Last March, I blogged about a Chronicle of Higher Education survey that pointed up the disconnection between secondary and post-secondary faculty about how well students are prepared for the university. The survey found that respondents found that secondary and post-secondary faculty had very different ideas about how well students were prepared for the university:
| Somewhat or very well prepared in writing: | |
| Secondary | 85% |
| Post-secondary | 53% |
| Somewhat or very well prepared in reading: | |
| Secondary | 82% |
| Post-secondary | 58% |
| Somewhat or very well prepared in research skills: | |
| Secondary | 79% |
| Post-secondary | 46% |
There was also a marked difference in workload:
|
Hours of work outside of class expected of students per week
|
||
|
|
High-school teachers
|
College professors
|
|
6 or more
|
17%
|
48%
|
|
3 to 5
|
55%
|
46%
|
|
None to 2
|
28%
|
6%
|
I predicted the survey wouldn’t have an impact, because few secondary school faculty read the Chronicle, and I was correct. I saw this study mentioned only on university-related blogs. However, thanks to Ken DeRosa, I found this hot of the presses ACT study (did I ever mention how much I hate pdf files?) Ken says:
But aren’t college professors looking for creative students? Apparently, not.
It’s a university, not a performance art school.
What about math and science? Don’t college professors want students who can think outside the box and who have higher order thinking skills? Er, no.
We might feel a bit more disposed toward "higher order thinking skills" if students could write in grammatical sentences and knew without reaching for a calculator that two and two are four. But let’s turn to the study. First, preparedness in general:
While most high school teachers across subject areas believe that meeting their state’s standards prepares students for college-level work, most postsecondary instructors disagree.
[ . . . ]
High school teachers believe states prepare students well for college-level work; however, roughly 65 percent of postsecondary instructors responded that their state’s standards prepared students poorly or very poorly for college-level work in English/writing, reading, and science.
Here are the results by field:
| How well do you think your state’s standards prepare students for high school-level work in your content area? | ||||
|
Middle School/Junior High School
|
||||
| Very poorly % | Poorly % | Well % | Very well % | |
| Writing | 3 | 8 | 60 | 29 |
| Reading | 2 | 5 | 65 | 29 |
| Math | 1 | 8 | 67 | 24 |
| Science | 1 | 12 | 68 | 19 |
|
High School
|
||||
| Very poorly % | Poorly % | Well % | Very well % | |
| Writing | 3 | 20 | 60 | 16 |
| Reading | 3 | 25 | 57 | 15 |
| Math | 4 | 17 | 64 | 15 |
| Biology | 4 | 20 | 63 | 13 |
| Chemistry | 7 | 34 | 51 | 9 |
| Earth Science | 4 | 20 | 65 | 12 |
| Physics | 7 | 33 | 54 | 7 |
| All Science Combined | 5 | 27 | 57 | 10 |
|
Post-secondary
|
||||
| Very poorly % | Poorly % | Well % | Very well % | |
| Writing | 13 | 55 | 29 | 4 |
| Reading | 11 | 52 | 33 | 3 |
| Math | 11 | 47 | 38 | 4 |
| Biology | 17 | 47 | 31 | 5 |
| Chemistry | 13 | 57 | 27 | 3 |
| Earth Science | 20 | 52 | 26 | 2 |
| Physics | 17 | 49 | 32 | 1 |
| All Science Combined | 17 | 52 | 29 | 3 |
So what are the differences between these perceptions? First, generally:
What postsecondary instructors expect entering college students to know is far more targeted and specific than what high school teachers view as important.
Exactly. Secondary (and probably primary and middle) school curricula are too broad and too shallow. The philosophy seems to be, "Cover a lot of topics, but never to any depth." Interestingly:
Remedial-course teachers’ ratings of mathematics and reading skills tend to align more closely with those of postsecondary instructors than with those of high school teachers.
I’ll leave the possible reasons for that as an exercise for the reader.
The specific differences:
There are specific differences between high school instruction and postsecondary expectations in every major curriculum area.
