I'm teaching a college course this-- public school is woefully underpreparing our students

[Shelydon]

I have a master's degree and a specialized field and was asked to teach an introduction to that field course at a local large university this semester. The students are primarily sophomores although there are a few students who are freshmen and had AP or dual credit hours coming into college.  The students simply have no idea how to learn. Their work is middle school level-- they are   unable to use appropriate grammar, capitalization etc. Putting together a paragraph seems to be an impossible task.  They are unable to perform basic math such as finding the percentage. Turning assignments in is hit or miss. The freshman in particular are all shocked that they have to read prior to class. 

The standout students were all private or homeschooled. The students tell me that in high school there were no textbooks, just Google classroom with a few slides. It doesn't matter if they turn things in because they can't receive below a 70, so they never do  homework. If they make a beat on a test or turn in a single paper, that will usually give them a B for the class. 

I've taught in a homeschool group for a number of years, and definitely saw that in high school students who transferred from public school, but kids who are being removed from one educational setting and put in another are often having other issues, so I didn't realize how widespread the problem is, at least in my state.  

The department head has sent out emails saying that we need to reduce the rigor of classes because students are failing. I knew public school was in bad shape, I just didn't realize how low performing students were even coming from "good"  districts. 

 

[wintermom]

Sounds like high school teachers and administrator would be a better audience. They are the ones that need to know this and how it's impacting their students for the future. 

ETA: I know that my dc who attended our local high school don't have these kinds of issues. So something is going wrong in the high school system near you.

Edited Wednesday at 03:22 PM by wintermom

[Shelydon]

2 minutes ago, wintermom said:

Sounds like high school teachers and administrator would be a better audience. They are the ones that need to know this and how it's impacting their students for the future. 

ETA: I know that my dc who attended our local high school don't have these kinds of issues. So something is going wrong in the high school system near you.

Perhaps. I just did a quick check though and third of the kids are from out of state in my class. This is a really large university, 40,000 plus students.

[SKL]

Interesting - I wonder what state.  The "can't receive below 70" is definitely not true in my state.

My kids went to a parochial 1-8 and public 9-12.  They are now freshmen at a public university.  They complain that the stuff being taught in English was learned by them in 10th/11th grade.  I don't know how much it will ramp up.  To be fair, they took 2 years of AP English but didn't bother with the AP tests, and that's on them.  So maybe if they'd taken General English in high school, this would be new for them.

I do feel that at least where I live, there are enough options in public school that kids who want to learn at a high level, will.  One needs a bit of self-motivation though, doesn't one?

We do have the "no textbook" issue here.  I HATE THIS.  Apparently it's true in college too.  IMO this removes some of the backup methods that could be used by students who can't keep up with classroom lectures or who need extra practice.  It is also really the only way for any other person to help a struggling student.  Imagine trying to tutor a child when you have no idea what they're supposed to be learning in school.

Even as a relatively good learner, I had to teach myself out of my textbooks at home.  I likely had undiagnosed ADHD and was / am an awful listener, as well as a slow reader. 

It's crazy that they've done away with books in the learning process.  And it's crazy IMO that I never hear anyone complaining about this.  I can't be the only one??

[SKL]

I would add:  I'd love to know if anyone has studied and written about the "textbooks" vs. "no textbooks" issue.  If not, I wonder why not?  Is there some reason educators aren't allowed to "go there"?

[wintermom]

3 minutes ago, Shelydon said:

Perhaps. I just did a quick check though and third of the kids are from out of state in my class. This is a really large university, 40,000 plus students.

Are you allowed to see what regions, and or high schools? 

Are there any state-wide exams that high school students have to complete in order to graduate. Those can be helpful in standardizing some basic knowledge and grading.

[kbutton]

Funny how if you do college in high school, you skip right over that practice at solidifying or learning high school skills. I hate that this is what we do now. My kid is in DE stuff in high school because regular college prep barely exists anymore and is looked down on. AP classes are not offered at his specific school because of size (this specific campus is small).

And so many skills are expected to be “picked up” by the kids on their own, such as grammar. 

[SKL]

Just now, kbutton said:

Funny how if you do college in high school, you skip right over that practice at solidifying or learning high school skills. I hate that this is what we do now. My kid is in DE stuff in high school because regular college prep barely exists anymore and is looked down on. AP classes are not offered at his specific school because of size (this specific campus is small).

And so many skills are expected to be “picked up” by the kids on their own, such as grammar. 

I did get the feeling my kids weren't really taught how to write, at least not in the systematic way I was taught.  However, hearing them now complain about how they "already know all this stuff," well, I wasn't there in their classrooms.  😛  My kids aren't horrible writers, but I don't know how much of that is due to classroom learning vs. having lots of experience with well-written literature.  (When I was in college, I took a course in which the theme was basically, reading is what informs writing skills.  Just one perspective.)

[Carrie12345]

My community college classes are such a mixed bag, of both teachers and students. Some classmates can’t write a cohesive 4 sentence assignment post, and others jump right in with formatting and references. Some teachers run classes like a middle school, and others run them like graduate courses.

What I find most interesting is that my kids and I (me, because my high school diploma is so old and kids because they were DE homeschoolers) had to take the accuplacer. The recent high school graduates do not. And I think maybe they should!

[wisdomandtreasures]

37 minutes ago, Shelydon said:

The department head has sent out emails saying that we need to reduce the rigor of classes because students are failing. 

