New Push to End Need for Remedial Classes Before

[momfromma]

College.

Nothing we did not know, of course, but this tells us a lot.

From what I can see with my two sons, the writing program is a total nonsense. There is no way they can learn how to write something meaningful the way they do.

www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/education/28remedial.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

After Bethany Martin graduated from high school here last June, she was surprised when the local community college told her that she had to retake classes like basic composition, for no college credit. Each remedial course costs her $350, more than a week’s pay from her job at a Chick-fil-A restaurant.
...
Ms. Martin blames chaotic high school classes. “The kids just took over,” she recalls. But her college instructors say that even well-run high school courses often fail to teach what students need to know in college. They say that Ms. Martin’s senior English class, for instance, focused on literature, but little on writing.

Like Ms. Martin, more than a million college freshmen across the nation must take remedial courses each year, and many drop out before getting a degree. Poorly run public schools are a part of the problem, but so is a disconnect between high schools and colleges.

...
“Right now, high schools hand students off to colleges and declare victory,” Dr. Kirst said. “They say, ‘A high percentage of our graduates went to college,’ but they don’t look at how many had to take remedial courses or never got a degree. And the colleges blame the high schools for not preparing students, but don’t work to align the courses. The two systems don’t communicate well at all.”
...


Unfortunately, I could not agree more about the disconnect between what kids need for college and real life and what HS teaches them (at least in our school) when it comes to writing and reading. My oldest ds is starting to get how you write after a remedial class and his English writing class, but he is not totally ready yet. My youngest ds just spend a year writing nothing more than literary analysis and he has no intention of writing book reviews in the future (and anyway what he learned this year would not help him at all- if they were asked to say if they liked the book and why, it would be something. However, the format is way too stilted for them to learn the pleasure of writing).

I am not really sure if I can hope things will change.

[Mayleng]

I totally agree, there is a disconnect between HS and college. Our kids are not taught how to write period.

[momfromma]

I showed this article to my son who is in college, as we have been speaking a lot about writing and what makes a good essay throughout the years.

After one year of college, he is more forgiving of his HS writing program than he was last year. He told me that some of his classmates (particularly coming from catholic schools) had never done an essay in their life and were even more in trouble than he was.

Given how he writes, it is difficult to imagine where they are at. But apparently, some schools graduate kids and send them to college without even writing ONE essay.

[Mayleng]

I always thought catholic schools concentrate more on writing than public school. Hmmm, that is a revelation.

[sleepy]

Hate to say it, momfromma, but another schools lack of teaching doesn't mean the the PS taught well. It's like my bowling analogy which got a chuckle out of several in the IEP meeting and made the case manager look silly in her assertion. Going bowling with your friends and being the best of the group doesn't necessarily make you a good bowler - especially if you bowled a 40.

[momfromma]

Oh, I know. My son's English teacher told us ds was not the only one having problems with inferences. I cannot say this was at all reassuring.

Mayleng,

I was as surprised as you are.

[d]

The quality of the public HS education in our town is of huge concern to hubby & I. Of course, it's "award winning" with scholar athletes, honors societies, excellent college rate, etc. but I feel like they "cook those books" and parents don't seem to notice or care. Parents want to "believe" in both the district and being told their kids are wonderfully smart and accomplished so the accept the skewed one-dimensional stats the district provides to support their chest thumping.

I kind of feel the same way about our HS education I did years ago when kool-aid sped parents would tell me our sped was "wonderful" yet I didn't see their kids progressing. We have this huge Stepford situation with lots of kool-aid flavors.

Bc of this, we're sending younger to a private HS that supposedly has a great rep for college prep (and other reasons). This private school doesn't teach to state standards and exams - their currics are more comprehensive, above those standards.

Hubby keeps asking if we are doing the right thing for older by letting older finish out her 2 years at public HS. I don't know anymore. She is learning to write very well but part of that is bc she was writing LD in elem so I have been on that like white on rice (and she has a talent for it).

However, this quarter older dd has a 99 in Bio and science has never been her strength. She has been regaling us with stories about how bored and annoyed she is in the class. It's a regular Regents class with lots of cut-ups who profess they don't know anything. Teacher has repeatedly stated he has stripped the lessons down to bare minimum doing things like photosynthesis. Dd's reaction is like 'Photosynthesis? We did that in elem and again in MS, if I get it, how come the rest are saying they don't. All you have to do is listen to his lessons.' Then dh shakes his head saying we are doing this kid a disservice. So, I think it extends beyond writing skills.

