High School

Schools, Parents or Students: Who’s Responsible for College Readiness?

by Robyn | July 28th, 2010 | View Comments

Considering the state of college readiness today, which do you think is more likely the case?

  • Students don’t know how to think?
  • Schools have low early achievement standards?
  • Both?

A few weeks ago I spoke with a college instructor and certified teacher trainer through LinkedIn. She works in a California community college and shared some of her colleagues concerns.

“The biggest lament is that students ‘don’t know how to think,’ but I believe that is related to low early achievement standards. More than half of entering students are placed in ‘developmental’ classes upon arrival at college. Moving them from 3rd-to-6th grade skill levels to college readiness in two semesters is not easy.”

She goes on to say that the number of students vs. teachers may be to blame. Secondary schools can’t keep up with the flow. High school students are passed through the system, ending up with inadequate vocabulary skills and little experience in critical thinking.

Here’s the other side of her findings.

“In over 12 years of teaching at community college, I have rarely seen more than 5 out of 25 students in a writing class who were anything like college material, despite their best efforts — which brings me to a second observation: Our students have not learned to put forth much effort, in part because our system is so soft that it passes most of them anyway.”

If teachers are unable to keep up with the mass of students, and their only option is to let kids slide, how will kids learn how to think? Who’s responsible for a student’s success in college?

Should students take a more proactive approach to their own learning?

Should parents be engaging their students in more learning activities?

Should educators fix all of the problems?

Let us know…

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  • Kelsey Love

    With my mother being a teacher, and being a mother myself, I have heard a lot about this argument. While everyone tries to point fingers, I believe we all are to blame.

    It is an educator’s obligation to push their students and extend the students’ thinking so that they can better prepare for the years ahead of them. If a child has a learning deficit, the teacher owes that child one-on-one assistance so that child also has the chance to succeed. Schools should place limits on the staff-to-student ratio, in order to guarantee a positive and educational experience for students.

    A parent must instill work ethic and a persevering attitude into their child at a young age. I truly believe children that are encouraged and praised for good work throughout their lives are more likely to succeed and have a desire to succeed. If this means a parent should provide their children with more learning activities, a parent should do so. From that point, it is the child’s (or student’s) responsibility to push themselves to work hard and have a good attitude toward education.

    So, you may ask, what about the students that do not have good role models or parents that will advocate good work ethic? I have seen this first hand with one of my best friends, and sadly she still struggles with it. She seems to have little to no drive, had to appeal from high school all four years from being absent too many days, and she has dropped out of college twice. Her parents do not encourage her, but at this point, she is old enough to understand it is her responsibility to do what is best for her, regardless of what her parents encourage.

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