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April 10, 2007
Misaligned Priorities
Colleges rely on high schools to produce students who can do college-level work. But, according to a study released today, college professors and high-school educators don’t necessarily see eye-to-eye on what the curriculum for college-prepared students should be.
Related stories
- Assessing the P-16 Phenomenon, June 5
- Immediate Payback for College Grads, May 2
- Higher Ed and the High Schools, Jan. 23, 2007
- Time to Team Up with Teach For America, Nov. 17, 2006
- The Hot Choice, Post-College, May 26, 2006
The ACT’s National Curriculum Survey for 2005-2006 — given to secondary-school teachers, college educators, and remedial instructors — highlights a “misalignment” gap that has persisted for the 30 years it’s been given, said Cynthia B. Schmeiser, president and chief operating officer of the ACT’s education division. “We haven’t seen it really getting any bigger, nor have we seen it getting any smaller,” Schmeiser said, but she noted that conversation on the topic was increasing. “I think we’re in the right time and the right place for [using] this information.”
For most subject areas, the mismatch can be seen as one of a few essential concepts versus advanced content. According to the report, “High school teachers in all content areas (English/writing, reading, mathematics, and science) tended to rate far more content and skills as ‘important’ or ‘very important’ than did their postsecondary or remedial counterparts.”
In math, for example, college instructors preferred an understanding of the fundamentals to a focus on higher-level study, while high-school teachers placed greater emphasis on the latter, such as statistics and graphical representations — often, colleges fear, to the detriment of the basics. In the sciences, college educators believe an understanding of the scientific process and investigative methods is more important than knowledge of specific content areas — again, the opposite of teachers’ focus in high school.
In English, the survey suggests, high school instructors’ focus on the development of students’ ideas overlooks basic grammatical and syntactic skills — possibly leading to an increased need for remedial teaching at the college level. Reading had the least misalignment between secondary and first-year college instructors, but the survey suggests that the reading skills acquired at previous levels are not built upon in high school.
The ACT study evaluates efforts in a movement that some are dubbing “P-16.” The survey applies mainly to the high-schoolers who do not, despite the popular conception, take loads of AP classes and pay for college counseling: in other words, most American students. But ACT emphasized that college isn’t the only end goal. Bringing standards in line with what instructors in higher education value the most would also help students seeking to move directly into the work force, ACT officials said — “college readiness” being shorthand, as well, for “work readiness.” “The skill sets we’re looking at aren’t just for college,” said Jon Erickson, vice president for educational services at ACT.
To work toward bridging the gap between secondary teachers’ views of what is important and those of college instructors, the ACT report mentions several policy proposals. One concerns state standards. While the authors don’t attempt to distinguish between the quality of teaching and the standards that teaching is based on (another potential gap), they do note that the majority of teachers are at least “moderately familiar” with their standards and that “they are the foundation for each state’s curriculum and assessment efforts.” Rather than increase the number of standards, then, ACT recommends “fewer and more targeted state standards” that pinpoint key areas in which college educators believe depth, rather than breadth, is important.
Other suggestions include core course requirements and consistent assessment of college readiness to gauge student progress. Officials of ACT, which produces one of the two main college entrance exams in the country, don’t see a conflict of interest. “I suppose one could perceive that. The real issue is, what are the expectations and outcomes we want from secondary education,” Erickson said. He also suggested that college readiness skills be tested in existing state examinations.
Other noteworthy findings in the report:
- Remedial instructors tend to side with postsecondary educators in their ratings of what is most important in both math and reading.
- Most high-school teachers, in contrast to college instructors, believe their state standards prepare students for higher education.
- College educators perceive no real decline in high-school students’ level of preparedness, but secondary-school instructors think the situation has gotten worse over the years.
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Comments
Jane’s comments
I would like to second Jane’s quiet observation about the reading gap that exists between high school and college. Students who arrive in college today—especially at “second tier” schools—are reading well below the level they need to be reading at to handle their first-year instruction. Students read aloud in my freshman composition sections, and I’m struck by how many of them are “sounding out” three-syllable words. Others read scarcely well enough to understand sentences as complete thoughts. It is ironic (and misplaced, I fear) to have writing-intensive curricula without having reading-intensive curricula as well. As an English professor, I don’t wish to give my peers more to do, but I fear that the “misaligned priorities” extend to our lack of respect for reading as the most demanding and necessary of college-entrance skills.
Larry Shillock, Assistant Academic Dean, at 8:41 am EDT on April 10, 2007
Reaching Students
As a developmental writing teacher in a community college, I find the most disturbing deficit to be the almost total lack of abstract thinking in my students, as if there is a short circuit in the connection between what they learned and how they think. This shows itself in their failure to be able to summarize or “get” a story, as well as in their inability to analyze the language to be able to use it in writing organized essays, the common coin of college-level assessment. Connected to this problem is the lack of disciplined thinking, so that they give up trying if the solution requires continued and careful cognition. The problem of discipline in general also rears its ugly head — so many developmental students are not ready to accept the fact that they are responsible for their learning — they expect to be passive and still pass. The solutions, of course, are complicated and must be individualized, since ultimately they result from individual teaching and learning styles. In the classroom the teaching/learning equation results from how we interact with our knowledge and the students’ lack of knowledge. We have to examine all the probably causes of what disturbs us, but in the end we have to connect with our subject and get the students to connect with their desire to learn.