And last night, younger was inducted into honor society. A full 43% of our 8th graders were inducted and that doesn't include all the kids with 90 averages so there is more.

I don't care if my kids have a 99 or perfect GPA. I want them to have an excellent academic foundation in knowledge base, critical thinking and basic skills like reading, writing and math. My kids are bright, not the smartest kids ever, but pretty bright. They don't have to be "the best". But I do want those neural pathways stretched and challenged as their brains are developing and I'm disappointed in what I'm seeing at my public HS.

[bros]

My english professor said that sometimes he hated teaching college, because high schools never taught kids how to write properly, so he would have to start over from the beginning in a non-remedial class, teaching kids not to use texting language in essays.

[shawbridge]

Our highly regarded public HS had two tracks for English. Our very bright dyslexic son was not a good writer when he entered HS. We inquired about putting him in the lower track and they basically said he'd be bored to tears and not learn much. So, he took upper track freshman English and a special ed course (Integrated English) that for him was focused on writing. The freshman course like all upper track HS English courses was largely oriented around reading a book (which took him a while), getting out a paper quickly, and moving on. No training or focus on how to improve writing. The only exceptions, first semester sophomore English had a big project of a research paper. While this involved some rewriting, much of it was focused on how to make notecards (grading included how many notecards) and the teacher's comments had to do with his disagreement with some of the assertions my son made based upon cited sources -- the teacher wanted to know details of studies cited by the sources my son cited and my son didn't have access to those primary sources. After that, we embarked on partial home-schooling to focus on writing. There was a remedial course called Writing Workshop, which was modified to focus on rewriting of papers (though the modification was not as big as intended). We found that the HS taught writing by osmosis. If you do it enough you will get better. That may work for neurotypical kids (though it may not) but doesn't work for many kids with LDs.

My daughter's private HS does teach and emphasize writing. However, the volume of work is quite high and the pressure pretty intense.

[sleepy]

Our HS offers three tracks for English - gen ed (with and without support - lecture about skills but not work with the students), Honors English with no support (a class where you need the skills - not taught the skills), or self contained with students that are typically not SLD where they really don't touch the curriculum. They have writing/reading courses designed to help the non-ld kids pass the state tests - not designed to teach a child with a learning disability. Or they have creative writing which doesn't teach the writing skills needed for academic success. This class contains the good writers who love to write.

[momfromma]

Our HS offer CP and Honors English as mandatory. Both have some writing in their curriculum, but emphasis is toward writing a standard 5 paragraph essay with all the required parameters. At least in CP English, as long as the students follow the guidelines, he will get a B or a A, and very little feedback of what could be improved and how. There is a class in Creative Writing and two classes in Grammar Skills that my son took as electives, but it was a total loss of time for improving his writing. It is more and more clear that the school does not understand how they can improve kids's writing.

Junior and Senior years require writing a thesis (social study for junior year, English for senior year). But, like Shawbridge, the focus is on the research and producing index cards, and not in the writing itself.

[healthy11]

I know I've mentioned this before, but my son's writing has always been his biggest academic problem area....He know "what" to do, but often doesn't DO it effectively. He took a "College Writing" class in his Catholic High School (not all catholic high schools are alike, any more than all public high schools are the same) and got okay grades, but when he started applying to colleges, most of them seemed to use different "arbitrary" measures of determining course placement. Some looked at ACT scores, some looked at application essays, and some may have looked at high school English grades.

One of the universities my son got accepted to was willing to put him in Honors English. Most just told him to take "regular" Literature and Humanities Courses. The darn college he finally decided to attend said they wanted him to take a "non-credit" remedial writing course first, before he could enroll in regular English classes. They didn't think his application essay was very good. Truthfully, my son just got his grades, and got a "B" in the remedial course; he thought he had a good chance at an "A" and isn't sure why he got a "B." He said he didn't learn anything new in it, it was a complete waste of time. I want to scream......I don't know if he's just "close-minded" and resented being in it, so he wouldn't admit to being helped by it at all, or if it really was a repetition of things he's been taught before. In any case, he just doesn't seem to be able to put his thoughts on paper as well as he should, and no amount of instruction seems to make a difference....