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[farm_boy]

I had a chat with "Jen" before class.  She's struggling to pass 3rd-semester Spanish here at my large public U.  Though she attends class regularly, asks questions, and has made lots of flash cards, she's one of the weakest students academically in my class, one that makes you think she just isn't college material.

She told me--and I have no reason to doubt her honesty--that her high school gpa was 4.25 (I'm so old I remember when 4.0 was perfect, and thus anything about 4.0 would be theoretically impossible, but that's a topic for another thread) and that she had earned 30 hours of community college credit before even graduating from high school.  She feels that her small high school did not prepare her for college, as she is struggling in other classes as well.

Something's not right here.

 

[shrek]

Probably it didn't. This is a huge problem I think with getting college credit in HS (or even middle school-- my son is in an accelerated program in middle school so that he'll start earning college credit in HS-- aghhh). But, it's not the SAME in kind or pace. I usually advise students who do this to "retake" courses they already have credit for. So, in this case maybe she has credit for Spanish 1 and 2, and is now taking 3, maybe retaking 2 will help her to better make that bridge. Some of the problem is knowing the material really really well, another is the pace (college usually goes faster), the other is maturity. She'll be better of repeating at least some of her courses and that'll give her an opportunity to fill in the gaps that are probably there (same goes for math).

[bluezebracat]

I would recommend that she gets checked for a learning disability.  It's uncommon, but adult diagnoses do happen--particularly with bright kids who didn't really have to study in high school.

[glowdart]

Grade inflation is rampant at high schools that we draw from, so we have lots of A students who never learned how to study.  Sure, they go through the motions and make flashcards, but Spanish III is the point where you need to actually apply an understanding of the language and grammar and not just regurgitate words & conjugations, isn't it?  Even really bright people can have horrible study skills -- and it's sometimes really unpleasant to watch them hit that wall where their innate intelligence is no longer enough to carry them.  Some of them hit it, bounce off, and then figure it out.  But some hit it and crumple for the rest of their academic career. 

So, it makes sense to me that someone who sailed through until this point is having difficulty, but I see it a lot.

If you want to help, then I would ask her how she studies -- literally what she does when studying.  Depending on her answers, you might have your answers as to what she needs to do to improve.  I'd also refer her to whatever student learning office you have on campus and to her advisor.

[mended_drum]

You might also ask your student what the biggest difference is between her high school courses and her college courses.  I've had quite a few students recently (over the last five years or so) who are very good, even excellent at memorizing and repeating, but who flounder when asked to analyze or extrapolate.  One student with AP English credit started to cry openly in class when she found out that I expected something other than a five-paragraph essay in my sophomore English class.

I've learned now to have a bunch of handouts from the freshman comp courses available for when I have to explain that the AP exam does not actually test the skills that we teach in English 102.

[collegekidsmom]

Many of the kids with the highest GPAs in my high school were not that bright. They studied ALL the time to get those grades. One parent was recently telling me that his kid studies 24 hours a day-all the time except when sleeping.  So, I am not surprised that when some of these high school performers get to college, it is almost impossible for them to ramp up to the point where they can excel- given an even more challenging workload.

Then there were those of us who did not study at all in high school, and found college to be a bit of a shock. Some could pull it off, and some could not. Probably not much has changed-well, except calling high school classes the same as college courses. In my day, high school was high school and college was something else.

[farm_boy]

Interesting comments, all.  Thanks.

Actually, most of the course grade is based on memorizing verb conjugations.

Maybe what bothers me most is the 4.25 gpa.  When did they slip that in (that you can have a higher than perfect gpa)?  In the 1990s?  Didn't anyone notice that absurdity?  Didn't anyone object?

[scienceprof]

Interesting comments, all.  Thanks.

Actually, most of the course grade is based on memorizing verb conjugations.

Maybe what bothers me most is the 4.25 gpa.  When did they slip that in (that you can have a higher than perfect gpa)?  In the 1990s?  Didn't anyone notice that absurdity?  Didn't anyone object?

It seems like there may be a problem with the structure of the course itself if most of the grade is based on memorizing! 

Re: above 4.0 gpa's, they had this when I was in hs (late 80's) and it was to distinguish the honors or AP courses; that is, straight A's in honors track get you a higher numerical gpa than straight A's in the non-college-prep track.

