Do You Feel You Were Prepared for Proficiency in College?
Posted on November 24, 2009 by Barbara Macaulay
Sometimes it can be good to tackle the hard questions; to examine an issue that might force us to do some honest self-examination, don’t you think? To this point, at the end of last month, U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan had some things to say about whether or not students are being measured for their proficiency to enter college or start their career and if so, are they making the grade. In Mr. Duncan’s opinion, based on recent research and a report by the National Center for Education Statistics, the answers are no and no.
Today’s study confirms what we’ve known for a long time: States are setting the bar too low. In all but a few cases, states aren’t expecting students to meet NAEP’s [National Assessment of Educational Programs] standard of proficiency. Far too many states are telling students that they are proficient when they actually are performing below NAEP’s basic level. At a time when we should be raising standards to compete in the global economy, more states are lowering the bar than raising it. We’re lying to our children when we tell them they’re proficient but they’re not achieving at a level that will prepare them for success once they graduate.
In a less scientific measure, it would be useful to know if you, as a UMassOnline student, feel that you were appropriately prepared for your college studies, even if years have elapsed since you finished high school and decided to revisit college. If you weren’t well prepared, in what studies did you experience the greatest shortfall in proficiency? If you feel you were very well prepared, what aspect of your readiness preparation served you best? Tell us about your experience and tell us what you think needs to be done to better prepare students for college studies today.
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Now I have to say that I have not read the NEAP statistics, but I am wondering how much damage NCLB has done. Personally I am not sure if school prepared me well. I have no complaints, so I guess the high school I went do prepared me well enough (in K-8 I was schooled abroad).
As a side issue, on higher ed news sites and discussion boards I keep seeing discussions between grad level professors, undegrad level professor and instructors and K-12 educators, all pointing to the person before them as doing a bad job. The grad-school professors say that the applicants are not that prepared for grad school, they don’t have the skills they should have at that level. The undergrad level instructors/professors say the same about K-12 schools, that they haven’t prepared students for college level studies. The K-12…who do they blame?
My guess here is that we all need to speak the same language and have a consisted measurement K-PhD as to what learners should accomplish/know in order to move to the next level. Until we have a consistent view of the system as a whole we will keep having disagreements and we will keep passing the buck - which isn’t helpful to our learners.
You raise both good points and good questions. How does being prepared for college get defined? I could try to answer this but would love to get thoughts from others! And because we are blogging about this on UMassOnline’s blog site, what are your thoughts about being prepared to take courses online?
As always, thank you for the questions you raise!