Class Biases in U.S. Higher Education?
Many Going to College Aren't Ready, Report Finds
By TAMAR LEWIN
Only about half of this year's high school graduates have the reading skills they need to succeed in college, a study has concluded.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/17/education/17scores.html?th&emc=th
...................................................................
It is a pretty established fact that many students diverted to community colleges tend to settle for the lesser career options available there. The report here on the lack of readiness of more than half of U.S. students heading to college would suggest that CUNY (its board) has introduced a class bias in its denial of remediation to students otherwise qualified to begin their studies in our senior colleges. All the boasting about raising standards sounds extremely hollow to this worker in the CUNY vineyards for nearly 4 decades against a background of personal study and teaching in the Seven Sisters and Ivies. Check this out with our CUNY expert on such things, Bill Crain, who has been our faculty voice in this particular wilderness. Shame!
I well remember in my own day the struggle that most public school grads had at Yale during their first year to catch up to the super prepped. But they did. And I saw the same phenomenon at Brooklyn College where I started teaching in the opening year of 1970 when minority students were welcomed aboard for the first time. A number of those who needed help at first have gone on to distinguished careers. And we have in the college been pioneering the ways to get students on board and keep them there. Bill Crain's figures have indicated that needing some remediation help is no bar to succeeding in a four year college career -- and much more likely to head one into a law school than a para-legal program.
Perhaps someone will pass this comment on to the CUNY list of which I am not a member? I have sent it widely by blind copy, including to the trustees. Let me add that I appreciate the efforts of our CUNY administrators to ameliorate this situation by making summer catch up programs available to students who need remediation and loosening the articulation obligations for students trying to transfer from our community colleges to senior ones without being obliged to repeat introductory materials such as those entailed by our Brooklyn Core program.
But it is absurd for a major public university serving an abysmally crippled public school system to manifest pretensions of excellence based on barring from admission to its senior colleges those both most needing and deserving of same. I need not detail the none too covert racist as well as classist overtones underlying these barriers to truly open enrollment.
Let me add that as a long time teacher of CUNY students I have learned, as most of us, to assess our students abilities and needs, particularly in our introductory courses. I will be teaching one again this fall. My discovery tactic is a to ask a short (one page) paper asking students to outline the arguments in Descartes' brief first meditation. This gives me a reading on their comprehension skills. I then proceed on to student reading of the Meditations paragraph by paragraph with an explanation by the reader of the content. This further assesses their reading and comprehension abilities. We do other things simultaneous with this reading process to keep the classes from being dull and I use the text as a jump off point for other things of interest such as the various arguments and counter arguments for the existence of G-d -- the proper place to deal with the design argument -- not in Biology 101. Will use this as an occasion to point out this nonsense, too, this fall.
Not infrequently I and others are obliged to help our students get on board with the skills not taught in any but our super high schools, e.g. researching and writing in depth papers. I spend quite a bit of time trying prep my students with doing 20 pp. research papers (I used to ask for 30 pp.) which most have never done, even in college, as so many of their teachers now are part-time, overloaded adjuncts who can muster little more than a hastily read mid term and final exam. I do not penalize my students for late papers and sometimes work with them during intersessions and summer breaks. The under funding of CUNY and most North American colleges is cheating students as much as the comparable under funding of their prior public school educations. The dirty little non secret in NYC is that one must either make it into a super school or else go to a private one to get properly prepared for college -- those stats reported in the NY Times article.
P.S. I have upgraded my Norton Security so that this is hopefully free of the newest virus monsters.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
--
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivacyRights
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net/blognews.asp
By TAMAR LEWIN
Only about half of this year's high school graduates have the reading skills they need to succeed in college, a study has concluded.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/17/education/17scores.html?th&emc=th
...................................................................
It is a pretty established fact that many students diverted to community colleges tend to settle for the lesser career options available there. The report here on the lack of readiness of more than half of U.S. students heading to college would suggest that CUNY (its board) has introduced a class bias in its denial of remediation to students otherwise qualified to begin their studies in our senior colleges. All the boasting about raising standards sounds extremely hollow to this worker in the CUNY vineyards for nearly 4 decades against a background of personal study and teaching in the Seven Sisters and Ivies. Check this out with our CUNY expert on such things, Bill Crain, who has been our faculty voice in this particular wilderness. Shame!
I well remember in my own day the struggle that most public school grads had at Yale during their first year to catch up to the super prepped. But they did. And I saw the same phenomenon at Brooklyn College where I started teaching in the opening year of 1970 when minority students were welcomed aboard for the first time. A number of those who needed help at first have gone on to distinguished careers. And we have in the college been pioneering the ways to get students on board and keep them there. Bill Crain's figures have indicated that needing some remediation help is no bar to succeeding in a four year college career -- and much more likely to head one into a law school than a para-legal program.
Perhaps someone will pass this comment on to the CUNY list of which I am not a member? I have sent it widely by blind copy, including to the trustees. Let me add that I appreciate the efforts of our CUNY administrators to ameliorate this situation by making summer catch up programs available to students who need remediation and loosening the articulation obligations for students trying to transfer from our community colleges to senior ones without being obliged to repeat introductory materials such as those entailed by our Brooklyn Core program.
But it is absurd for a major public university serving an abysmally crippled public school system to manifest pretensions of excellence based on barring from admission to its senior colleges those both most needing and deserving of same. I need not detail the none too covert racist as well as classist overtones underlying these barriers to truly open enrollment.
Let me add that as a long time teacher of CUNY students I have learned, as most of us, to assess our students abilities and needs, particularly in our introductory courses. I will be teaching one again this fall. My discovery tactic is a to ask a short (one page) paper asking students to outline the arguments in Descartes' brief first meditation. This gives me a reading on their comprehension skills. I then proceed on to student reading of the Meditations paragraph by paragraph with an explanation by the reader of the content. This further assesses their reading and comprehension abilities. We do other things simultaneous with this reading process to keep the classes from being dull and I use the text as a jump off point for other things of interest such as the various arguments and counter arguments for the existence of G-d -- the proper place to deal with the design argument -- not in Biology 101. Will use this as an occasion to point out this nonsense, too, this fall.
Not infrequently I and others are obliged to help our students get on board with the skills not taught in any but our super high schools, e.g. researching and writing in depth papers. I spend quite a bit of time trying prep my students with doing 20 pp. research papers (I used to ask for 30 pp.) which most have never done, even in college, as so many of their teachers now are part-time, overloaded adjuncts who can muster little more than a hastily read mid term and final exam. I do not penalize my students for late papers and sometimes work with them during intersessions and summer breaks. The under funding of CUNY and most North American colleges is cheating students as much as the comparable under funding of their prior public school educations. The dirty little non secret in NYC is that one must either make it into a super school or else go to a private one to get properly prepared for college -- those stats reported in the NY Times article.
P.S. I have upgraded my Norton Security so that this is hopefully free of the newest virus monsters.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
--
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivacyRights
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net/blognews.asp
posted by Ed Kent at 10:53 AM
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