Are our years of university study morosely stretched out with additional classes teaching material we ought to have learned in high school, if not earlier? Even if our time is not spent brushing up on algebraic equations and grammar rules in remedial classes, we must still question how ill-prepared many of us may be for classes here at the university level. Could we be learning more deeply, and scoring higher grades, had we been better prepared earlier in life?
Were we cheated then? Is our time being wasted now? Are we simply catching up?
A commentator on News Radio 610 a.m. discussed an eighth-grade exam intended to measure a student’s knowledge and determine his graduation status. The radio host informally asked adult callers a few questions from this test, and nearly all of them were unable to answer. One challenged the student to write out both a personal check and a certificate of deposit, while another asked him to name nine rules of the capitalization of letters, along with various arithmetic problems and analogies. What was especially astounding to both the commentator and the listeners was that the exam, from a school in Kansas, dated back to 1895.
Students of the same age this year were, in a similarly informal survey, unable to name the country from which the United States won their independence. This was glaring evidence of the frightening decline in the standards we as a society set for education.
South Florida has recently been in a public uproar over the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT), a test given to students in third through ninth grades to measure how much they have learned thus far. While private school students are not required to pass the test in order to receive their diplomas, public school students are. This would not be such an issue if it were not for the startlingly high number of kids who are unable to do so.
Many parents and other concerned citizens argue that local schools are not meeting the expectations that they themselves have set, and some even blame the amount of funding provided to the state by President Bush for education. Bush argues that his administration has increased the education budget by almost $11 billion since his election, but this in no way even breaches the topic of how each individual state appropriates their share. That’s an entirely separate issue that we need pester Jeb about.
Of course, a complaint commonly admitted by anyone who is at all touched by the educational system, is that our teachers are over-worked and under-paid, which has led to the inevitable shortage of educators in South Florida. State universities are churning out graduates as quickly as possible (as evidenced by the waiting time to even enroll in FAU’s Department of Education), but other desperate measures are also being taken. Right now in Palm Beach County, busloads of teachers are taking tours of remote Western areas of the county and their schools, which culminate in a time-share style pitch. These potential employees are lured with sign-on bonuses and salary supplements in exchange for their willingness to live in an area that carries a poor reputation.
Once these schools have the teachers, though, they need a better system by which to educate the students. President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act was passed in 2002, requiring all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico to all reevaluate their curricula and submit plans for their improvement.
According to Bush, who spoke publicly about this act along with Secretary of Education Rod Paige at The Rose Garden on June 10, “Educators are embracing a new level of accountability, which is creating a new culture for our nation’s schools: a culture of achievement, a culture of results over process.” President Bush is hopeful, but when a student can use his decent score on the SAT or ACT as a replacement for his failing FCAT score and receive his diploma that way, I begin to feel doubtful.
Other soft spots in the system allow for a high school student to receive a certificate of completion, meaning the student accrued the necessary number of credit hours but did not attain the minimum 2.0 grade point average needed for a standard diploma. Here’s what this means for colleges and their students: according to new law, this certificate of completion now meets the requirement for admittance into any two-year community college, which means these kids can graduate with an associate’s degree, transfer to a university and graduate there as well. The number of students in college preparatory classes is bound to skyrocket!
These prep classes are numerous, as anyone can see on the registration page of the Palm Beach Community College website. Reading, English, writing (including grammar and spelling), basic math skills (as in long division and fractions), even study and life skills classes. For adults who have been away from school for some years and need a refresher course, and for foreign students who are still perfecting their skills, these classes are critical. The fact that they are critical for the high school student of the 2003 graduating class is disconcerting, at best.
So we are back to our situation. Even for those of us who were not required to take a prep class, there was often quite a bit of material in some of our freshman-year classes that was only a reiteration of what we learned (or did we?) in high school. We, at a minimum, reviewed essay-writing skills in English and equations in Algebra for the first couple of weeks of a semester before delving into any new information.
Most of us needed that review. We would have sunk without it, but instead we floundered, with our heads just above water. And here we are, however far into our four years each of us is at this moment, and I wonder: How much more could I have learned in grade and high school if the bar had been set just that much higher, if the teacher (and the school board for that matter) had had that much more faith in me, or if I had been pushed just a little bit harder?
At this rate I know just how much time was wasted in every one of my freshman classes covering things I already knew. Or how much new material was lost, material I will never be able to squeeze into my 120 credits.
Just how much more intelligent could I be? So, I’m curious as to whether I was cheated of something then, or if I am wasting any precious moments now. For how long will Florida’s graduates need to play catch-up?