Ray Orkwis, Instructor at Northern Virginia Community College, at 9:45 am EDT on April 10, 2007
I agree with the first two comments...
...but I’m not totally sure that the intent of the study’s authors (at least not in terms of what was presented in this article) was to say that there isn’t a gap between how well college freshmen read and how well they NEED to read — I think it was more that college faculty and high school faculty have a smaller divide between their ideas of what constitutes the necessary reading skills than there is between how the two groups think about math skills, for instance.
Regine, Doc student at NYU, at 9:45 am EDT on April 10, 2007
Even in elite colleges and universities, the most conspicuous deficiency of entering students is their inability to construct, analyze, appraise, and counter even simple arguments. Since standardized tests (e.g., the SAT, AP, IB, etc.) attach little or no importance to this indispensable skill, most secondary schools give no systematic instruction in non-mathematical reasoning. Worse, most institutions of higher learning do not make remediation a priority. Except for the lucky few — who seek out or happen into appropriate electives (e.g., “Critical Thinking", “Argumentation") or are competently and intensively mentored — recipients of the bachelor’s degree are likely to be as logic-challenged as they were on matriculation.
DLR, at 11:50 am EDT on April 10, 2007
I disagree with ACT officials that college readiness is shorthand for work readiness. Until academia includes businesses in the process of alignment of priorities, we will continue to produce college and high school graduates who are not work ready. I have hired graduates at both levels and more often than not, they do not have the soft skills required for success in a job or career. The Education community should stop operating in a silo and be much more inclusive of the ultimate consumer of their product, businesses who hire graduates. The survey sadly shows no real progress in aligning priorities between secondary and college level curriculum, but I would add we are still not preparing a competitive workforce either, and perhaps a change in the alignment discussion to include businesses might produce a different and better result.
Mary, at 11:50 am EDT on April 10, 2007
As a Reference Librarian, I am constantly aware that most high school students are not taught the basics of locating information either in a library or on the internet. They seem to assume that all information is equally valid. I want to underline the concept that basics in scholarly processes need to be instilled continually at the lower levels so that when students get to the content of higher level courses — or go out into the work world — they have the skill set needed to think critically. Knowledge is important, but the ability to learn and grow from content is essential and should be taught continually over the K-12 years. It can then be refined in higher education or in the work place for the person’s chosen work area or discipline.
Karen Chobot, Librarian at NDSCS, at 11:56 am EDT on April 10, 2007
The Pendulum Swings
An interesting pendulum swing from Albert Kitzhaber’s Themes, Theories, and Therapy: The Teaching Of Writing in College, The Report Of The Dartmouth Study Of Student Writing (1963), which descried the descent of rhetoric and writing instruction into a focus on grammar, syntax, and structures rarely larger than paragraphs. It’s as if the ACT study levels an indirect critique on high school teachers getting it right and over-correcting the preparatory focus toward content and thought while short-changing a mastery of the surface features. The rub, of course, is in the balance. Another, less charitable but perhaps a little true, interpretation is that college writing teachers want their secondary school counterparts to leave invention, logic, and organization to them so that those with five classes and 130-students-a-day can focus their charges on correct sentences and judicious word choice. Unfortunately, if kids hammer exclusively at scales and etudes for the right and left hands, the vast numbers will have little experience with and joy in the composition and performance of real music.
Philoctetes, at 11:56 am EDT on April 10, 2007
The Real Report Card
Are Highschools Failing Students or Colleges Failing its Graduates?
Isn’t it the responsibility of colleges and universities to prepare our high school teachers?
If there is such a concern, address it while you can! Don’t give someone a degree in secondary education and then complain that you don’t like what you’ve produced.
As universities, we are not only charged with the responsibility of preparing our next and newest generation of teachers, we’ve also taken on the role of providing continuing and lifelong education to those who wish to remain in the field.
Teachers aren’t the only ones who should be graded in this regard.
T. Yang, at 12:51 pm EDT on April 10, 2007
Mary, you get what you pay for
Mary,As an educator I don’t turn people into products; I’ll leave that to the corporate sector. But, if we did, as you imagine, then why aren’t businesses paying institutions directly for these products?
In addition, I think educators will be much more open to input from corporations and business as soon as educators are placed on the boards of directors of these institutions and they take input from them. Businesses could ask “How can we best use the education—the knowledge, skills and dispositions—that students acquire?", instead of feeling entitled to having our education system provide free training to suit their purposes. Corporations have been feeding at the free trough of public education for so long that they now believe—like Mary— that the purpose of education is to manufacture products for their (free) use. Universities are not inexpensive labor force sorters or free training programs for coporations, but if you think they are, then you better be prepared to pay a lot more for the product. Remember, there’s no free lunch, and you get what you pay for.
