Florida’s remedial education needs are much greater than in many other states. Nationwide, about 40 percent of all first-year students need remedial education before they can enroll in credit-bearing courses.
For me personally, education was a ticket out of poverty. I believe that is our ethical and moral responsibility to offer each and every child a chance at a better life–a chance to live a longer, healthier, more prosperous, and happier life. That is precisely why I talk all the time about the need to prepare all students to be college- and career-ready, because I know from my own experience that education may be their only hope. After reading this article, I could not stop talking about it.
Here are some highlights:
In 2010-11, 54 percent of students coming out of high school failed at least one subject on the Florida College System’s placement test. Keep in mind that these are students who graduated and enrolled in college. What happened to the rest?
Education experts say part of the problem is that a high school diploma has never been the same thing as a certificate of college readiness. Equating high school completion with college- and career-readiness is a major shift of the Common Core State Standards
State Tests Never Measured College-Readiness
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush has been a proponent of the state’s high school exit exam – the FCAT. But now the conservative education advocate admits the test was never meant to determine whether students are prepared for college.
Curriculum Gap
There’s a curriculum gap between what high school students are taught and what they need to know going into college. And it’s been an ongoing problem that state educators have not addressed until recently.
Low Expectations Equal Low Performance
One high school teacher noted that her “average 10th-grade student reads at a 7th-grade reading level.”
At Miami Dade College, the final project for students in most remedial writing classes is to write a single paragraph by the end of a semester.
See on wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu
