High schoolers seen as taking easy way out
Posted on Friday, August 17, 2007
Education Commissioner Ken James said Thursday that getting more students to take a "rigorous"course load in Arkansas high schools is the key for improving college retention and graduation rates.
He called for continued scrutiny of high school courses, among other things.
He also said the state's remediation standards may be too weak.
"One of the problems we've got across the state is simply the fact that we don't have a large portion of our kids in certain pockets of the state engaged in a rigorous course of study,"James said. "They get to the point where they are going to take the ACT, they're going to score below 19, and they're going to qualify for remediation."
James offered his thoughts during the organizational meeting at the state Capitol of the Arkansas Legislative Task Force on Higher Education Remediation, Retention and Graduation Rates.
The committee decided to have recommendations by May or June 2008 in time for Gov. Mike Beebe to consider when he puts together a budget proposal for the 2009 legislative session.
Arkansas for years has finished second to West Virginia as having the smallest percentage of adults with bachelor's degrees. Just 19 percent of Arkansans older than 25 have at least bachelor's degrees.
One task force member, state Sen. Dave Bisbee, R-Rogers, said Arkansas officials for years have talked about improving remediation, retention and graduation rates but little has resulted, mostly because of politics.
He said that before term limits powerful legislators looked after colleges they wanted to help and hurt those they opposed.
"Now, we've moved from that to trying to get all the colleges to agree with each other,"Bisbee said. "You've got to make sure nobody is ever getting hurt. But sometimes someone needs to get hurt. But you can't do that and get everyone to agree. The way to affect policy is to [change ] the way the money flows. The Legislature has never had the courage to do that. When college presidents come up and tapped [legislators ] on the shoulder, [legislators ] roll over."
But Bisbee said that could change because Beebe has publicly said he wants to change the way state dollars are distributed to colleges by weighing the colleges' performance.
Steve Floyd, interim director of the Department of Higher Education, said Beebe wants the department and the Higher Education Coordinating Board to come up with recommendations on a new funding formula by next summer.
Rep. Johnnie Roebuck, DArkadelphia, chairman of the task force, wanted to bring in experts, such as from the National Conference of State Legislatures, to get ideas. She cautioned task force members to approach the group's goals with a statewide focus as opposed to trying to help a college with which they may have ties.
Regarding remediation, Floyd said, there are "no sacred cows,"and he agreed with James that the state standard should be viewed as subject to change.
State law passed in 1987 requires students to take noncredit remedial courses in English, reading or math if they score below 19 in those subjects on the ACT. Some schools have implemented higher standards. The University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, for example, requires a 20 or higher on the English and math sections for students to avoid remedial courses.
"A 19 is not really getting them prepared to do collegelevel work,"James said.
He pointed out that the standards of ACT Inc. of Iowa City, Iowa, are higher.
ACT uses a score of 18 in English, 22 in math, 21 in reading and 24 in science as "College Readiness Benchmarks,"with students at or above those levels considered 75 percent likely to earn a C or higher in a corresponding introductory college course.
Just 17 percent of Arkansas students scored at or above ACT's benchmarks in all four subject areas as compared with the 23 percent national average.
Rep. Bill Abernathy, D-Mena, told James it would be a mistake to focus exclusively on expanding high school curriculum. He said maybe students were prepared for college but dropped out because they "ran out of money."
James acknowledged there are numerous reasons why college students drop out. He said the state needs to figure out how to "reconnect"with students "on the border"of dropping out and make sure they stay in schools and get degrees. That will help the economy, he said.
Asked in an interview after the meeting how the state should expand a "rigorous"course offering to more students, James said the state needs to be sure that the high-level courses being taught are preparing students for college.
"We need to be careful in that we don't just say 'We've got all these courses in place' - we've got to monitor and make sure,"he said.
He said the department already keeps track of scores in those courses and how those students do on end-of-course exams.
James also emphasized that parents can opt out of the state course requirements for their children. He repeated statements he made earlier this week that the state needs to study whether to disallow that exemption from the curriculum.
His statement during the meeting about students in some areas of the state not taking "rigorous"courses doesn't refer to high schools failing to offer a large variety of courses, he said.
"Those may be the kids that are opting out and not taking a rigorous course of study,"James said.
He said he wasn't calling for more consolidation of school districts, which some have said would allow for greater course offerings than small districts can provide. He emphasized that all high schools must teach at least the 38 courses required by the state.
Regarding his statements about the state remediation standard possibly being too weak, James acknowledged that changing the state standard to the ACT standard would lead to a higher percentage of freshmen taking remediation courses in college.
"I'm not advocating that we need to raise the 19,"James said.
But he emphasized that the state must "completely understand"that ACT says higher ACT scores are needed for college preparedness.
Richard Hudson, a lobbyist for the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville attended the meeting and said in an interview after that he recalled that the 19 ACT cutoff for remediation was developed by a task force of English faculty members meeting at the Department of Higher Education years ago.
He said raising it to the ACT standard would "obviously mean a whole lot more students would have to be remediated and there would be a high cost. Fewer at Fayetteville get remediated [than at other colleges in the state ] so it would impact us less but it would impact everybody."
He said the UA's remediation rate could rise from about 6 percent to 12 percent but the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff could see its rate rise from about 80 percent to more than 90 percent.
"The 19 was probably a compromise number between what's ideal and what's realistic,"he said.
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