Corporate Boardmember To Be, at 12:51 pm EDT on April 10, 2007
Whose priorities are misaligned?
Philoctetes has hit on something important.
The study suggests that the college professors have naive, unrealistic and very old-fashioned expectations that mastering mechanics should and can be separated from using the knowledge in a meaningful way. Learning doesn’t work that way. For instance, learning to read is always learning to read *something* and one’s skill in reading a particular kind of text develops hand in hand with one’s knowledge of the subject matter. Similarly mastery of mechanics in both math and writing works best when those mechanics are being used to figure something out or prove something (in the case of math) or to express something (in the case of writing) that genuinely matters to the student.In this case, it looks as if the high school teachers, not the college professors, are the people who genuinely understand the educational needs of the students.
Laurence Miller, Director of Distance Learning and Continuing Education at Westchester Institute for Human Development, at 1:11 pm EDT on April 10, 2007
Bad writing
Someone offers to take you on a lovely ride in town. You get in his car. He then proceeds to scrape the vehicle next to him as he pulls out of the parking space. He runs a stop sign, skids past a stop sign, and bumps the car in front of him. By this point instead of seeing the sights you are thinking, “Good God! What next?” You arrive back at your starting place and he says, “Wasn’t that a lovely collection of buildings and parks?” You reply, “What collection?”
Well, language is a vehicle which is supposed to show us something. Bad grammar (e.g.: comma splices, run-on sentences, sentence fragments, mixed tenses, etc.) are like the bad driving above: one can’t pay attention to the content because of the bad “style.” Too much of the college-level writing I see is replete with such errors. This is inexcusable. From grammar school to high school to the university it is up to all of us to insist that students learn to write properly and to bend every effort to that end. Clarity of thinking and clarity of writing go together. Stifle their lovely thoughts? It won’t matter how lovely our students’ thoughts are if no one can understand them or appreciate them.
Mario D. Mazzarella, Professor, at 2:17 pm EDT on April 10, 2007
Understanding Language
Professor Mazzarella,You fail to make any logical connection whatsoever between “proper” writing and “understanding” and “appreciation". There’s no necessary link between adhering to (outmoded) grammatical rules and understanding or appreciation. I can understand IM language, not to mention spoken language, just fine—thank you very much—without these varieties adhering to the anachronistic, romantic revival-inspired grammar rules of written Standard American English. I can even appreciate the creativity and economy of these forms not to mention, in the later case, its lyrical qualities that are not impeded by avoiding ending a sentence with a preposition or splitting infinitives. If you fail to understand and appreciate what so many other language users clearly do, that is your limitation, not the language’s or its users. Or, would you say, for instance, that Fijian (or Baoan) is “improper” because you cannot understand or appreciate it?
Linguaphile, at 3:20 pm EDT on April 10, 2007
Theory vs. Practice
The argument surrounding this article seems to have descended into linguistic theory and the problem of language change. The problem is that our students are sometimes smart, they just cannot express themselves using standard language. In order to be successful in the world (business or otherwise) people must be able to communicate with each other. This is the reason we have standards of use which lag behind less formal writing styles.
Yes, as a native speaker I may be able to decipher the writing of my college student who is spelling phonetically. However, I would not expect the Austrian professor he will have for higher-level instruction or the Chinese businessman she will encounter in her career to be able to understand... nor will they take that time.
writing instructor, at 7:20 pm EDT on April 10, 2007
Concurrent Enrollment Bridges the Gap
An important component to bridging the schism between high school teachers and college instructors is the presence of concurrent enrollment programs linking the faculty together. Colleges and universities that partner with high schools to offer introductory college courses bridge the divide because the high school teachers work directly with the higher education faculty to maintain standards and evaluate student performance according to the higher educationrequirements. The National Alliance for Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships, http://nacep.org/,provides accreditation standards that ensure that such partnership programs truly serve the students in preparing them to function at the level they will need to perform when they enter higher education.
Dianne Siegfreid, President at National Alliance for Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships, at 10:35 am EDT on April 12, 2007
IB
Just a quick note — I don’t think it’s fair to lump the International Baccalaureate (IB) program with the rest of these “standards” tests. While IB does require the students to write exams that are standard in the program, there are many more assessment tools used to come up with a student’s grade. The IB program focuses both on the skills and the higher thinking, making it the best preparatory program available for high school students, hands down.
Glenn Finn, IB does not equal the rest, at 9:45 am EDT on May 15, 2007
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Interesting. . . . My college had a highly successful symposium with local high school English teachers this fall, and one thing that concerned us was the lack of emphasis on basic grammar and writing skills, as these are the lowest priority on the state-mandated tests. Maybe we should get back to teaching high school subjects in high school instead of trying to pretend that we can give high school students college-level courses.
I suspect the reading gap is far greater than this study shows. My colleagues in other departments are constantly in despair over the fact that students can’t—or won’t—read.
Jane, at 8:06 am EDT on April 10, 2007