[ . . . ]
English/Writing:
High School: Focus on Idea Development
Postsecondary: Focus on Writing Mechanics
I could rant and rave about how students can’t write a grammatical sentence, don’t know what a paragraph is, construct a thesis statement, or argue their way out of a paper bag, but if you’ve spent any time around any faculty lounge at your nearest university, you’ve already heard all about that. It’s one of those topics that comes up at least ten or fifteen times every week–every time somebody is grading papers or essay questions. And it’s not only that. They don’t have the grammatical knowledge to understand what you’re talking about when you try to help them write coherent, grammatical English. Try telling a student, "This is a run-on sentence," or "This is a comma splice," or "You have to use a colon here, and not a semicolon," or "Your subject-verb agreement is wrong," and behold the deer-in-the-headlights look you get. Students don’t know what a proper noun is, so pointing out that something should be capitalized because it’s a proper noun is a lesson lost on them.
Process writing certainly has its pedagogical advantages, but that doesn’t mean you should drop editing and revision from the process.
And math?
Mathematics:
High School: Focus on Advanced Mathematics Content
Postsecondary: Focus on Developing a More Rigorous Understanding of Fundamentals
Look, it would be nice if I had a class of incoming students who already knew what Chi-square, ANOVA, t-test, regression, binomial distribution, and so forth were, knew how to do them, and when, but they can’t add. They don’t have the basic arithmetic fluency to be able to set up and solve a problem. They don’t know that they can’t divide by zero. They don’t understand the relationship between multiplication and division. Forget Chi-square. Give us students who are arithmetically fluent, please!
And science?
Science:
High School: Focus on Science Content
Postsecondary: Focus on Process and Inquiry Skills in Science
Here, we’re putting reading and math together, because the above isn’t just science. It’s also how to set up and carry out research, then write a research paper. Students do not understand the thought process of first constructing a hypothesis, then constructing the study to oppose their hypothesis to the null hypothesis. Students do not understand that the study must be clear in their minds before they gather data, and they don’t understand the process of gathering data. And even if they get through that, students don’t know how to develop their ideas and construct a logical argument with evidentiary proofs.
Then, there’s reading:
The survey results indicate a general lack of reading courses in high school and a decline in the teaching of targeted reading strategies after ninth grade. Meanwhile, remedial-course teachers rate such strategies as being of high importance and devote a large percentage of time to teaching them in order to get their students ready for entry-level college coursework. These findings suggest that more instruction in reading and reading strategies—including reading texts with greater complexity across the curriculum—is needed throughout the high school years. All courses in high school, not just English and social studies but mathematics and science as well, must challenge students to read and understand complex texts.
[ . . . ]
Meanwhile, analysis of the responses indicates that English language arts teachers overall did not tend to rate reading in other content areas as highly as they did language arts–based reading activities.
There’s nothing new about that, and certainly nothing specific to the secondary schools. For many years, university faculty complained that the English department freshman composition classes taught students nothing useful to non-English classes. That’s why so many English departments had freshman composition torn away from them and given to WAC (writing across the curriculum) and WID (writing in the discipline) programs. And from most of the composition teachers I’ve known, I suspect the reason they do nothing but write personal essays and position papers about their feelings or opinions is that the composition faculty don’t know anything about writing anything else.
But look at this:
|
% Teachers who do not teach reading or understanding of:
|
||
|
Grade
|
Social science texts
|
Natural science texts
|
| 9th | 60% | 93% |
| 10th | 62% | 88% |
| 11th | 22% | 94% |
| 12th | 52% | 96% |
Yes, Virginia, everybody at the university wishes students were better able to evaluate evidence and critique arguments, not to mention read the articles we assign in depth. And yes, of course, high school students should be reading literature–I’m the last person on the planet who would argue against that. But currently, the first academic writing students see is when they come to the university–and it isn’t pretty (neither the writing, nor how students react to having to read it). And the same can be said for writing. We care about what they think and why. We care about their logical argumentation. And although it may sound insensitive, we don’t care about how they feel or what their opinons are. Can we please have at least a few students who don’t have to have the difference between fact and opinion explained to them?