Ah yes, reward failure instead of weeding out the chaff so a college degree can continue to mean something and the people who actually want to learn something CAN. 😑

Yes, it's a joke. A relative graduated this year. He had Bs in the easiest classes (2 PE classes) and C- in history, English, etc. but his mother was raving and said he was "Killing it". Um...

[whitestavern]

My DD earning her Master’s is a TA for bio at a large university. She was homeschooled then did parochial for hs. She has similar complaints about almost all her students. Also that they seem incapable of following very simple directions. 

[prairiewindmomma]

Is it an open admissions/no accuplacer school? I know some universities are bringing in a lot of out of state students as a way of bringing in additional revenue to prop up budgets. 

[SanDiegoMom]

1 hour ago, SKL said:

I would add:  I'd love to know if anyone has studied and written about the "textbooks" vs. "no textbooks" issue.  If not, I wonder why not?  Is there some reason educators aren't allowed to "go there"?

I completely agree.  The textbook issue drives me insane.  Often they are online textbooks with access codes (which make it even more expensive) and many are so hard to use - so distracting.   
 

Slides on Canvas and short movie clips are often used in place of textbooks (at the CC I work at) and this just completely dumbs the entire learning experience down.  

 

[Clemsondana]

We've had multiple kids from our co-op come back and talk about how well prepared for college they felt and how they thought that their classmates didn't take college seriously, or how they weren't impressed with the difficulty of some classes.  This isn't to say that they don't have hard classes, that some classmates aren't awesome students, or that all kids who use our co-op excel in college, but we have heard from a surprising number who are perplexed by what they are seeing.  This includes kids at community colleges (some doing DE, some as grads), students at state flagships, and kids at SLACs.  

Some of the kids are what would be considered 'brainy' kids, so their natural abilities, love of learning, and good prep would be expected to lead to good outcomes in college.  But, others are kids who were A/B students in high school - great kids, but not the most academic.  Maybe they learned good study skills and found their groove in college, or were late bloomers?  A friend who teaches college physics (non-majors, not calc-based) has said that they are trying different things to up the pass rate, including doing remedial algebra in class.  Friend is running an experiment this semester doing different things in different sections to try to figure out what works.  Students have talked about colleges doing 'boot camps' for 2 weeks prior to the start of classes for students in some majors.  Schools have also added 'Academic success centers' and tutoring programs that weren't there 30 years ago.  On one hand, I celebrate this!  I'd much rather students get help and learn the material rather than drop out or have the classes dumbed down.  But, I'm also concerned that students are coming in so poorly prepared.  They aren't just needing help in known 'weeder' classes.  

I'm also noticing a bifurcation - some students are doing far better than in the past and some are doing far worse.  When I was in college profs were starting to see a bimodal distribution rather than a bell curve for grades, and it's gotten worse.  There are so many resources available - Khan Academy and other videos can explain almost anything - and students who use them excel.  Other students seem stuck in learned helplessness.  If the instructor doesn't say it directly, they don't think to look it up.  I've had students say that they need help with a definition on their homework because it doesn't cross their minds to use the glossary or index in their textbook.  If it's not in their notes (whether I forgot to say it or they forgot to write it) they are stuck.  I specifically teach some of that, but I'm guessing it's not universal.  

My students are usually pretty good, but last year I had a group unlike any that I've ever had.  A couple of students would raise their hand during class and ask 'Do you really expect us to remember all of this?' or 'Do we really need to write all of that down?', referring to the things that I was writing on the board.  It was only on year - this year's class is back to normal - but I'm wondering if it's part of a bigger wave that is hitting colleges.  

Edited to add: I agree about online texts.  They frustrate my kid because they are hard to use, hard to read, and you can lose access.  Kid sometimes pulls out our old books, and buys a physical book whenever possible.  

Edited Wednesday at 04:50 PM by Clemsondana

[regentrude]

Welcome to the club. I have been teaching the same introductory course for 22 years, and we can observe the ability of the students declining steadily. They wouldn't be able to solve the exam problems we gave 20 years ago. Even students have remarked on it.

For us, the decline of math skills is the biggest obstacle. Plus lack of reading comprehension and attention to detail. We've been fighting against a lowering of standards, but it's impossible. The dumbing down is gradual but noticeable. 

[rebcoola]

Thats crazy my older 2 go to a choice stem school high school all classes are considered honors level except the things like yearbook.  By junior advanced students are typically taking at least 3/4 college courses using college in the classroom or running start no ap. They can definitely fail in fact they can and are asked to leave the school if they fail too many classes. Their are no textbooks but they have required reading and classes are definitely not just a few google slides.

I do wonder about about the level we have a couple of state schools that accept anyone with a 3.0 gpa and the minimum required classes. I know that our regular high schools have a wide variety of classses you put together a pretty easy schedule that checks the boxes of admission and you can probably get a B average as long as you just do the work.

S

[Heartstrings]

1 hour ago, SKL said:

We do have the "no textbook" issue here.  I HATE THIS.  Apparently it's true in college too.  IMO this removes some of the backup methods that could be used by students who can't keep up with classroom lectures or who need extra practice.  It is also really the only way for any other person to help a struggling student.

A lot of my college classes had no textbook but there was always written material.  Usually it was some sort of scanned articles that the professor uploaded and we could read online or print out.  I usually printed so I could refer back to it easily. 

