- Graduates from low-performing D.C. schools face tough college road [Cesar Chavez PCS mentioned]
- Schooling Ourselves in an Unequal America
Graduates from low-performing D.C. schools face tough college road [Cesar Chavez PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
June 16, 2013
Johnathon Carrington grew up on the sixth floor of a low-income D.C. apartment complex, a building most recently in the news for a drive-by shooting that injured 13.
His parents told him early on that education could be his escape, and Carrington took them at their word. He graduated Friday as the valedictorian of his neighborhood school, Dunbar High, and against all odds is headed to Georgetown University.
But Carrington, 17, is nervous, and so are his parents. What if Dunbar — where truancy is chronic and fewer than one-third of students are proficient in reading — didn’t prepare him for the rigors of college? What if he isn’t ready?
“I don’t think I’m going to fail everything,” Carrington said. “But I think I’m going to be a bit behind.”
It’s a valid concern. Past valedictorians of low-performing District high schools say their own transitions to college were eye-opening and at times ego-shattering, filled with revelations that — despite taking their public schools’ most difficult classes and acing them — they were not equipped to excel at the nation’s top colleges.
When these students arrived on campuses filled with students from high-flying suburban public schools and posh privates, they found a world vastly different from the one they knew in their urban high schools.
For Sache Collier, it meant writing her first research paper. For Darryl Robinson, it meant realizing that professors expected original ideas, not just regurgitated facts. For Angelica Wardell, who grew up going to school almost exclusively with African American students, it meant taking classes with whites and Asians.
And for many top D.C. graduates, it meant discarding the idea that school is easy.
“You can’t make it in college by yourself,” said Wardell, who just finished her junior year at Ohio State University. “You need professors, you need friends, you just need all the help you can get.”
Wardell said she breezed through H.D. Woodson High before graduating in 2010 and heading to Ohio State, where the workload was immediately overwhelming. And the diversity was a social shock. But her lowest point came during sophomore year, when she failed trigonometry despite pouring herself into the course.
She had taken trigonometry in high school and earned a B.
“I basically thought I was stupid,” said Wardell, 21. “I just felt like, ‘What’s wrong with me? Maybe I’m not meant to be here at one of the best schools in the nation.’ I told my mom I wanted to leave.”
It was a temporary impulse, eventually drowned out by a chorus of encouragement from friends and professors. Wardell redoubled her efforts to reach out for help and earned a C-plus on her second try at college trig. She is majoring in public health and plans to continue for a master’s degree in the same field.
“I like to challenge myself, even though sometimes it frustrates me,” Wardell said.
College can be jarring for young people no matter where they’re from or how challenging a high school they attended. But experts and educators say the transition can be particularly difficult for first-generation collegians and students from struggling inner-city schools.
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Schooling Ourselves in an Unequal America
The New York Times
By Rebecca Strauss
June 16, 2013
Averages can be misleading. The familiar, one-dimensional story told about American education is that it was once the best system in the world but that now it’s headed down the drain, with piles of money thrown down after it.
The truth is that there are two very different education stories in America. The children of the wealthiest 10 percent or so do receive some of the best education in the world, and the quality keeps getting better. For most everyone else, this is not the case. America’s average standing in global education rankings has tumbled not because everyone is falling, but because of the country’s deep, still-widening achievement gap between socioeconomic groups.
And while America does spend plenty on education, it funnels a disproportionate share into educating wealthier students, worsening that gap. The majority of other advanced countries do things differently, at least at the K-12 level, tilting resources in favor of poorer students.
Objective Subject
Historically, the role of the federal government, which takes a back seat to the states in education, has been to try to close achievement gaps, but they have continued to widen. Several changes in federal education policy under President Obama have actually increased the flow of scarce federal dollars toward those students who need it less, reinforcing inequities and further weakening overall educational performance. Reversing America’s slide in international education rankings will require turning that record on its head.
America’s relative fall in educational attainment is striking in several dimensions. American baby boomers ages 55 to 64 rank first in their age group in high school completion and third in college completion after Israel and Canada. But jump ahead 30 years to millennials ages 25 to 34, and the United States slips to 10th in high school completion and 13th in college completion. America is one of only a handful of countries whose work force today has no more years of schooling than those who are retiring do.
On international tests, American students consistently score in the middle of the pack among advanced countries, but America underperforms most on two measures — preschool enrollment and college on-time completion. Nearly all 4-year-olds in Japan, France, Britain and Germany are enrolled in preschool, compared with 69 percent in the United States. And although the United States is relatively good at getting high school graduates into college, it is horrible at getting them to graduate on time with a college degree. With more than half of those who start college failing to earn a degree, the United States has the highest college dropout rate in the developed world.
On average, money is not the problem. Given the country’s relative wealth, per-pupil spending on elementary and high school is roughly on track with other advanced countries. At the college level, the United States spends lavishly, far more than any other country.
The problem is that the United States is not spending its education dollars effectively. At every point along the education track, from preschool to college, resources are skewed to wealthier students.
The wealthy inhabit an educational realm very different from what national averages suggest. Consider these examples. If ranked internationally as nations, low-poverty Massachusetts and Minnesota would be among the top 6 performers worldwide in fourth-grade math and science. Among 15-year-olds, Asian-Americans, who also tend to be more affluent, are the world’s best readers; white Americans are third only to Finns and New Zealanders. In a 2012 Harvard Business School survey, high-quality universities were rated the country’s chief competitive advantage. The world’s brightest students clamor to attend them.
See link above for full article.