High schools must do better at tracking their students’ success in college and no longer view a high-school diploma as an end in itself, says the Center for American Progress. In a report, “A Promise of Proficiency,” released today, the Washington think tank recommends that the federal government should help high schools track how their graduates fare in their first year of college, and reward schools for success in that regard. Such steps are necessary to meet the Obama administration’s goal of having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020, panelists said at a discussion accompanying the report’s release.
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2 Responses to High Schools Should Track Students’ College Success, Report Says
11126724 - December 4, 2009 at 5:10 pm
This is a very sound recommendation. How are high schools to know whether their curriculum adequately prepares their graduates for college-level studies unless they track their first year success rates? They can’t know if their students live up to college faculty expectations unless they do this. Merely calling a high school curriculum “college prep” does not ensure that it is. Studies at the University of Southern Maine by Prof. Lynn Miller indicate that high school honors curricula in the State of Maine often prepare students for college, but that high school curricula labeled “college prep” fail to do so.Of course, the flip side of this should be a recommendation that colleges routinely report success rates of their first year students to every high school that sends them students. This is a coordination problem, not an issue of failing high schools. If the high schools were aware of the success rates of thier students, and the shortcomings in their college prep curricula, most likely they would move quickly to remedy the situation. They would know what needs to be done. But in the current situation, they simply haven’t got a clue.
11126724 - December 4, 2009 at 5:13 pm
PS: This gap between high school curricula and college expectations likely explains a great deal of the low retention rates of many colleges and universities in the U.S.