[elegantlion]

I saw this when I TA'd. Administrators kept putting freshmen in the US history courses thinking they were easy. We were a heavy reading and heavy writing course. I saw the gamut as our campus drew students from a wide range of high school backgrounds. Forget the proper citations, thesis statements, and use of evidence, I had students who needed help forming proper sentences and how to literally format the essay in a word document. 

Edited Wednesday at 05:12 PM by elegantlion

[BusyMom5]

I have kids in 3 different colleges.  I think the problem comes from federal policies that encourage high schools to graduate everyone without regard to how much they actually learned. The credit recovery programs and no grades less than 50% are hurting academic integrity!  Couple that with colleges who have lowered admission standards, open admission, or admission for all students with a 3.0 GPA and you end up with a lot of students who are not prepared- for college, trade school, or even life.  I do think we expect too many kids to go to college.  

My daughter is a TA (IT computers) and does tutoring for accounting and computer classes at a big university. She just said yesterday the main problem is the students do not understand math- how it works, basic number sense.  Calculators and programs don't work if you don't understand the information you are inputting and how it is related!  You can't write a program if you don't understand what the data means. 

 

 

[Heartstrings]

7 minutes ago, BusyMom5 said:

I have kids in 3 different colleges.  I think the problem comes from federal policies that encourage high schools to graduate everyone without regard to how much they actually learned. The credit recovery programs and no grades less than 50% are hurting academic integrity!  Couple that with colleges who have lowered admission standards, open admission, or admission for all students with a 3.0 GPA and you end up with a lot of students who are not prepared- for college, trade school, or even life.  I do think we expect too many kids to go to college.  

My daughter is a TA (IT computers) and does tutoring for accounting and computer classes at a big university. She just said yesterday the main problem is the students do not understand math- how it works, basic number sense.  Calculators and programs don't work if you don't understand the information you are inputting and how it is related!  You can't write a program if you don't understand what the data means. 

 

 

I'm shocked at how the math that I see from public school friends looks.  Its all just skimmed, like drinking from a fire hydrant.  They move so fast and have what I think is "fake rigor" that just confuses a lot of the kids. There is a weird push away from memorizing facts too.  

Edited Wednesday at 05:21 PM by Heartstrings

[cintinative]

My freshman kid in Computer Science said that his prof had to explain the lesser and greater than symbols in his Discrete Structures class. Those are taught in elementary school. I really don't get it!

Edited Wednesday at 06:11 PM by cintinative

[teachermom2834]

I think there are so many issues. One that makes me personally crazy is grade inflation. My dd goes to Catholic high school and while it isn't a top competitive school I do feel like she is getting a great education. However, if one were to just look at the grades given they would have no idea how their student was performing, nor could any college reasonably assess. My dd is a top student but she isn't a genius and she makes silly errors. Her 9th and 10th grade transcript is almost all 100s in honors and AP classes. But the real deal is that my dd had like 110 in most of her classes because the teachers would put so many extra credit questions on the tests. So she has 100s on her transcript but she really was scoring about 110 out of say 120. Okay...whatever...but for the kids that are squeaking out lower grades no one, not even their parents unless they investigate, realize it wasn't really on a 100 scale. It's just a pet peeve for me but a kid doing extra credit to push a grade in the high 80's up to an A just gets an A and boasts a 4.0, higher if weighted, and no one has any idea that kid maybe needs some holes filled. That a kid with high 80s was missing alot on tests that were really out of 120. 

Once last year they called the 10th class to the auditorium and read them the riot act and said only 5 students in the class of 110 didn't have missing work, they were not going to write them letters of recommendation, etc etc. The next day the quarter honor roll was posted and 40% of the class was on high A honor roll and another 40% was on A/B honor roll. So...quite a disconnect. Then all those kids get into our flagship because they have high GPAs from a reputable school. Surely these practices go on all over. Makes me pretty crazy actually. 

Tonight we have National Honor Society Induction. The invite said the requirement is a 3.75 weighted GPA. I'm expecting that to be at least 50% of her class. I don't know what to make of that. 

I actually think my dd's school is pretty good and most of these kids go on and are successful. But if schools offering less rigor are also using these grading policies it is no wonder kids show up thinking they know what they are doing when they have no idea how to approach academic challenge.

In 11th grade my dd has finally encountered tough graders and teachers that are not doing the extra credit on every test/assignment. She and her peers are texting each other commiserating over grades like "95" and sometimes even "85". They haven't seen this before. LOL. They are adjusting but I'm glad I've been pointing out to her all along that the grading has been unrealistic. 

I, for one, am grateful that our state schools are not test optional because I don't know how they would differentiate these students at all and there is a huge difference between the top kids with 4.0s and the lowest 4.0s.

 

[Shelydon]

2 hours ago, wintermom said:

Are you allowed to see what regions, and or high schools? 

Are there any state-wide exams that high school students have to complete in order to graduate. Those can be helpful in standardizing some basic knowledge and grading.

No. Just 'out of state ' and 'in state'. In my state their are end of year exams required. 

[Shelydon]

2 hours ago, kbutton said:

Funny how if you do college in high school, you skip right over that practice at solidifying or learning high school skills. I hate that this is what we do now. My kid is in DE stuff in high school because regular college prep barely exists anymore and is looked down on. AP classes are not offered at his specific school because of size (this specific campus is small).

And so many skills are expected to be “picked up” by the kids on their own, such as grammar. 

