News-Record.com

Not really very surprising if one reads the entire study. In the push, in this state at least, to get everyone "ready" for college, we end up getting very few actually ready for college. Having taught at both the high school and college level, it often seems to me that our more capable students come off to college more or less ready despite what has been done to them in high school. Continual testing has become a game of seeking the lowest competence level so everyone passes and any suggestion of academic rigor has become rather laughable on the broad scheme of high school education.

I have just sent this to the school board.
Bet I get no answer
Ok

Mission Possible, Aviation Academy, Culinary Academy, Engineering Acadamy, Health/Medical Academy Performing Arts Academy, Two year GTCC scholarship. Discipline Task Force, Advance placement Courses ( some with less than 10% passing ) Striving Achieving Excelling,( Business spent half a million dollars telling the world )
Low drop out Award, Thematic Goals, New Mission Statement, Core Values

Can we get some perspective and finish something?

Well over 30 percent never graduate.

Many that do cannot be considered literate in the 21st century
They read write and do arithmetic at an abysmal level.

We fiddle with awards, end of grade statistics, guide lines. No Child Left Behind.
Fancy misleading names for programs. You name it.
They cannot read write and do arithmetic.

GTCC’s largest division is Developmental. That is a Euphemism for Remedial.

I would challenge every member of the School Board. This fall to go spend a few days at GTCC in the Developmental Division. Talk to the administrators, full time faculty etc.
Look at English and Math 050,060,070. Just go look. Read the Text Books, take the placement exams yourself ( you might learn something ), Attend some classes. Observe what you have given us.

Get off your Butts and actually see, feel, touch, understand, what you are turning out
Go look. Never mind Dr. Zhang’s Statistics, Grier’s chest beating. Take in the real thing.
You decide then. Is this striving achieving excelling or throwing many of our children away. I bet you don’t have the courage or interest. Just Actually Look That’s what real leaders do.

Have any of you every actually gone and looked.

By the way don’t write it off as well, community college. Check with many of the regional 4 yr colleges and see what they tell you about remediation

Remember. This is after over 30% never made this far.

Now what all this means I think is that of those that start maybe we are managing to educate less than 30 to 40 % of them.
Stop taking credit for those and worry about the 60 to 70 percent we are throwing away.

Ms Fernandez Ms Josey Why don’t you go look. Write an article. Investigative reporting. Go to GTCC, Alamance Community, Randolph Community.
Beats hell out of all those reports ( I know you mean well ) that are just press releases

Not terribly well-written, grammatically, itself.

I read a lot of college papers. The quality has not improved in tweleve years, overall. Students are more proficient at cutting and pasting, but woefully unprepared from their high school days for developing a thesis, using analysis, or reaching coherent conclusions. The entire culture of sound bites and easy access to data has fostered the notion that writing is th accumulation of lists and factoids. Precious few adults model in their own speech and writing an ability to form arguments and back up opinions with logical, progressive syntax and syllogisms.

What to do? I suspect many teachers in high school are equally deficient in these intermediate-level thinking skills. We cannot expect them to impart effective tools for producing verbal critical analysis, which is what most college papers demand.

I read a lot of college papers. The quality has not improved in tweleve years, overall. Students are more proficient at cutting and pasting, but woefully unprepared from their high school days for developing a thesis, using analysis, or reaching coherent conclusions. The entire culture of sound bites and easy access to data has fostered the notion that writing is th accumulation of lists and factoids. Precious few adults model in their own speech and writing an ability to form arguments and back up opinions with logical, progressive syntax and syllogisms.

What to do? I suspect a good many teachers in middle-high school are equally deficient in these intermediate-level thinking skills. I would hope a good many more are capable of such work as high school teachers. The system, however, does not provide the incentives to prod those who develop curricula to address the slow, methodical, painstaking approach to rhetoric and logic that would bolster such learning. Having Latin for three years was a boon for me, I know.

College isn't the only issue.

The 70% that don't go on to college can't read,
write and do arithmetic. We have thrown them away.

They cannot add two fractions.

What is a syllogisms?
They can't do that either.

Syllogisms are basic "equations" (and sometimes "inequations" of a sort) of thought. Students must learn to hold two ideas simulataneously in abeyance while testing hypotheses. In fact, anyone who wants any kind of higher-level career or technical job must learn this skill.

If it is true that 70% of non-college-bound (does this include those who start but don't finish college?) cannot read beyond, say, third grade level; cannot write clear directions or statements of their own thoughts; and cannot do fractions, let alone algebraic substitutions, we can forget being a leader in the 21st century.