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 "Frenzy" Over Standardized Tests

A recent editorial in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram discusses the pros and cons of trying to prepare for the SAT in order to raise scores and make oneself more desirable for admission to top schools.
The author, Mitchell Schnurman, decries the fact that the SATs and ACTs are too important in judging the worth of students–or the worth of colleges themselves. He notes that the Fort Worth school district entered into a $1.4 million contract with Princeton Review to provide test prep courses for all students in the district. While Schurman, and the district, are not altogether happy about having to prep students for these exams, the reality is that in today’s competitive world of college admissions, there is little choice but to try to help students do the best they possibly can.

Just about everyone complains about the out-of-whack emphasis on the SAT and its rival entrance exam, the ACT. Parents, students, teachers, counselors, college admissions officers, think-tank experts — they all dis it to varying degrees, and some colleges have stopped requiring the tests.
But most keep playing the game and turning up the pressure.

Colleges, too, try to tell the public–and anxious students and parents–that SAT or ACT scores don’t matter all that much. Schnurman quotes a representative from Texas Christian University who says that test scores make up only about 20% of the admissions decision.
But in the next breath, TCU is bragging about the fact that its next incoming class has higher test scores than ever before. And while they don’t say so out loud, the higher the average test scores, the higher up the selectivity curve the college can claim to be. While some colleges have gone “test optional” in recent years, you won’t hear a single college boasting about how low its students’ tests scores are.
Like it or not, standardized test scores matter in admissions decisions. Depending on the individual student, they may make more or less difference as they apply to college, depending upon what other factors the applicant may be able to bring to the application (GPA, class rank, athletic prowess, teacher recommendations, and/or other special talents–to name a few). So I tell my clients to take them seriously as applicants.
But I also do what I can to remind students and their families that scores on standardized tests are no gauge of a person’s worth. They are not necessarily a gauge of raw intelligence or potential. While we cannot deny their importance in the admission process, we should do all that we can to find other measures of our humanity.
Mark Montgomery
Montgomery Educational Consulting
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Dartmouth Admission: “The Pool is So Deep”

Dartmouth admission

The July/August issue of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine contains an article about Karl Furstenberg. The retiring Dean of Admissions at Dartmouth. It’s an interesting look at his 17 years of experience as the gatekeeper of one of the nation’s top undergraduate schools.

[Full disclosure: I’m an alumnus. My classmate, Maria Laskaris, has taken over from Furstenberg as the new Dean of Admissions. And Jacques Steinberg, member of the Class of ’88 and author of The Gatekeepers (which is an insider’s view of the admissions process at Wesleyan) wrote this interview with Furstenberg.]

During his tenure, Furstenberg saw applications to Dartmouth rise by 80%: from 7,900 to over 14,000. Steinberg asked him how his staff has grown in that time to meet the challenges of such a huge increase in applications.

The staff is virtually the same size today as it was 17 years ago. Which is kind of staggering. We’ve made up for that with the use of technology and the inclusion of faculty and alumni who work in partnership with us to recruit students. What has changed over time is the speed with which we have to read. As much as we try to make it personal, to read 14,000 applications–with 15 admissions officers–is a challenge. We try to be as thoughtful and fair-minded as we can be.

Two points here. First is about the use of technology. Numbers matter. Test scores. GPA. Class rank. Dartmouth crunches these numbers through an algorithm to see whether your application passes muster. If the resulting number is not high enough, your application won’t be read very thoroughly, if at all. If you’re a legacy, an athlete, or a minority, you might get passed through if your scores are lower than the usual cut-off, but no guarantee of that, either. While the numbers may not tell the admissions officers the whole story. In this very “deep pool,” your scores must begin to pull you from those depths so you can rise to the surface.

Second, with so many applications, the admissions officers get pretty bored reading them. Another essay about grandparents and another prep school kid. Another who swears Dartmouth is her first choice. The all look the same. Unless your application really sings. It has to hook the officer. It has to ignite some interest in you as a person. The essay must be original. Something has to get the officer to wake up from his stupor and say, “hey, this kid is interesting and unusual…let’s give him another look.”

The competition for Ivy League admission is fierce. The pool, indeed, is very deep. And what with the Common Application, demographic bubbles, and savvy college counselors, the pool will only get deeper.

Mark Montgomery
Montgomery Educational Consulting
Dartmouth Alumnus

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

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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.

Will Financial Aid Reforms Save Students Money?