Agree. My own kids do DE in local community colleges, and the quality of classes is really low. It is stuff my kids learn in 6th grade. However, I didn't expect it for the big 4 year University 

[Bootsie]

54 minutes ago, BusyMom5 said:

I have kids in 3 different colleges.  I think the problem comes from federal policies that encourage high schools to graduate everyone without regard to how much they actually learned. 

 

 

Surprisingly, there are some federal policies that are also encouraging colleges to do the same.

I have been teaching at the collegiate level since the mid 1980s--almost 40 years and have seen a huge change.  Over a decade ago I had college juniors and seniors write a one-page paper in my class about the current economic environment.  I took the papers back to them and told them to put one line under the subject of each sentence and two lines under the verb.  Only 5 of almost 200 students could consistently identify a subject and a verb in a sentence they wrote.  (To be honest, sometimes there was NOT a subject or a verb in the collection of words followed by a punctuation mark on their papers.)  Many could not do this for any sentence on their paper--they identified "very," "the," "and," "a," "grew," "became," and many other adjectives, adverbs, and verbs as a subject.  Words like "economy", "interest rate," "very," and "higher" were identified as verbs.  The were not understanding if I said that they needed to work on subject/verb agreement, theat they had incomplete entences, or that they had run-on sentences.  All had completed their college-level writing courses (many as AP/honors credit in high school).  

The lack of textbooks is a problem.  Students ask me if they are supposed to "read the Powerpoints" for the exam.  I did not understand this until I realized that many high schools were not buying books.  The teacher had the PowerPoint slides from the publisher and was providing those to the students to "read".  The students are not experiencing a sentence--much less a sentence in context.  They are being presented bullet points.  They are not seeing how ideas fit together, order, or logic.  I have had college students who do not know what an "index" is.

And the math skills are as bad, if not worse.  Just this week I had a college senior (in a fairly mathematical major), asking if this was when he should divide everything by "1".  (He could not figure out if 12A = X and 29B = X, how many B's and A equaled).  I had one tell me that their calculator didn't round properly because it gave them 6.25 rather than 0.06%--the student was clueless about scientific notation--no light bulbs went off when I explained his calculator was showing scientific notation.  I have many who can not caluclate 10% of $200 without a calculator.  I have even had one who did not know how many days were in a year, weeks were in a year, or months were in a year; she did know that there were seven days in a week, but thought once I told here that there 365 days in a year that she should multiply 365 and 7 to find out the number of weeks in a year.  Then she tried adding 365 and 7 (originally she thought there were 125 weeks in a year!)

 

 

[Shelydon]

In chatting about this with public school parents they all say " not at my kid' school, mine is better/different." But when I press, they admit they have no idea what their kids are doing in class and that their kids don't have textbooks. Parents have their heads in the sand, IMO. 

[Shelydon]

1 hour ago, regentrude said:

Welcome to the club. I have been teaching the same introductory course for 22 years, and we can observe the ability of the students declining steadily. They wouldn't be able to solve the exam problems we gave 20 years ago. Even students have remarked on it.

For us, the decline of math skills is the biggest obstacle. Plus lack of reading comprehension and attention to detail. We've been fighting against a lowering of standards, but it's impossible. The dumbing down is gradual but noticeable. 

 

5 minutes ago, Bootsie said:

Surprisingly, there are some federal policies that are also encouraging colleges to do the same.

I have been teaching at the collegiate level since the mid 1980s--almost 40 years and have seen a huge change.  Over a decade ago I had college juniors and seniors write a one-page paper in my class about the current economic environment.  I took the papers back to them and told them to put one line under the subject of each sentence and two lines under the verb.  Only 5 of almost 200 students could consistently identify a subject and a verb in a sentence they wrote.  (To be honest, sometimes there was NOT a subject or a verb in the collection of words followed by a punctuation mark on their papers.)  Many could not do this for any sentence on their paper--they identified "very," "the," "and," "a," "grew," "became," and many other adjectives, adverbs, and verbs as a subject.  Words like "economy", "interest rate," "very," and "higher" were identified as verbs.  The were not understanding if I said that they needed to work on subject/verb agreement, theat they had incomplete entences, or that they had run-on sentences.  All had completed their college-level writing courses (many as AP/honors credit in high school).  

The lack of textbooks is a problem.  Students ask me if they are supposed to "read the Powerpoints" for the exam.  I did not understand this until I realized that many high schools were not buying books.  The teacher had the PowerPoint slides from the publisher and was providing those to the students to "read".  The students are not experiencing a sentence--much less a sentence in context.  They are being presented bullet points.  They are not seeing how ideas fit together, order, or logic.  I have had college students who do not know what an "index" is.

And the math skills are as bad, if not worse.  Just this week I had a college senior (in a fairly mathematical major), asking if this was when he should divide everything by "1".  (He could not figure out if 12A = X and 29B = X, how many B's and A equaled).  I had one tell me that their calculator didn't round properly because it gave them 6.25 rather than 0.06%--the student was clueless about scientific notation--no light bulbs went off when I explained his calculator was showing scientific notation.  I have many who can not caluclate 10% of $200 without a calculator.  I have even had one who did not know how many days were in a year, weeks were in a year, or months were in a year; she did know that there were seven days in a week, but thought once I told here that there 365 days in a year that she should multiply 365 and 7 to find out the number of weeks in a year.  Then she tried adding 365 and 7 (originally she thought there were 125 weeks in a year!)

 

 

Just 😳😳🤐 

For the first time I am truly concerned about the future. 

