Are High School Grads Ready to Write at the College Level? Nope.

Most high school teachers I have met believe that one of their critical responsibilities is to help their students become better writers.
Scores on the ACT writing tests tell us that students entering high school are not very well prepared in writing. Add to this that state colleges and universities are often placing as many as 30% of their students in remedial, general education courses if they cannot pass basic writing requirements. Further, according to research by ACT (which was presented at a conference I attended yesterday sponsored by ACT), there is a disconnect between what high school teachers believe high education wants them to do, and what they actually do.
The ACT survey research indicated that high school teachers want their students to develop their voice, to analyze multiple perspectives, and write longer papers. College professors, on the other hand, would prefer that high school teachers focus on mechanics and presenting a single, coherent thesis.
An article in this week’s Education Week reinforces this point. Steven Horwitz, a professor at St. Lawrence University in New York, picks up on the ACT research. He summarizes it this way:

Teachers of the students who graduated from American high schools in the spring may think that their charges are well prepared for the colleges they are entering this fall, but the professors who will greet them on campus disagree, according to a recent national survey.
The differences in perception among the 6,568 teachers and professors who responded to the survey, conducted by the educational testing organization ACT Inc., were apparent in virtually every college-preparatory subject.
Perhaps most significantly, the high school teachers surveyed had more confidence that their students were prepared to handle the fundamentals of writing–basic grammar, sentence structure, and punctuation–than the college professors did.

My own experience as a college professor bears this out. While I wanted to help students advance their thinking about political science or international relations, I often had a difficult time wading through tortured prose, run-on sentences, and butchered punctuation to get at their ideas. Many–even at a private university like the University of Denver–had difficulty expressing themselves using proper form. If the learned the basics of expository writing in high school, they seem to have forgotten everything by the time they entered my classroom. Of course, some students were elegant writers. But they constituted the minority.
Horwitz also bemoans the fact that students do not know how to undertake the most basic research, even though they may have been assigned “research papers” in high school. I bemoaned this, too, in my students’ writing…to the point I had to create research projects that did not include writing at all–just so I could teach them how to find and interpret information from a wide variety of resources.
In addition to calling for increased attention to the mechanics of good writing, Horwitz makes some excellent suggestions for high school teachers as they prepare their students for college writing and research. They bear repeating.

Begin to gauge the research process itself, but in short, focused assignments that help students become comfortable recognizing and evaluating the different types of sources and the differences between the Web and library databases.
Use short assignments that ask students to try to identify the various positions that sources take on a controversial topic and the core of their disagreements, even if that does not involve taking a position of their own.
Work with students on the ethical and accurate use of sources before they begin to do actual research, so that they understand that this is not just an “Internet problem” but an obligation central to all the writing they do, whether the sources is a course reading or textbook, or the research materials the find using and old-fashioned paper index or a library database.

I would say that if a student is a good writer by 11th grade, she has a much better chance of writing a solid college application essay. Though I am a consultant helping students present themselves as best they can, there is only so much writing I can teach in the advising process. And ethically, I cannot write students’ essays for them. It pains me when I see clients whose writing is sub-par–who are are not really ready for college-level writing. Even if they get in to the college of their choice, these students will have a hard row to hoe when they do land on a college campus.
Mark Montgomery
Montgomery Educational Consulting
Writing Coach and Teacher
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The Carnival of Education

This week’s Carnival of Education is a cavalcade of information about the Edusphere. You can find it here, hosted by the Education Wonks.
My favorite articles for this week include:
Alan Gottlieb’s post on helicopter parents (Alan is a fellow Denverite and mover and shaker at the Rose Foundation and the editor of Head First Colorado).
A post by My Wealth Builder about the colleges that put students into hock the most (can you believe that University of Massachusetts at Amherst is in the top 5? A public institution? And my wife’s alma mater? Wow.)
A post by one of my favorite bloggers, Matthew K. Tabor, about edublogging in general.
Check out the Carnival. It’s a whee of a time.
Mark Montgomery
Montgomery Educational Consulting
EduBlogger

AP Audit Makes Teachers Bristle

alumni interview questions for college admission

Jay Mathews of the Washington Post has an article today about the College Board’s audit of AP courses across the nation. You can find the article here.

The article focuses on the fact that some veteran AP teachers’ syllabi have been rejected by the College Board, despite these teachers’ stellar success in preparing their students to ace the exams. In some cases, even teachers who have been tapped by the College Board to train new AP teachers were told their courses were inadequate.

The article makes good copy, and points out to glitches in the College Board’s audit. But the audit makes sense, from two perspectives.

First, the rapid expansion of the AP program across the country has led to uneven delivery of those courses. Part of the problem is that some AP teachers simply do not have the content background to successfully prepare students for the rigors of the AP exam. A course can be labeled “AP”, but that does not mean that the quality is necessarily going to be excellent.

