State University system this year required 58 percent of its freshmen to take remedial classes in math or writing, or both, while acknowledging that such classes do a lousy job of helping laggards catch up. In fact, those who take one remedial class are twice as likely to drop out of school, and those who take two rarely finish.
Free and open to all, the public school system tricks students into believing they've been well educated, then shoves them into higher education, where learning is rationed by cost and capacity. And despite the decades-long effort to beef up academic demands and the tens of billions of dollars spent to open college doors to students who can't pay on their own, the percentage of U.S. college students who eventually earn degrees has been about the same since the 1970s.15
Across the nation, a National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) report estimated that 42 percent of community college freshmen and 20 percent of freshmen in four-year public institutions enroll in at least one remedial course.16 We're talking about nearly a third of all college freshmen having to take courses to learn basic skills they were supposed to have mastered in high school. Remember, these are supposedly our best and brightest high school students. Community colleges already bear the greatest share of the remediation burden, and trends indicate that their responsibilities in this arena are likely to grow. Nearly a dozen states, for example, have passed laws preventing or discouraging public four-year institutions from offering remedial courses to their students, thus having the effect of concentrating unprepared students in community colleges.17
Analyses of students' preparation for college-level work show the weakness of core skills such as basic study habits and the ability to understand and manage complicated material. The lack of preparation is also apparent in multiple subject areas; of community college freshmen taking remedial courses, 35 percent were enrolled in math, 23 percent in writing, and 20 percent in reading.18
Sadly, the very same students who need remediation are more likely to leave college without a degree. Research shows that the leading predictor that a student will drop out of college is the need for remedial reading. Although 58 percent of students who take no remedial education courses earn a bachelor's degree within eight years, only 17 percent of students who enroll in a remedial reading course receive a B.A. or B.S. within the same time period.19
Even more alarming is the fact that just 11 percent of all college freshmen are African American and 7 percent are Hispanic, although these populations make up 14 and 17 percent of the eighteen-year-old population, respectively.20 Their completion rate is even lower. In 2005, just 40.5 percent of African American students and 47 percent of Latino students enrolled in college graduated within six years, compared to 59.5 percent of white students.21 What we see from these statistics, in part, is the result of disproportionate level of college readiness among student subgroups, as illustrated in Figure 2.1.
Not even high school teachers are particularly optimistic about what their students will be able to accomplish once they go off to college. Though 71 percent of students plan to go to a four-year college, only 52 percent of parents and 32 percent of teachers think the student will actually enroll.22 In a wide- ranging survey of American teachers in 2007 by the National School Boards Association, nearly one in four teachers in urban schools said most of their students "would not be successful" at a community college or university. An additional 18 percent of teachers said they weren't sure.23 This is a particularly gloomy assessment from those who work with our young people every day, and it illustrates a significant "expectation gap" between students and those charged with educating them.
The numbers seem to match what many of us have been hearing anecdotally for years. Anyone who knows a college professor teaching undergraduates has undoubtedly heard the instructor lament the sorry state of preparedness among students—like the art history professor who spends half a semester teaching her students how to write a basic term paper, so that in the second half of the semester they can actually begin writing about art history. I know another professor who was assigned to teach a course called Challenges in Government and was assured by college administrators that the students taking the course were advanced enough to at least name the three branches of government. What happened? You guessed it. The professor, teaching this high-level course, was required to start the semester by having to reteach the three branches of government—a lesson his students were supposed to have been taught in grade school.
With so many of our students seeming to be so similarly unprepared, however, it is difficult to pin the blame solely on the students themselves. With this much remediation required for basic academic skills from coast to coast, it is obvious that our outdated high schools must shoulder a good deal of the blame. These "academic do-overs" for college students come at a tremendous cost to taxpayers. The Alliance for Excellent Education conservatively estimated that the nation would realize an additional $3.7 billion annually in combined reduced expenditures and increased earnings if more students who graduated from high school were actually prepared for community-college-level work.24 Moreover, if the nation's high schools and colleges raise the graduation rates of Hispanic, African American, and Native American students to the level of white students by 2020, the potential increase in personal income across the nation would add, conservatively, more than $310 billion to the U.S. economy.25
Once again, this highlights how important it is that we transform our high schools to ensure that we get the job done right the first time.