[SKL]

2 hours ago, Heartstrings said:

I'm shocked at how the math that I see from public school friends looks.  Its all just skimmed, like drinking from a fire hydrant.  They move so fast and have what I think is "fake rigor" that just confuses a lot of the kids. There is a weird push away from memorizing facts too.  

Yes, kids who aren't mathy are expected to pass mathy classes in order to graduate (was state law when my kids started high school).  You can't squeeze water from a stone.  [Especially when there's no textbook to study!]

If people are thinking there's something good about making it impossible for some kids to earn a high school diploma, I'm gonna disagree with that.

Maybe the college selection process should be revisited.  Some programs truly don't require much understanding of math; some don't require high level writing.  But for those that do, wouldn't it be fairer for everyone involved to do the weeding at the college application level, vs. set teens up to fail?  Someone above suggested that maybe there's a financial incentive to accepting candidates that aren't necessarily ready.  Is   that the issue?

My kids were late to school their first 2 days because the parking lots were all full.  Now, they say there's plenty of space because so many people have dropped out.  Something is not right IMO.

Edited Wednesday at 07:42 PM by SKL

[Heartstrings]

7 hours ago, SKL said:

Someone above suggested that maybe there's a financial incentive to accepting candidates that aren't necessarily ready.  Is   that the issue?

I could see that.  Those kids that drop out still pay for the full semester, they still pay for the  meal plan they won't eat and dorm they won't use.   

Edited Thursday at 02:33 AM by Heartstrings

[Hilltopmom]

As a teacher, I would Love to have some textbooks. They are very, very expensive to buy for entire districts and it rarely happens anymore. Often no online ones either, we just have to create or buy our own digital or print things to photocopy.

No wonder not everyone is teaching what they should be across the board.

 

[SKL]

Well I mean I graduated at 16 with 17 high school credits (of which 2 were gym/health/art).  There were no honors/AP courses, but there was a "college prep" track, and I went up to Biology, Algebra II, Spanish 3, and CP English IV  (and I didn't have a 4.0).  With that, I had no trouble succeeding at a state college.

I think my kids have been exposed to as much if not more than I was exposed to in high school.  They don't love language as much as I did; they aren't as genetically mathy as I was; but they aren't completely ignorant either IMO.  (I still think they would have learned / retained more with textbooks.)

I do want to say that I think my eldest benefited from the fact that some things were really hard for her in high school.  She had college aspirations and worked to make it happen.  She probably knows more about "how to study" than her more intelligent sister.  (Still, I am not sure how she's gonna do with her freshman classes.  But I do think she has a better chance than she would have had if she'd taken a less challenging path in high school.)

Edited Wednesday at 07:55 PM by SKL

[regentrude]

29 minutes ago, SKL said:

Maybe the college selection process should be revisited.  Some programs truly don't require much understanding of math; some don't require high level writing.  

We're not talking about high levels here. The ability to read a paragraph and figure out what it means or to write a sentence that is complete with a subject and predicate and understandable are probably needed in every college major.

I have engineering students (!!!) who are unable to solve a system of two linear equations. 9th grade material.

My sister is an anesthesiologist. She reports that many of the interns, i.e. people who finished medical school, cannot perform simple multiplication to find medication dosage without a calculator. Questions of the type: if you need 0.25 mg drug per kilogram patient weight, how much do you give a 64 kg person? They also can't do a basic estimate to see if the number their calculator spits out is reasonable. 

So, not fancy calculus. This is 5th grade stuff. Students never understood basic concepts about fractions or ratios. Because they were encouraged to use calculators since elementary school and never developed a number sense.

Edited Wednesday at 08:02 PM by regentrude

[regentrude]

@Clemsondana we are seeing the bimodal distribution too. We have to make exams so easy that there is no way to distinguish truly outstanding from just okay students- if they know anything,  they get it right, and we still have a large tail of students who fail the exams because they can't even answer the simple questions. 

 

[Carrie12345]

32 minutes ago, SKL said:

Maybe the college selection process should be revisited.  Some programs truly don't require much understanding of math; some don't require high level writing.  But for those that do, wouldn't it be fairer for everyone involved to do the weeding at the college application level, vs. set teens up to fail?  Someone above suggested that maybe there's a financial incentive to accepting candidates that aren't necessarily ready.  Is   that the issue?

My CC has remedial math and English courses available. I have no idea who’s IN them, but I cross paths with many who should be and aren’t! They cost just as much, but don’t grant credit.   
But, like I said, if you have a recent diploma, you’re basically right to regular courses.

[SKL]

2 minutes ago, regentrude said:

My sister is an anesthesiologist. She reports that many of the interns, i.e. people who finished medical school, cannot perform simple multiplication to find medication dosage without a calculator. Questions of the type: if you need 0.25 mg drug per kilogram patient weight, how much do you give a 64 kg person? They also can't do a basic estimate to see if the number their calculator spits out is reasonable. 

So, not fancy calculus. This is 5th grade stuff. Students never understood basic concepts about fractions or ratios. Because they were encouraged to use calculators since elementary school and never developed a number sense.

Maybe this explains why so many deaths are due to medical errors.

I don't know the answers.  I know there have always been people who are good at some stuff and bad at other stuff.  I remember in tax law class (selective law school) when most of the class gave a blank stare when asked what's 25% of 200!  Once my boss (a partner in a "Big Four" CPA firm) asked me how to spell "pencil," and he was not joking.  It's hard to blame it all on stupidity or laziness.