Therefore parents and students should be advised to dig beneath the label. Ask teachers and administrators about the teacher’s track record in helping students get passing grades on the exams.

What’s the pass rate? What percentage of the students get a 5, or a 4, as opposed to a mere 3 (the passing threshold)? What specialized training has the teacher received from the College Board?
Second, colleges have been worried about the AP program digging into their budgets. As more students take the AP exams and pass, more students are receiving college credit and advanced standing at colleges and universities. While admissions offices are eager to have more AP students in their matriculating classes, department chairs may feel a pinch as few students enroll in their entry level courses. And college professors are skeptical that high school teachers can do as well as they can (after all, those professors have doctorates and fancy titles–never mind that they have never–ever–taken a course in pedagogy or instructional methodology).

So the AP audit engineered by the College Board is meant to prove to the skeptics that the AP courses really are quality, college-level courses.
And that’s where the glitches reported by Jay Mathews today come into play: the professors don’t know about a particular teacher’s pass rate, or the fact that they have been tapped by the College Board to train other teachers. All they see is the syllabus. So goofy outcomes are likely.

Some AP teachers complain that their college professor auditors are not only ignorant of the teaching records of the people they are auditing but are alarmingly inconsistent in their judgments. Patrick Welsh, an AP English teacher at T.C. Williams who has been recruited many times by the College Board to grade AP exams, called it a “bureaucratic mess.” He said he and three other teachers submitted identical syllabuses for an AP English Literature course they are teaching this year. One syllabus was accepted. The other three, including his, were rejected. When three teachers in Fairfax submitted the same syllabus, one was accepted, one rejected with three suggested revisions and one rejected with eight suggested revisions.

My take is that AP courses, when taught by well-trained, content-oriented teachers, can be much better than introductory college courses taught by inexperienced college professors with a bevy of graduate student assistants. Though my colleagues in the professoriate would call me a traitor, I have found that some high school teachers are more knowledgeable about a broader range of content than their peers in academia. And they are often much better teachers.

Add to these observations that high school teachers may see their students every day for an entire year, while college instructors may see their students (all 200 or 300 of them in an introductory course) once or twice a week for a mere 15 weeks.

I think the AP audit is a good thing. Of course it is leading to some anomalous results–which the College Board and the affected teacher are swift to correct. Generally, however, it will lead to better uniformity in the way these courses are delivered from school to school, and it will do a lot to calm the skeptics that a 5 on the AP exam is an indication that the student really has learned something.

Beware Marketing Glitz from the Office of Admission

Last night I was researching colleges for one of my clients and had a look at High Point University in High Point, NC. I previously knew nothing about.
The website is impressive. It was clearly constructed by masters of marketing and public relations. The president, Nido Qubein, is a fantastic businessman and public speaker, and he clearly is a motivator and visionary. And undoubtedly his leadership is having an impact: new classroom buildings, new schools, new residence halls, and impeccable grounds.
Nido Qubein
But what struck me most is that this university has learned that marketing and PR make a huge difference. The school has a “Director of Wow.” I’m not kidding. This person’s job is to make everyone on campus feel great, take pride in the school and its people, and generally make people happy. (Perhaps he worked for Disney World before coming to HPU?).
This link will take you to a page of videos produced by the university. The first one, “Prepare to be WOWed,” is a good example of masterful marketing. It’s professional, the messages are clear, and the viewer comes away with a feeling that High Point is perhaps the most wonderful college on earth.
Have a look.
Impressive, right?
But think about it. Just because a college is great at marketing does not mean it is a great college. The video says almost nothing about academics, about professional placement, about the kind of kids who go there, about its athletics, extracurriculars, learning centers, or just about anything really useful for a college-bound student to know.
The video sells a feeling. A sentiment. An idea that you will be loved. That you will be nurtured. That you will be pampered, even.
While it’s true that every college does have a personality, and in a sense, each is trying to sell that “feeling” of love for one’s school, this glitzy marketing video–and other techniques used on the website–do not convince me that High Point University will be a good fit for every student. Nor does it convince me that there is substance underneath the veneer of good feelings.
To be clear, I’m not knocking HPU. I’m still learning about it, and it may be a great place for certain kinds of students who want a certain kind of educational atmosphere and educational programming.
And I’m not even knocking the fact that colleges and universities are becoming better at marketing themselves. They are taking lessons from Nido Qubein and other masterful marketers as they sell their services. And why not? Like any other business or service provider, institutions of higher ed need to convince consumers that they are worthy of your educational dollar.
But caveat emptor: buyer beware. videos like this–and many others that colleges are now creating to help sell their services–should be viewed with caution and a dose of skepticism. Don’t be snowed by the glitz and glamour. Remind yourself that they are selling, and that you must do some due diligence before letting yourself be hooked. Dig beneath the marketing veneer.
For example, what are faculty saying about the quality of education at HPU? What do they say about the quality of the students, the learning atmosphere, the value of the education that is provided? What do the data tell us?
In order to decide whether the school is right for a particular student, we need to look beyond the feel-good videos. We need to dig into the data, talk to students (ones that are not managed by the admissions office!), and to faculty. This sort of research takes time and effort, but it’s well worth it if you plan to invest tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of dollars into an institution.
Fortunately there are professionals out there who can help you find the right fit.
Mark Montgomery
Montgomery Educational Consultant and Healthy Skeptic
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Study Abroad: Caveat Emptor