A number of components contribute to the high price that colleges, students and their families, and taxpayers pay to get students up to speed for postsecondary education. Colleges must pay faculty to teach the remedial courses; furnish the classroom space; and supply a variety of support services, including counseling, administrative support, parking, facilities maintenance, and so on. Because of tradeoffs required by limited space and resources, schools must often reduce the number of nonremedial courses offered to students, higher-level courses that would impart greater benefits to the community and its economy.
Through tuition, students and their families directly pay about one-fifth of the overall cost of remediation. This relatively small portion totals approximately $ 283 million in community college tuition alone, but it is not the only cost. Another factor is students' time, which could be more productively spent taking college-level courses that advance their goals and increase their earning potential. Because many colleges offer no credit for remedial courses, students are expending energy in study that, though necessary, delays the quest for a degree.
Taxpayers are conservatively estimated to pay a billion dollars a year to cover the direct and indirect instructional costs of community college remedial courses through the subsidies community colleges receive from state and local governments. These tax dollars are in addition to the taxes allocated to support communities' secondary schools. Thus, taxpayers are essentially paying twice for the coursework and skill development students are expected to receive in high school.
Businesses, in particular, are bearing the financial brunt of having to train workers in basic skills they should have learned in high school. By one estimate—the result of a survey conducted in cooperation with 113 employers across the state (on the condition of anonymity)—businesses in Michigan spend approximately $40 million per year teaching their workers how to read, write, and perform basic math functions.26 The next time you go shopping for a new American-made car, consider that the sticker price may include not just the cost of building the car but also the cost of reeducating a workforce that was failed by its high schools. Even more important, consider that the lack of a quality education in parts of Michigan, as well as other parts of the country, is contributing to the slow collapse of our own national manufacturing industry—particularly the automobile industry.
Clearly, businesses are important stakeholders in our education systems, and they rise or fall with the quality of the education that is being delivered to American students. How important is a better educated workforce for American corporations? Many of our nation's major corporations annually petition for growing numbers of H1B visas (the official U.S. work visa for international professionals and students) to enable skilled foreigners to move to the United States and keep the company competitive, while retaining headquarters on American soil. Even American manufacturing companies, formerly regular employers of high school dropouts, cannot adequately staff positions; more than 80 percent of those surveyed in 2005 reported a moderate-to-severe shortage of qualified workers.27
Notes
13 U.S. Department of Labor, 2006.
14 ACT. Reading Between the Lines: What the ACT Reveals About College Readiness in Reading. Iowa City, Iowa: ACT, 2006.
15 Colvin, R. L. "Congratulations! You're About to Fail." Los Angeles Times, Jan. 2, 2005.
16 NCES. The Condition of Education 2004, Indicator 31: Remedial Coursetaking. Washington, D. C.: NCES, U.S. Department of Education, 2004.
17 Jenkins, D. and Boswell, K. State Policies on Community College Remedial Eduction: Findings from a National Survey. Denver, Colo.: Education Commission of the States, 2002.
18 NCES. The Condition of Education 2004, Indicator 31: Remedial Coursetaking. Washington, D. C.: NCES, U.S. Department of Education, 2004.
19 National Center for Education Statistics [NCES] (2004). The condition of education 2004, indicator 18: Remediation and degree completion, washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.
20 Alliance for Excellent Education. "Demography as Destiny: How America Can Build a Better Future," (Issue Brief), Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education, Oct, 2006.
21 Alliance for Excellent Education. "Demography as Destiny: How America Can Build a Better Future," (Issue Brief), Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education, Oct, 2006.
22 Metropolitan Life Insurance. The Metropolitan Life Survey of the American Teacher: Are We Preparing Students for the 21st Century? The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company: New York, NY, 2000.
23 Perkins, B. K. Where We Teach: The CUBE Survey of Urban School Climate. National School Board Association, Alexandria, VA, Mar. 2007.
24 AEE. "Paying Double: Inadequate High Schools and Community College Remediation." (Issue Brief.) Washington, D.C.: AEE, Aug. 2006.
25 Alliance for Excellent Education. "Demography as Destiny: How America Can Build a Better Future," (Issue Brief), Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education, Oct, 2006.
26 Greene, J. The Cost of Remedial Education: How Much Michigan Pays When Students Fail to Learn Basic Skills. Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Midland, MI.: 2000.
27 National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). 2005 Skills Gap Report: A Survey of the American Manufacturing Workforce. Washington, D.C.: NAM, 2005
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