From the Montgomery Advertiser:

In 2006, 28 percent of Alabama’s graduates who enrolled in one of the state’s colleges did not have the basic skills required for college-level math or English.

Last fall, 5,985 of Alabama’s 21,118 graduates needed remedial or developmental courses in English, math, or both as freshmen, according to data collected by the Alabama Commission on Higher Education.

The National Center for Education Statistics estimates the same rate for all freshmen across the country.

I’m not exactly surprised.  Statistics on our nation’s government schools are less than encouraging.  In fact, they’re downright depressing.  The 28% unprepared number used in the article is misleading.  Our schools are actually only preparing 28% of students for college.  Read on.

Pay close attention to the first sentence of the article above.  Twenty-eight percent of Alabama’s graduates who enrolled in one of the state’s colleges did not have the basic skills required for college level courses.  As recently as 2005 only 57% of ninth graders enrolled in Alabama’s schools go on to receive a diploma.  Nationally the graduation rate has fallen from 72% in 1990 to a low of 67% by the turn of the millennium and now sits at a paltry 68%.  Of those who do graduate an average of 67% go on to enroll in college immediately.

So, here is the way the numbers shake out - simplified for the 28% of you who fall into the unprepared segment.  Let’s say that you enter an Alabama high school with 999 other pupils.  Over the next four years 430 of your classmates will leave school early and head off to the world of burgers and fries.  Of the 570 intrepid souls who persevere only 382 will enroll in college immediately.  107 of you will not be ready.

Now, revisiting the 28% unprepared number.  Using our simple example only 275 of the original 1,000 students navigated through four years of high school and were ready for college*.  What that means is that our schools only prepared 28% of students for college, as opposed to the misleading statistic used in the Montgomery Advertiser article.  Reading the article might leave the casual reader thinking that our schools are preparing 72% of students for college, but that is just not the case.

Part of the problem is that contrary to popular opinion not every one is identically suited for all challenges, including college.  We’re simply encouraging too many kids into college who are just not capable of meeting the associated rigors.  Charles Murray had a very interesting series of columns on this topic in the Wall Street Journal earlier this year (here, here, and here).  Essentially, intelligence is distributed in our society on an inflexible Bell Curve.  Increasing the number of people under the curve who enroll in college only brings down the average intelligence of those enrolled.  Based on that, we shouldn’t really be surprised that our schools simply don’t do a good job preparing many kids for college.

*This ignores some of the 188 students who graduated and chose not to attend college for various reasons.  Maybe some had other desires, like joining the military, but would have been prepared to enroll immediately.  Others might not have been able to afford college.  But, on balance, I would suggest that the majority did not enroll in college because they were not ready.

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This entry was posted by Brian on Monday, July 9th, 2007 at 8:32 pm and is filed under Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.