At Temple, There Really Is No Child Left Behind, Unless You Missed Sped Registration
Thank you, George W., for successfully molding a stupider nation. Nearly half of incoming college freshmen going from Philly high schools and into state and community colleges were placed in remedial classes this school year, also known as (if you remember your high school lingo) the sped English and Math courses. Oof. We saw this story yesterday, and we wondered how this shakes out in reality on local college campuses. What we found was alarming and kinda sad: Temple, for example, is offering no less than eight remedial English courses this summer — and they’re all full. Lil’ Conrad, we’ll never poke fun at you again.
Inky: Generation Duh
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:26 pm
As a Temple student (100 yrs ago), I placed out of sped English and into Sped Math, so I guess I’m only half sped. My math skills are still atrocious to this day.
January 23rd, 2009 at 3:01 pm
No reason to single out Temple – these kids end up everywhere. The problem is the test/hurdle/product mentality most people have about school (some of the adults running the schools included, sadly) – as long as people see the degree as a hurdle they need to get over and a product that they pay for, those English scores are not going to go up since the crucial piece is the ability to critically engage with ideas, not whether you know the difference between a nadir and a zither.
Temple is doing what it should – offering students a chance to learn what they should have been taught previously. My guess is that it’s not really possible to duct tape a shoddy high school education with a few classes though – and I’m pretty sure that the demonstration of that is the discrepancy between Temple’s acceptance and graduation numbers.
Check this out for some real thinking (and some jokes):
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html
January 23rd, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Temple, and other area schools, are exploiting a middle class illusion that you have to go right into a four year school after high to “make it.” Four year schools, particularly research universities, don’t serve these students well despite stop-gap summers schools or whatever the remedial remedy of the academic year may be. More frustrating, a lot of grant money and tuition is squandered on token developmental language/math staffs and quasi-faculties who are then faced with a larger institutional culture that wishes the problems these token band aid experts are supposed to remedy would just go away.
It would be much better for students if guidance counselors in high schools got off the four year placement figures and directed these students toward community colleges which have traditionally had greater expertise in building the skills to attend a four year school (or do something else) for a much lower cost.