For that matter, my dad was tested in middle school (part of his truancy adjudication) and he tested "college plus" in science, 3rd grade in math, and 2nd grade in reading (in reality his reading level was early 1st grade).  As an adult, he was the best engineering student on campus, but he needed intense hand holding to write a simple college 101 essay. 

I guess I'm saying that this is a complex issue.  Placing blame will have limited results.

[SKL]

4 minutes ago, Carrie12345 said:

My CC has remedial math and English courses available. I have no idea who’s IN them, but I cross paths with many who should be and aren’t! They cost just as much, but don’t grant credit.   
But, like I said, if you have a recent diploma, you’re basically right to regular courses.

My kids had to take a math placement exam.  I was holding my breath for one of them (psychology major).  I mean, who wants to have to spend the time and money for remedial college courses?  Though, I guess nowadays one should be able to use free online resources to shore up math skills.

[Faith-manor]

5 minutes ago, regentrude said:

We're not talking about high levels here. The ability to read a paragraph and figure out what it means or to write a sentence that is complete with a subject and predicate and understandable are probably needed in every college major.

I have engineering students (!!!) who are unable to solve a system of two linear equations. 9th grade material.

My sister is an anesthesiologist. She reports that many of the interns, i.e. people who finished medical school, cannot perform simple multiplication to find medication dosage without a calculator. Questions of the type: if you need 0.25 mg drug per kilogram patient weight, how much do you give a 64 kg person? They also can't do a basic estimate to see if the number their calculator spits out is reasonable. 

So, not fancy calculus. This is 5th grade stuff. Students never understood basic concepts about fractions or ratios. Because they were encouraged to use calculators since elementary school and never developed a number sense.

This right here.

Literal, numerical illiteracy. And apart from working very low pay, hard labor, no benefits jobs for forever, so don't know what jobs are available that do not require high school level reading and comprehension plus here the ability to write memo that people can understand. Just none off the top of my head.

I know the answer in every anti-math mind is "trades" but what the heck trades are they talking about? Seriously, it takes numeracy to do any of them. It takes the ability to read and comprehend OSCHA regulations, schematics, blueprints, , you name it. Most people who attempt the electrical journeyperson licensing fail, epic fail. Cannot do the math.

We live in a technological age. Unless you want your kid to make minimum wage foe the rest of his or her life washing bird dung off runways or something, I really don't know what people who want it dumbed down further think is going to be available other than supporting their kids for their rest of their lives and leaving a big inheritance.

Fix the base. Dumbing it down further is an even bigger disaster unless the USA is going to steal all its brainpower from other countries.

If we fix the curriculum nonsense, the lack of numeric literacy, get back to the basics and cover them well, a lot of things will start going better in the upper grades.

That said, when it comes to work ethic and applying the noggin to trying, something is going to have to give with parenting in general. Not all parenting by any stretch, but we do have a lot of parents who are anti-education, work actively against education, and really imbue their kids with bad attitudes from the very beginning.

And if I hear one more time, "My kid don't need know fancy education cuz he's gonna play football in the NFL", my head is going to explode...says the woman living in a class C school district surrounded by class D districts that play a limited league football without even the standard number of players. No kid from these districts is playing sports in college much less the NBA. But we still have fathers pushing this nonsense.

[regentrude]

Just now, SKL said:

Though, I guess nowadays one should be able to use free online resources to shore up math skills.

This is what baffles me. Never before in history have students had access to so many free or inexpensive educational resources! Need math remediation? There are oodles of math videos on YouTube. Don't do well with online texts? You can find dirt-cheap old editions of textbooks on ebay or AAmazon. Or, heaven forbid, go to the library!

Anyone could find resources to learn just about anything. But there's his mindset of learned helplessness...

[rebcoola]

The math issue is realy kids school does integrated 1,2, and 3 than all the higher courses are college level. They take whole trimester and review than the kids are given a placement test before they begin the college level calc and above classes. A good number of students make it but their understanding is somehow so low. ODD was in class working on something and 1 of her tablemates shouted oh thats what multiplication is they literally just figured out what multiplication actually was while sitting in calc class!! Oldest was stunned and grilled him for awhile about it and other basic concepts.  In her words he wasn't even 1 of the dumb kids.

[Clemsondana]

I think there's a gap between what people think a job is and what the job actually is.  I had nursing students who were angry that they had to learn the metric system and dose calculations.  It's true, some nurses don't do that!  But, you don't know what you'll be hired to do - it may be taking temperatures and giving shots, or it may be diluting injection material in an allergist's office.  

When I was teaching these classes to pre-nursing students, 15-20 years ago, I chatted with a nurse who said that she was perplexed because the students doing...practicum, maybe? supervised nursing, and also new nurses, seemed unafraid.  She said that people in her cohort had been terrified that they'd make a mistake and kill somebody but the new crops of students were blase about the whole thing.  At some point I remember doing the intro to a lab and saying 'I've heard many of you talk about your kids or other family members.  Would you be comfortable taking your family member to an ER, knowing that the nurse had put in the level of effort and had the level of understanding that you are in this class?'.  It was a revelation, like it had never crossed their minds that they did this for a purpose.  I think the same thing when somebody says that they want to be an engineer but can't do math.  When engineers don't math, space shuttles crash and bridges collapse.  There may be jobs that don't involve math on a day to day basis, but you aren't guaranteed those jobs.  

