High school graduation took place a few weeks ago for most Colorado schools. For many, this was a great time to celebrate the hard work with a look forward to entering college ready to learn. For far too many others, the coming seasons will be a time for dead-end low wage jobs and/or entering college unprepared to do the work.
There are approximately 3.2 million young adults who will graduate this year from American high schools. About 40 percent or 1,280,000 of these students will not be able to do college-level work. And most of those needing remediation are likely to drop out of college without any degree.
Colorado will have about 55,000 kids graduating, with about 30 percent needing remediation, according to the Colorado Department of Higher Education.
It’s a travesty that the once great American comprehensive high school designed to prepare the top third for college and rest for low-skill but well-paying jobs has not evolved to meet the challenge of educating for the 21st century.
American high schools worked reasonably well for many when a college degree and the skills attached were not a barrier to living a middle-class life. This is no longer the case.
And it’s not just India, China, Denmark, South Korea that get it, Turkey and a growing list of other countries understand the relationship between education, quality of life and economic development.
There are far too many American high schools that graduate less than half. For those that do graduate, few are ready for college. Education Week’s latest Diploma Counts reminds has some powerful maps of dropout “epicenters” showing that there are more than 40,000 projected not to graduate from LA and New York City Schools. NYC has recently made progress but still only has a 54.8 percent graduation rate. LA is at 40.6 percent. Remember this is just a small piece of the elephant.
So how is your high school doing? How would you find out? Are test scores and graduation rates enough?
What would kids and families do if they knew how well or poorly their school was doing?
Would a 50 percent chance, 5 percent odds or even a 1-in-50 chance of graduating and being prepared for college be good enough to attend the school or for the district to continue to support it?
I recently reviewed the data in Colorado and found that there are at least four big comprehensive high schools within several miles of my house that have fewer than 5 percent of their high school graduates ready for college.
Denver’s North High School had 13 kids ready for college in last year’s class.Yes, I said 13 and that’s out of a freshman class of about 412 students (a 3.1 percent college yield rate). Denver is currently investing $40 million in bond funds refurbishing the crumbling building.
Another nearby high school, West had 7 college ready graduates out of starting freshman class of 301 (a 2.3 percent college ready yield rate). That’s a 1-in-43 chance of success!
And this is not just a Denver issue. Aurora’s Central High only graduated 25 students ready for college. It’s a school that started with around 800 ninth-graders and a staff of over 200.
Adams City High School in Commerce City (Adams 14 district) prepared 17 out of a freshman class of 460 (3.7 percent college ready yield). Pueblo’s Central High had a college yield of 8.6 percent.
By the way, if you do go to any of these or most high school or district websites looking for data on their quality, you will find everything from lunch menus to sports schedules but you’d be hard pressed to find a link or any data about their quality. There are often marketing materials like the DPS enrollment guide which says:
“West High School is becoming one of Denver’s premier high schools emphasizing college preparation and career and technical education. The rigorous coursework and real world experiences offered at West provide students with relevant pathways to higher education.”
I’d be fine with the spin if that is, in fact, the future direction of West and if there was other data next to the spin. When I’m looking for a new cereal, I expect and count on the information about sugar content while I also appreciate a nice box with photos of blueberries even if they aren’t in the cereal.
Savvy education consumers have to search for quality by reviewing DPS’ excellent school performance framework, SchoolView, greatschools.org, coloradoschoolchoice.org or do more complicated digging to determine the quality of a high school.
I will say that many districts, and Denver in particular, are doing a great job of improving the quality of their high schools by increasing AP, expanding duel enrollment classes and setting up new structures like ninth grade academies. Denver Scholarship Foundation has done a remarkable job of cutting many of the financial barriers for low-income kids to attend college. All of these initiatives have had a positive impact on keeping more kids in high school and creating a stronger tie to higher education.
None of these measures, however, address the fundamental design flaw in these big inefficient and impersonal urban high schools. The reforms don’t change the basic design of kids moving through an instructional assembly line where no one is formally responsible for ensuring that every kid is ready for graduation. Horace’s Compromise written appropriately in 1984 is still the definitive book on the problem of the American High school challenge.
The current high school reform efforts, while better than many in the last 30 years, are still like adding an airbag to a Chevy Corvair (remember Unsafe At Any Speed), only helpful if that’s the only car available.
It’s time to be honest and take on these big ineffective high schools. We can no longer afford to educate so few students. The design doesn’t work for today’s society.
The great news is that there is now a small but growing list of highly effective new schools with similar student demographics. The challenge is in creating enough of them quickly while brave superintendents and school boards phase out the big old failing schools.
New high school networks like YES College Prep in Houston, Uncommon Schools in NJ /NY, Denver’s School of Science and Technology, Chicago’s Noble Street, Aspire Public Schools throughout California and many others have shown that you can retain most of your students and prepare most to enter college ready regardless of race or poverty. We’ve demonstrated that we have the knowledge to design a modern urban high school that works for most kids.
According to the Education Commission of the States, there are only 17 states that collect remediation data and tie it back to the high schools. I know of no state or district that regularly reports this data to students and families. In Colorado, you can find this data buried in an appendix in a Colorado Department of Higher Education’s annual remediation report.
Could you imagine what would happen if the US Department of Transportation had data buried in their website that certain cars only had a 5 percent chance of reaching their destination? Would you knowingly get into one of these cars?
Let’s all push the feds, the Colorado Department of Education, school district and your local school to collect and make this data available to not just educators and policy makers but most importantly the public.
An important step in this process will be to clearly define college readiness with a national standard as was done with high school graduation rates a few years ago. Different states, colleges and universities use different definitions which result in confusion and opportunities to game the system.
We’ve made some progress with high school graduation rates and assessment data. It’s now time to make sure we know how many kids go on to college and whether they are prepared to succeed.
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