Grade 13
Don’t miss J.B. Schramm and E. Kinny Zalesne in The Times on post-secondary preparation:
…the real revolution, tucked away in the Race to the Top guidelines released by the Department of Education last month, is that high school has a new mission. No longer is it enough just to graduate students, or even prepare them for college. Schools must now show how they increase both college enrollment and the number of students who complete at least a year of college. In other words, high schools must now focus on grade 13.
December 22nd, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Well, that’ll be a pretty neat trick. For states that sign on the CCSSI’s Common Core standards in hopes of getting RtT points for subscribing to common standards, the math standards may actually prevent students from getting in to college. The “college readiness” math standards which were released in September by CCSSI do not contain a majority of topics that are in algebra 2. Many 4 year universities in the US requires students to have 3 years of math, two of which are algebra 1 and 2, and the other geometry. The geometry standards are also fairly weak.
See http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/21/ED951B7LLP.DTL .
December 23rd, 2009 at 2:34 pm
This is a trend in the right direction. Let’s ratchet it up by holding colleges and universities accountable too — perhaps with exit examinations like those administered by their European peers.