I'd be fine with there being various routes to a high school diploma, I'm happy to not require degrees for jobs that don't actually use them, and I like to see 'adjacent' jobs for people who would be great in a field but would struggle with the degree (engineering tech vs engineering, various medical fields that require an associates, or a certificate rather than a degree).  But, students who take a class need to learn what's supposed to be taught in the class and not an 'everybody can pass this' easier version.  We should guide students into paths where they can succeed...if algebra is a struggle, you are going to need to figure it out before embarking on a degree in engineering.  And there are many other fields for which this is the case.  If you are squeamish, perhaps reconsider the health sciences.  If you get irritated repeating yourself, elementary ed might not be the field for you. 

[kbutton]

2 hours ago, Shelydon said:

Agree. My own kids do DE in local community colleges, and the quality of classes is really low. It is stuff my kids learn in 6th grade. However, I didn't expect it for the big 4 year University 

I mean something else. If middle school teaches a-k, and high school becomes college classes teaching r-z, where does the missing stuff get made up? A lot of the missing stuff is what you talked about like grammar in context, etc.

My kid is a good writer, but he hasn’t had a lot of direct instruction on going from good to better—last year it was all peer review in his college English class, and he was not getting substantive comments at all that helped him fix his writing. Then the kids complain that the prof is a hard grader. No one is teaching those in-between skills. It’s now somehow wrong to teach something explicitly in high school when kids need to solidify it. 

40 minutes ago, regentrude said:

We're not talking about high levels here. The ability to read a paragraph and figure out what it means or to write a sentence that is complete with a subject and predicate and understandable are probably needed in every college major.

I have engineering students (!!!) who are unable to solve a system of two linear equations. 9th grade material.

My sister is an anesthesiologist. She reports that many of the interns, i.e. people who finished medical school, cannot perform simple multiplication to find medication dosage without a calculator. Questions of the type: if you need 0.25 mg drug per kilogram patient weight, how much do you give a 64 kg person? They also can't do a basic estimate to see if the number their calculator spits out is reasonable. 

So, not fancy calculus. This is 5th grade stuff. Students never understood basic concepts about fractions or ratios. Because they were encouraged to use calculators since elementary school and never developed a number sense.

When I hear SKL say that maybe not everyone needs all the same pre-reqs, I am hearing that not everyone needs calculus, so let’s put those kids in normal math so that they can solidify those skills instead of propping up harder classes that they have to dumb down. But I can’t speak for her.

It used to be okay to be not well rounded, have some weak areas, but overall be a solid student. Now it’s like everyone has to have AP or DE largely across the board, so those things become either high stakes or dumbed down.

My state (seems like SKL lives here too) requires tech prep (which is usually college level—trade math still requires algebra skills) or AP/DE classes as proof of college readiness to graduate. What ever happened to having appropriate high school classes that aren’t either remedial or drink from a fire hose?!? That’s what high school is for! 

If it makes you feel better, my son is in a pre-nursing program (still high school) where they take medical math (tech prep), and they aren’t allowed calculators for this stuff. They are trying to avoid the exact issue with medication dosing, etc.

My former neighbor teaches AP calc in one of the best districts in the state (lots of science companies here, so lots of PhD parents) and has for 20+ years. She was complaining about a LOT of the same lagging math skills for all of that time. I think the lack of textbooks has just exacerbated so much of this since then; it’s gone from a small percentage of maybe a few kids who are just not attentive to the norm.

I think “formative assessment” is also to blame. I doubt it’s an awful technique, but I bet it is not always used well just like anything else. It is a way of moving on when enough kids get it, and from what I’ve seen, a way of having less homework to grade. There are fewer problem sets, so the focus is supposed to be on understanding, but I think the kids don’t get enough practice to get it into long-term memory or enough actual feedback from individual grades/comments to isolate their own patterns of mistakes. That can be fine for some gifted kids (not always for 2e kids), but most people need more practice for long-term memory. But I may be getting the wrong idea (I used a fair amount of teacher blogs when I was trying to teach middle school math to my kids, which is where this impression is coming from).

I think using calculators early and often is a problem too. My son is finding that he makes dumb mistakes because of this in his medical math class, but he does have the tools to work on this on his own, and it’s quickly coming back to him. But he’s only been out of homeschool for two years.

[Clarita]

I think this all starts in elementary school. Possibly all the way back in Kindergarten.

What I see is a push for impressive sounding stuff in Kindergarten like writing a paragraph. (Mind you this would be a bunch of children who are assumed not to be able to read at the beginning of the year.) How does this work? Because no one can expect Kindergartners to actually write a good paragraph, whatever 3 sentence thing gets a check for these children know how to write a paragraph. Perhaps at no point is it checked whether the child has mastered writing a paragraph or a sentence before graduation because at the checkpoints the skill was so out of line with what is age appropriate. 

The grade report to parents look super impressive at the end of the year. So parents think their kids are doing great because the report says their kindergartner can write paragraphs. 

Edited Wednesday at 09:15 PM by Clarita
typo

[maize]

For those of you who have been teaching college for years, have you seen a gradual decline in student preparedness? A sudden drop?

Edited Wednesday at 09:17 PM by maize

[wintermom]

7 minutes ago, Clarita said:

I think this all starts in elementary school. Possibly all the way back in Kindergarten.

Sure, however in order to teach the concepts in elementary school the teachers have to have writing and math competencies. If those teachers are allowed to make it through an undergrad and B. Ed. program never having to show their math competencey, then there is a problem from that point. 