[kaysixteen]

1) 4.25 gpa does not bother me.  Good point about weighted grades for honors classes, and there is also the 'A+', which probably counts as 4.33.

2) Certainly true that the girl may have study skills issues... she may literally never have had to study at all in East Podunk HS... sad but true... the variations in the quality of hs education in this country are astounding.  I used to be, for instance, in favor of dumping the SAT, but now I know better-- college admissions folks simply have to have a (reasonably) objective way of comparing kids from different schools.

3) With specific regard to Spanish, and more or less to all hs foreign language programs, often they s*ck.  The textbooks today, esp. in 'hard' languages such as Latin, are very watered down, and the work expectations minimal.  Thus, the kid's hs Spanish backround may well have told the college that she was ready to take 'Spanish 3' there successfully, but that may simply just not be the case.  Indeed, while virtually anyone teaching Spanish at the college level in this country likely is approximately fluent in that tongue, more or less, such is certainly not the case in high school America.  Indeed, many hss, esp. in rural areas, more or less have to hire virtually anyone that they can find to teach some of these languages, and some of them are more or less incompetent-- think, for instance, as a comparison, the young women Anakin noted studying for the praxis math exam, who had collectively no comprehension of basic elem school arithmetic.  And subjects like Spanish are often not even covered by standardized teacher certification exam reqs.

[fishprof]

A fourth possibility some have hinted at but I see all the time.

4.0 students got very good at studying one way, and never had that method fail them.  They get to college and have a more challenging course, and the only method they know doesn't work.  So they do that more/harder.  It still fails, and they fall apart (I tell them that if you are driving east when you mean to go west, driving faster won't help)

Other students who were less skilled at the high school tasks have often learned multiple approaches b/c nothing they did worked for them all the time.

I have taught 4 college courses for high school students.  They are always shocked and dismayed that the course is so much harder than what they do in high school.  "Yeah, Skippy, It's a college course.  You get college credit for this."

[collegekidsmom]

In the competitive town next to mine, they have stopped giving class ranks a few years ago-and no longer have valedictorians or salutatorians. The kids competed for higher and higher over-4.0 GPAs and there were these tiny increments between students -and they finally just had to bail on the whole thing.

[zharkov]

Where I live, the public university system weights the HS gpa, adding 0.5 to honors courses and 1.0 to AP courses, as part of making admissions decisions.  So a gpa higher then 4.0 is certainly possible if a HS student did well overall and took some honors and AP courses.

In addition to the "small town effect," I've seem similar issues with students who went to HS in small/medium decaying cities, like mill towns.  The A student from Mill Town may be operating at about B level at a decent suburban HS.

[polly_mer]

I resided for a fair amount of time in a state that had such a poor school system that an A from many high schools meant "showed up a reasonable amount of the time and turned in a substantial portion of the work". 

One of the big scandals uncovered by the big newspaper was the high percentage of high-school top-of-class people in that state who were in remedial classes at community college because the A was a result of regularly showing up and doing some work rather than mastering the material at a sufficient level.

[slinger]

I resided for a fair amount of time in a state that had such a poor school system that an A from many high schools meant "showed up a reasonable amount of the time and turned in a substantial portion of the work". 

One of the big scandals uncovered by the big newspaper was the high percentage of high-school top-of-class people in that state who were in remedial classes at community college because the A was a result of regularly showing up and doing some work rather than mastering the material at a sufficient level.

Polly, do you have a link to that article?  It may be very useful as I transition to community college this fall.  Thanks.

[dr_alcott]

I resided for a fair amount of time in a state that had such a poor school system that an A from many high schools meant "showed up a reasonable amount of the time and turned in a substantial portion of the work". 

One of the big scandals uncovered by the big newspaper was the high percentage of high-school top-of-class people in that state who were in remedial classes at community college because the A was a result of regularly showing up and doing some work rather than mastering the material at a sufficient level.

In my CC district, the worst high schools, in terms of test scores and graduation rates, have the highest GPAs. In other words, here, the poorer the high school, the more likely it is that grades are inflated.

And in a couple of these schools, anyone with a B average is considered an Honors student. Yet in an Honors English class, the longest essay they'll write might be two or three pages. (I don't blame the teachers. They have a bajillion students; they don't have time to grade longer essays.)

So yeah, we get plenty of students in developmental English who are stunned because "I was an Honors student in high school!"