But let’s go back to math (you knew I would). Unsurprisingly, post-secondary respondents rated basic arithmetic operations as more important than secondary respondents. Also unsurprisingly, secondary respondents rated statistics far higher (3.01 on a 1-5 scale of least to most important) than did post-secondary respondents (1.91 on the same scale). In fact, the only one of the identified math skills rated more important by post-secondary than secondary respondents was basic arithmetic operations.
This study points up what I’ve been saying repeatedly for a long time now, and let us hope that because it is an ACT study, and not just a Chronicle study, that somebody in the educracy will pay attention. The primary and secondary school curricula are broken because the educrats have a twisted sense of priorities. Let us worry about their creativity and higher order thinking–that’s what the university is for. You worry about the basic knowledge (you know, as in facts) and basic skills (you know, as in writing a grammatical sentence or knowing that two plus two is four)–that’s what the primary and secondary schools are for. And while you’re at it–and I’m speaking primarily to you teachers in the secondary schools–start weaning your students off the teat. Freshmen are too needy, and want constant hand holding. There’s not much that can be called "supportive" about the university, and students need to be ready to deal with it when they get there.
Other education articles are here.
Right Wing Nation says:
[…] articles are here. Date Posted: Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 by rightwingprof Categories: Education Trackback URI(right-click) […]
April 10, 2007, 7:35 pmCollege Freshmen Ain’t Learned Good at matthewktabor.com says:
[…] RightWingNation goes into more detail and references plenty of data to back it up. Subscribe to Newsletter: […]
April 10, 2007, 7:43 pmJeffrey Quick says:
I was just chatting with one of our music profs (the one who does freshman advising), and she discussed going to a support group with and for a friend, and the group leader (who is allegedly finishing a doctorate) was consistently writing “Your” in place of “You’re” on the board, and using “had went”. When the music prof brought this up privately, she was accused of nitpicking.
You can probably guess that the support group leader’s major was psychology.
April 11, 2007, 11:12 amMatt Johnston says:
I am afriad I can’t speak as well about math cirriculum in secondary education, but I will say that most reading/writing curricula in secondary schools leaves so much to be desired that most of the students I tutored at the U-Md writing center needed such basic remdial help about sentence construction I had to wonder, how in the world did these kids get the SAT/ACT scores to be admitted into U-MD, whose average SAT’s at the time (the mid 1990s) was around 1200.
As for reading, I too have long wondered why reading instruction in secondary schools was focused almost solely on literature. outside of English class, if it wasn’t in my textbook I wasn’t required to read anything remotely resembling a scientific article. Had it not been for outside reading (thanks to my dad), I would not have had the skills to read and understand technical and/or academic writing in social sciences or hard sciences. Much more time needs to be devoted to the different reading skills.
But then, that means restructuring whole curricula at the upper elementary and secondary schools–a political exercise that could take decades.
April 11, 2007, 11:56 amCarnival Of Education at Joanne Jacobs says:
[…] This week’s Carnival Of Education, hosted by The Ed Wonks, includes a post by Right Wing Prof on the disconnect between the expectations of high school teachers and college instructors. While 85 percent of secondary teachers think their students have the reading skills they’ll need for college, only 53 percent of professors agree. The differences are similar for writing and research skills. […]
April 11, 2007, 1:51 pmTony Iovino says:
Interesting–but instead of heading “upstream” from college to HS to middle school– how about a survey going “downstream”–to graduate schools and, ultimately, to employers. I have found, as an employer of 25 years, that young employees directly out of graduate and undergraduate schools are wholly unprepared– especially with regard to writing skills.
Seems everybody thinks they’re doing a fine job, and that the people feeding them are not. At the end of the day, though, the cost to employers required to educate employees in basic math and writing skills is astounding.