An article the other day on MSNBC asked the above question.
The answer? Hard to know. Depends on how Congress reforms the industry through oversight and legislation.
Here’s an excerpt:

Congress is also proposing significant changes in the way the $85 billion market for student loans is subsidized and guaranteed. The House and Senate have enacted separate bills with some common ground, but it remains to be seen just how the final law will impact the cost of a student loan.
Both bills would ease the burden on student by placing limits monthly payments based on income; once out of school, graduates would have to pay no more than 15 percent of their income each month. All debt would be canceled after 25 years. And more loans would be “forgiven” for graduates who take public-service jobs like teachers, nurses, police and firefighters.
The bills also both call for cutbacks in subsidies for lenders that participate in government-backed loan programs. By shaving roughly a half-percentage point from those subsidies, Congress is hoping save as much as $19 billion a year. The government would also require lenders to cover more of the losses from defaulted loans — the House and Senate bills differ on just how much more.
At issue is how and where those savings are diverted. The House bill would slash the rate on need-based loans in half — from the current 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent — and provide additional money for so-called Pell grants, a program that currently pays up to $4,010 a year in direct aid to low-income students. The Senate bill doesn’t include a rate cut, but is more generous with increases in Pell grants.

No matter what Congress does, three things will remain constant:

  • 1. The cost of a college education will continue to go up.
  • 2. More families will be taking out more loans to pay for college.
  • 3. The amount of information necessary for families to make good consumer decisions to finance a college education will continue to grow.

Mark Montgomery
Montgomery Educational Consulting
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Authenticity Is Key on the Application

The headline of an MSNBC article last week screams, “Typo On Your College Application May Get You In.” The insinuation is that if you make some mistakes on the application you look more human and less like an automaton.
But the real point of this article is on the essay: demonstrating some humility, a bit of human frailty, or a dose of self-awareness is likely to lead to a more informative essay than one that shouts out your accomplishments, your invincibility, and your ability to overcome anything life might throw at you.
Super-heroes are out. Real people are in.
Literally.
Here’s an excerpt from the article:

In an age when applicants all seem to have volunteered, played sports and traveled abroad, colleges are wary of slick packaging. They’re drawn to high grades and test scores, of course, but also to humility and to students who really got something out of their experiences, not just those trying to impress colleges with their resume.
The trend seemingly should make life easier for students — by reducing the pressure to puff up their credentials. But that’s not always the case.
For some students, the challenge of presenting themselves as full, flawed people cuts against everything else they’ve been told about applying to college — to show off as much as possible.

My advice to students is to not pretend. To be themselves. Not to be afraid to demonstrate their humanity.
I also make clear that the essay is theirs: I won’t write it for them. Of course I provide pointers and ideas for restructuring, and clarifying points. But I try not to put ideas into their heads or words into their mouths. As a professor, I taught college students for years how to write term papers, how to construct an elegant paragraph, how to develop the trickle of an idea into a gushing torrent of insight. It’s something that I enjoy, and frankly I’m pretty good at it.
My aim is to guide from the side, provide counsel, and set the course. The navigation of the essay is up to the student.
Mark Montgomery
Montgomery Educational Consulting
“Mapping College Journeys”
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SAT Scores Down a Bit Nationwide

The College Board reports that 2007 average scores on the SAT I exams dipped slightly, bringing them to the lowest level in 13 years. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that a large part of the reason for this decline is the increase in the number of test takers, including some students who never considered themselves college-bound.
Here’s an excerpt from the New York Times article explaining what happened:

The declines for the class of 2007 were not caused by a single factor, College Board officials said. But the increase in the number of traditionally underrepresented minority and low-income students taking the test played a role, they said. So did a new requirement in Maine that all high school seniors take the exam, including those who would not in the past have viewed themselves as college bound.
Gaston Caperton, the president of the College Board, said in a news conference, “The larger the population you get that takes the exam, it obviously knocks down the scores.”
Wayne Camara, vice president for research and analysis at the College Board, described the declines from 2006 to 2007 as statistically insignificant.
The officials trumpeted the size of the group that took the SAT — nearly 1.5 million seniors — and the expanded diversity of the test-takers. Hispanic, black and Asian-American students accounted for 39 percent of the seniors who took the test, representing the largest proportion of minority test-takers since the SAT was introduced in 1926. In all, 35 percent of those taking the exam would be the first in their family to attend college.

So that’s the good news.
The bad news is that with more students taking the SAT, the tougher the competition will be for those kids in the middle of the pack to land spots in some colleges. With the number of admissions slots relatively finite, a greater number of applicants means greater competition for those slots.
The fact that more kids are taking the SAT won’t affect the competition at the higher end of the scale at the more selective colleges. But the further down the selectivity curve, the greater the competition for college admission may become.
So demographics and a greater emphasis on creating a college-going culture in many public schools may put actually be bad news for some kids.
Mark Montgomery
Montgomery Educational Consulting
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College Rejections Are Up (Way Up) in 2007

The Today Show reported last April that college admissions offices are rejecting applications in record numbers. The piece does a good job of demonstrating how a colleges, students, and demographic changes are combining to create a “perfect storm” for high school seniors.

Need help navigating in a storm? Consider hiring an expert to help.
Mark Montgomery
Montgomery Educational Consulting
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