High Schools Aren't Preparing Students

Critics are claiming college isn’t getting students ready for the workforce. Perhaps the issue starts before students even get to campus.

A 2015 survey of students, faculty, and employers found that only 14% of the instructors felt high schools did an adequate job of preparing students for college, down from 28% in a 2004 survey. Just 29% of employers felt students were ready for the workplace in 2015, compared to 49% in 2004.

High schools are doing well at teaching computers and technology, teamwork, and verbal communications. Unfortunately, there appear to be major gaps in student preparation involving critical thinking, comprehension of complicated content, work and study habits, writing, problem-solving, conducting research, math, and science.

A bigger issue is that students indicated in the survey they understood there were problems with their high school education. Nearly 90% said they would have worked harder if expectations for earning a diploma were higher and 20% said it was “easy to slide by.”

“We know that our schools can do a better job of preparing students for success in their next steps,” Michael Cohen, president of the not-for-profit educational organization that sponsored the survey, said in a report in Campus Technology. “We hear students saying that they are certain they would have worked harder in high school if they’d been held to higher expectations. It’s critical that schools clearly communicate the expectations of colleges and employers early in a student’s high school experience and help them understand the coursework they will need to complete. When we set rigorous expectations, students can and will rise to the challenge.”

Old-Fashioned Note-Taking Works

One solution for increasing student success has little to do with interactive content and electronic course materials. It’s as simple as taking better notes.

Carol E. Holstead, associate professor of journalism, University of Kansas, Lawrence, decided she had had enough of students mesmerized by their laptop computer screens instead of listening to her lectures, so she banned the devices from her classroom. She did continue using PowerPoint presentations to outline her lecture and provide examples, but also instructed her students they needed to be more selective in writing down important points.

“It turned out my theory was right and now is supported by research,” Holstead wrote in an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education. “A study published last year in Psychological Science showed that students who write out notes longhand remember conceptual information better than those who take notes on a computer.”

The problem for students who used laptops is they become so intent on capturing every word of a lecture they don’t always listen to what is being said. Students who used paper and pen to take notes were more selective because they couldn’t write fast enough, allowing them to retain more information and understand it better, according to the research.

Holstead ended her first semester without laptops by having students fill out a questionnaire. Nearly 52% of the 95 responding students said they paid more attention without a computer in front of them. More importantly, test scores went up in her classes.

“Their answers reinforced the note-taking study,” Holstead said. “The students who tried to transcribe my lectures, even without a laptop, hated taking notes longhand. The students who figured out how to take selective notes liked it.”

Students Turning to Paper for PARCC Exams

The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) is an effort to provide information on how prepared students are for higher education or work after high school. The exams are based on Common Core standards for reading and math, but technical glitches in the computer-given tests are driving some districts to turn to paper instead.

“Our concern was really that the results of this testing taken online wouldn’t necessarily give clear data on what students know and should be able to do,” a spokeswoman for one school district told The Chicago Tribune.

The Tribune reported that one in four students in Illinois will use paper to take the exams during the spring testing period, costing districts an additional $2.4 million. The percentage of students taking the test online vs. paper is about the same in other states giving the test, according to PARCC officials.

About 11% of the school districts in Illinois plan to use paper and pencil to give the exam and another 34% will use a combination of paper and computer exams. The cost to administer the test to grades 3-8 is about $24 per student, but it rises to $33 each for paper testing.

The Tribune also reported that some students are planning to not take the exams at all, but opting out could be an issue. State officials said that if more than 5% of students statewide opt out, Illinois could fail federal requirements and face sanctions and that the state could then penalize districts for not testing enough students.

Efficiencies Lowering Quality of Education?

Colleges and universities are facing increasing pressure to graduate more students quicker and for less money. Policymakers at some institutions have responded by reducing the number of required credits, cutting certain major fields of study, and giving credit for life experiences.

Now, some professors are asking if this push for efficiency is leading to lower-quality education.  A group of faculty members plan to meet later this month in New York to discuss the issue.

“There are a whole bunch of policies—like getting students through more quickly—most of which don’t pay attention to what they are learning,” Debra Humphreys, vice president, Association  of American Colleges and University, told The Atlantic. “It could be making a bad situation worse if we don’t look at the impact of not only how many students but what they learn.”

One area of concern is policies that include performance-based funding. While critics contend that a U.S. graduation rate of 56% is unacceptable, too little is known on how such policies affect the quality of what is being taught.

Humphreys added, “Getting students through more efficiently, more quickly, and with the learning they need, we need to pay attention to all three. Otherwise, at least one will suffer.”

Udacity Pulls Math Course over Quality Concerns

Udacity, a start-up firm offering massive open online courses (MOOCs) taught by “world-renowned university instructors,” recently decided to cancel its Logic and Discrete Mathematics course because it didn’t live up to the quality standards set by the company.

Sebastian Thrun, founder of Udacity, told The Chronicle of Higher Education in an e-mail that while the entire class was recorded and edited, it didn’t meet the “quality bar” during the firm’s internal testing. Thrun did not say what that quality bar was, how many students had signed up, or whether the course would be offered in the future, but did praise the work done on the project by Jonathan D. Farley, associate professor of computing and information science, University of Maine at Orono.

“We want to make clear this disappointment is in no way a reflection on Jonathan, but on the Udacity team and the constraints we put on ourselves,” Thrun wrote.

Farley said he spent 45 hours recording the lectures and three hours of preparation for each hour recorded, but he also agreed with Udacity’s decision to pull the plug on the course.

“I blundered when recording some of the logic, and the camera was not on,” he said. “And also some of the mathematical proofs needed to be explained in a different way. It’s a totally different way of teaching because you have to figure out how you can reach 100,000 people.”

MOOCs make headlines for offering an online alternative to traditional educational programs, often free or practically no charge, but critics remain. As one commentator to the Chronicle article suggested, “Quality control is particularly important at this stage, when so many critical eyes are looking at online curricula,” so Udacity’s proactive approach could be the kind of move that may silence some detractors.