At the dawn of the 21st century, every college in America is touting its smorgasbord of study abroad opportunities, from Albania to Angola to Australia and back again. For colleges, these programs are “must-haves,” just like climbing walls, salad bars, and frisbee golf. And these programs have proliferated in a very short amount of time. How did this happen? The free market stepped in to provide “study abroad services” to colleges that could not economically create their own programs.
But as everything in a market society, some shady practices have developed along with the demand, and it turns out that some colleges–and even individual college administrators–sometimes get kickbacks to promote certain programs over other, or to build exclusive arrangements with certain study abroad companies.
The New York Times recently ran an article (registration required) exposing some of the cozy relationships between colleges and study abroad providers. Here’s an excerpt:

At many campuses, study abroad programs are run by multiple companies and nonprofit institutes that offer colleges generous perks to sign up students: free and subsidized travel overseas for officials, back-office services to defray operating expenses, stipends to market the programs to students, unpaid membership on advisory councils and boards, and even cash bonuses and commissions on student-paid fees. This money generally goes directly to colleges, not always to the students who take the trips.
Critics say that these and similar arrangements, which are seldom disclosed, typically limit student options and drive up prices for gaining international credentials compared with the most economical alternative — enrolling directly in a foreign university, paying generally lower tuition to that institution and having the credits transferred. Some campuses require students to use one of several affiliated providers, but some even have exclusive arrangements with study-abroad agents, further limiting options.

The article also highlights the case of a Columbia student who wanted to go to Oxford to study for a year at one of the most prestigious colleges within the Oxford system. Because Columbia had an exclusive financial agreement with another, lesser college, the student was not allowed to transfer his credits earned at Oxford back to Columbia. He appealed, and lost. So he dropped out of Columbia and graduated from Oxford.
The cautionary tale here is that not all study abroad programs are alike. While some universities have rich academic offerings and exert tight quality control over their programs, others are simply “credit mills” shepherd large groups of students overseas, through them into some classes of questionable value, and transfer some (always good) grades back to the students’ home universities.
Meanwhile, many cash-strapped universities are happy to send kids overseas for reasons other than the transformative experience of learning another culture. Universities make agreements with study abroad providers, whose programs cost considerably less than the cost of tuition at a private, 4-year college. Mom and dad are paying full tuition at the home university, while the university turns around and pays the provider perhaps a third of what a semester’s tuition costs. And the university pockets the rest. Moreover, the university doesn’t have to construct new dorms for all those kids on their junior year abroad…thus saving even more money over the long haul.
What’s the point here?
The point is that students and their parents needs to be as careful about choosing a study abroad program as they are about choosing a college. Some study abroad experiences have the potential to expand a student’s horizons intellectually, culturally, and socially (and geographically, of course). But others are not worth the price of admission.
So look carefully at those study abroad options. Does the college create its own programs or buy them “off the shelf” from other providers? Who are those other providers? Does the college have exclusive arrangements, or can students create their own programs or choose others that are not on the college’s “official, approved list”? Does the college’s academic faculty exert any oversight at all over the study abroad program, or is it run as a profit center within the university administration?
The answers to these questions…as well as the goals of the individual student…should guide you as you investigate study abroad options.
Mark Montgomery
Montgomery Educational Consulting and Study Abroad Specialist
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Preparations for NACAC

I’m getting excited about my September trip to Austin for the annual conference of the National Association of College Admissions Counselors (NACAC). I’ll have the opportunity to attend a college fair and meet with dozens of college admission counselors in the search for schools that match the needs of my clients.
Furthermore, I’ll visit several other colleges and universities for an insider’s tour to what makes those schools different. Again, my aim is to get a better feel for which colleges will be a good match for clients.
Here’s a list of the schools I will visit:

  • Trinity University (San Antonio)
  • Austin College (Dallas)
  • Southern Methodist University (Dallas)
  • Texas Christian University (Fort Worth)
  • University of Dallas (Dallas)
  • University of Texas (Austin)
  • Southwestern University (Austin)
  • Rice University (Houston)
  • University of Saint Thomas (Houston)

    • There’s nothing like getting a first-hand knowledge of colleges and universities. These experiences better prepare me to serve the needs of my clients.
    Mark Montgomery
    Montgomery Educational Consulting
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