April 11, 2007, 5:58 pmlee says:
I can’t agree enough. I’m a high school mathematics teacher. I’ve literally got students who reach for a calculator to multiply 2 x 3. I’ve got a world of students who think 4/5 is 1.25! You’re completely right about the breadth vs. depth of American public schools. I’m constantly being told that students need to think outside the box, too! My standard response is that I would like for them to learn to think inside the box first, then they can venture outside of their own backyard to see what the wider world has to offer. You’ve got me so wound up, I think I’m just going to have to continue this thread on my own blog! Great blog, by the way. I’m glad I’ve discovered you.
April 11, 2007, 9:15 pmJohn Hetman says:
Way back in 1964, somewhat yet before the onslaught of universal progressive education in the United States, I enrolled at the University of Illinois, fresh out of the Army. In my Rhetoric class, the very first thing our instructor did after introducing herself was to blast the lack of college preparation in the Chicago Public Schools.
So this issue of poor preparation has some history to it. The best example now of how dismal much of our educational system is now can be found on any page of the local newspaper where most reporters and columnists simply cannot think nor fashion an objective statement.
April 11, 2007, 11:40 pmMike says:
I suspect that much of the current difficulty is that, for social and economic reasons, we are encouraging legions of kids who would never have gone to college in the past to haunt the ivy-covered halls. It would seem obvious that a given proportion of the public is simply not intellectually capable of true college level work, and that a given proportion of the public will be engaged in occupations–worthwhile, honorable occupations–that do not benefit from or require a college degree. That these folks are not up to, or actually interested in, college should hardly be a surprise.
Of course, there are other issues involved, but I’m addressing this one.
April 12, 2007, 12:59 amPhoenix says:
“I could rant and rave about how students can’t write a grammatical sentence, don’t know what a paragraph is,… … Students don’t know what a proper noun is, so pointing out that something should be capitalized because it’s a proper noun is a lesson lost on them.”
Those are the first and last sentences of a paragraph from your post. There is one word in there that you could change and exact the same frustration you outline: “university”. Substitute “high school” and it all ends up in the same hierarchy of blame.
It’s sad stuff all the way around. I taught 10th and 12th grade English for 20 years, and I cannot tell you how many times I sounded off just as you did here. Very sad. I and many others in my department took our yearly certification classes at UVA, and we knew how the professors felt about us. Teachers of Lesser Gods would work. Most of us busted our chops to get it right. But there is that thing about the masses vs. the private, independent student without parents bitching about stuff they know nothing about or loonies or mainstreamed special ed kids in our classes that required a lot of time off task or the constant interruptions from guidance, the office, the nurse, the potty breaks, run-for-your-life-in-case-of-a-bomb practices, ….. …. oh well. One last thing: I was required to teach *everything*. I did not get to specialize.
I’m not whining so much as defending a career I loved. I did walk away from it, though. The work was exhausting but fulfilling, and I was very good. But, I caught a girl cheating, she denied it, and the parents wanted my hide. My word meant nothing. The administrators willingly sacrifice their teachers to quiet a bitching parent. It wasn’t always like that. I distinctly remember the days when my principal would tell an irate parent that he could not abuse one of his teachers……….
Your tone upset me. But then I recognized it as my own back when I cared about doing the hard work of teaching.
April 12, 2007, 1:13 amRight Wing Nation says:
[…] In the comment thread to this article, Phoenix said: Those are the first and last sentences of a paragraph from your post. There is one word in there that you could change and exact the same frustration you outline: “universityâ€. Substitute “high school†and it all ends up in the same hierarchy of blame. […]
April 12, 2007, 9:00 amCarnival Of Education: Week 114 « Let’s play math! says:
[…] They Could Have Asked Me [more thoughts on the same survey] […]
April 12, 2007, 12:16 pmEli Rabett says:
We’ve been correlating basic math vs. success in General Chemistry for several years. The interesting thing is that there is a floor, below which the kids flat out fail, but there is not a very strong correlation with grade above that floor. In other words, if they don’t have the basic math skills they are lost. If they do, then other things are determinative (hours spent, study skills, etc.)
April 13, 2007, 10:26 pm