ACTA's Must-Reads
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It's time to ACT, not gamble with our future
A 1 in 4 chance in a Las Vegas casino is risky. But when that 1 in 4 represents the class of 2011 high school graduates who met key benchmarks to prepare them for college, we're gambling with something far more important than money.
We're gambling with our future.
In a piece for the Washington Post, columnist Valerie Strauss brings to light the dire situation at our nation's schools:
"Only 25 percent of the graduates in the class of 2011 who took the ACT exam met or surpassed all four of the ACT College Readiness Benchmarks in English, math, reading and science. The 2010 figure was 24 percent, which ACT calls progress but others might consider relatively flat.
The college readiness benchmarks are the minimum ACT test scores required for students to have a high probability of success in credit-bearing college courses -- English composition, social sciences courses, college algebra or biology. They are based on grades earned by students in college."
According to Strauss, only two-thirds of all ACT-tested high school graduates met the English College Readiness Benchmark. Only about half of students met the reading and math benchmarks. And less than a third met the science benchmark.
Of course, we could take heart if colleges and universities helped to make up for these deficiencies. But our research suggests the contrary. Results from our 2010-2011 What Will They Learn? project on general education requirements, found that:
-More than 20 percent of colleges and universities surveyed did not require a writing-intensive composition course as part of their core curriculum.
-Only 61 percent required a college-level math course.
-Less than 5 percent had an economics requirement.
-Only 28 percent of public institutions and a shockingly low 5 percent of private institutions required even a single broad survey course in American history or government.
And we'll be rolling out 2011-12 results later this month at on the What Will They Learn? website.
It's not surprising many students enter the workplace unprepared when both high school and college are failing them.
Posted by dburnett on August 23, 2011 at August 23, 2011 01:15 PM
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