When I completed a B. Ed. for Primary/Junior in order to teach K - 6, there was no math exam for me to pass. I also didn't need a university level math course. When my dh completed a B. Ed. for Secondary with his teaching competencies being Math and Physics, the prof was not allowed to test any of the B. Ed. students in their math skills. 

Also, teachers in my province never have to renew their competencies in their subject areas of teaching. So they never have to prove that they know anything in any subject to keep teaching. For some reason we have a professional association for teachers, but no standards to maintain - just a fee to pay.

Edited Wednesday at 09:22 PM by wintermom

[busymama7]

5 minutes ago, Clarita said:

I think this all starts in elementary school. Possibly all the way back in Kindergarten.

What I see is a push for impressive sounding stuff in Kindergarten like writing a paragraph. (Mind you this would be a bunch of children who are assumed not to be able to read at the beginning of the year.) How does this work? Because no one can expect Kindergartners to actually write a good paragraph, whatever 3 sentence thing gets a check for these children know how to write a paragraph. Perhaps at no point is it checked whether the child has mastered writing a paragraph or a sentence before graduation because at the checkpoints the skill was so out of line with what is age appropriate. 

The grade report to parents look super impressive at the end of the year. So parents think their kids are doing great because the report says their kindergartner can write paragraphs. 

I've been saying this for years and years.  At least 20. Indenting 3 times does not an essay make and yet it counts here and is done as young as 2nd grade.   I've seen some of the writing and it's not full sentences, terrible spelling, rarely punctuation. But if they indented and made 3 paragraphs it counts as writing a 3 paragraph essay 🤦‍♀️ it's part of the reason I homeschool and my kids have all done well in college despite having a slew of learning disabilities. I have a (dyslexic) son who is currently getting straight As in mechanical engineering and helping other students etc. I sure hope his college isn't inflating grades though. I don't think so because once they have above a 3.9 they don't pay tuition anymore -automatic scholarship- so I can't imagine how inflating grades would work with that set up.   I have 3 with bachelor's degrees only one of which does not have a diagnosed or suspected learning disability. 

[regentrude]

5 minutes ago, maize said:

For those of you who have been teaching college for years, have you seen a gradual decline in student preparedness? A sudden drop?

Both.

A gradual decline that started years before Covid.
Plus a drop now because of the lack of decent math instruction during the height of the pandemic. The current class of students who take my course is lacking basic algebra skills; they are mostly sophomores who would have been in the 10th grade in 2020.

[knitgrl]

1 hour ago, regentrude said:

This is what baffles me. Never before in history have students had access to so many free or inexpensive educational resources! Need math remediation? There are oodles of math videos on YouTube. Don't do well with online texts? You can find dirt-cheap old editions of textbooks on ebay or AAmazon. Or, heaven forbid, go to the library!

Anyone could find resources to learn just about anything. But there's his mindset of learned helplessness...

Ha! If your campus library has gutted most of the books like my alma mater, did -- good luck!

[Laura Corin]

For another way of looking at expectations of roundedness, traditionally in England one took a range of subjects up to age 16, then only 3-5 subjects from age 16-18. There were no general courses at university. The maths and English studied to age 16 were also the basic qualifications for low-level clerical/retail work.

One difference with the US system is that there are no school transcripts  - all grades are assessed by centrally-organised national exams.

If you are interested in level, these are English and maths exam papers for 16-y-o. English has the option of a greater or lesser concentration on literature. This is from the literature version

https://filestore.aqa.org.uk/sample-papers-and-mark-schemes/2023/june/AQA-87021-QP-JUN23.PDF

Here's one of the non-calculator maths papers

https://filestore.aqa.org.uk/sample-papers-and-mark-schemes/2023/june/AQA-83001H-QP-JUN23.PDF

 

 

[regentrude]

6 minutes ago, knitgrl said:

Ha! If your campus library has gutted most of the books like my alma mater, did -- good luck!

Most schools still have textbooks in the reference section, even if the library is sparse.

[prairiewindmomma]

23 minutes ago, regentrude said:

Both.

A gradual decline that started years before Covid.
Plus a drop now because of the lack of decent math instruction during the height of the pandemic. The current class of students who take my course is lacking basic algebra skills; they are mostly sophomores who would have been in the 10th grade in 2020.

This is what I am seeing. Kid2 was a freshman in the 2020-2021 school year, and a freshman now in college. I would say the majority of his fellow high school graduates have some serious gaps in their education. He does have some peers who Khan Academied themselves an education because they knew they needed to be prepared, but they were few in number. So many more became apathetic and kind of dropped out of society. Their parents have dragged them into college but they arent intrinsically motivated to be there. It’s a perpetuating cycle of ignorance—as they fell further behind they are even less able to easily catch up. The kids who didnt solidify algebra 1 struggled in algebra 2 and definitely didnt master calculus, iykwim.
 

The gaps go all of the way down. Youngest’s class was covering the water cycle this week at school. Youngest reports that her fellow students were baffled. Youngest was like, “We learned this in second grade. Clouds are made of water vapor that evaporates from oceans, rivers, and moist ground. When the water vapor becomes too heavy, it falls as rain..” She came home grousing about how ill-informed they are. I reminded her that *she* learned that at home in second grade, but her classmates were still virtual schooling from home during lockdown. We read books, did crafts, measured humidity and rainfall, traced a creek from a nearby mountain to the nearby ocean, etc. Her classmates often didnt even log in to class according to district records. 
 

Schools failed…but so did parents.