Ed-yu-cay-shun; putting two and two together

Editorials

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Wednesday, February 8, 2006

The news at the top of page 1B in Friday's paper would've scared the daylights out of any Arkansas student-or parent:  End-of-Course Exams to gain weight.  What was this?  Another Mike Huckabee all-points-bulletin about fat kids?

Nope. The story said nothing about fat kids. It was about exit exams. Starting this spring, students have to pass tests in algebra, geometry and 11th-grade literacy. If they fail, they’ll have to undertake remediation in the fall—or go without a high school diploma. 

And it’s not going to get any easier anytime soon. 

This from the story by our own John Krupa and Cynthia Howell:  “Beginning in 2009-10, according to the revised rules, students [who don’t pass endof-course exams] not only will have to participate in remediation programs to get credit for the corresponding high school courses, but also will have to actually pass each of the state exams to pass their courses.”  That is, to get credit for a course, students will have to show they know their stuff on an end-of-year exam. And by 2009, there’ll be no getting around it. 

Which is more than fair; it may be the only way to fight grade inflation and stop issuing diplomas that are only paper. 

Consider: In 2005, 54 percent of Arkansas’ 11th-graders didn’t score high enough on the end-of-course exam to pass the literacy test. Some 40 percent didn’t pass the algebra test, and 45 percent failed geometry. 

That’s a lot of kids taking a lot of remediation classes, folks. 

Which means a lot of people aren’t happy. They have all kinds of complaints: The new requirements will create a logjam in remediation classes, they say. 

Kids who don’t take tests well shouldn’t be punished this way, they say. 

A “D” should be a passing grade, they say. And it should be acceptable without making a kid demonstrate that he’s learned enough, they say. 

If the kids pass their classes, but not their end-of-course exams, why, you’d have them taking Algebra II while taking remediation for Algebra I, they say. How much sense does that make? 

(Then again, how much sense does it make for a kid who’s not prepared for a test on Algebra I to be taking Algebra II at all?)  One principal quoted in the story said the new rules were “just awful.”  It’s not how much kids know that seems to matter to such principals, but how quickly the kids can be passed along to become someone else’s problem. 

Then there was this headline on the front page of the very next day’s paper:  Number of freshmen/ taking remedial units/ in college dips in ’05.  Although more than half of the students entering Arkansas colleges require some classes to get them up to college speed, remediation for Arkansas’ college freshmen was at its lowest level in more than a decade. Still alarmingly high at nearly 55 percent, the number of kids who started college without being prepared for it decreased by more than 3 percent last year. Even though enrollment grew by 3 percent. 

That means fewer college kids (and their parents) are paying for those remediation classes that don’t count toward a degree. That means fewer college kids are finding college confusing. And the shock of finding out he’s really not been prepared is a sure way to turn a college student into an ex-college student. 

In short, we need to have more and more young people coming out of high school ready for the next step. 

Education is a continuing process. Each year builds on the last. What happens in 3rd Grade will affect 7th Grade, which will affect 12th Grade, which will affect academic performance in the sophomore year of college . . . right up and through graduate and post-graduate studies. If Arkansas high schools ratchet up their standards, as they are doing, think how it’ll improve our college campuses in another year or two, or decade or two. Much for the better. 

Conclusion: It’s better to take remediation classes in high school today than to pay for them in college tomorrow, when it could be too late for a lot of young people.