From the Daily News:Nearly three-quarters of city high school students entering City University community colleges failed placement exams in reading, math and writing this year.
About 74% of first-time freshmen who graduated from city schools and are attending CUNY's community colleges needed remedial classes this year after exams deemed them unprepared for college-level work.
That's up slightly from 2009, when 71% of incoming city students needed the catch-up classes.
Education Department officials could not explain the uptick but noted that there has been improvement since 2002, when 82% of first-time freshmen at the community colleges weren't ready for college-level work.
30 comments:
"Education Department officials could not explain the uptick"
Blame is simple -
1) Education department officials
2) Unions
3) Immigrants
Not in any particular order.
Crappy, you should change the title of the post from open enrollment is still a joke to 'the public school system is still a joke'.
BTW you spelled enrollment wrong. Better brush up on remedial English.
Ha Ha Ha. I'm sure Crappy did that on purpose.
Since I am a CUNY graduate, I may need to.
Also, just in the last week or so they tossed out the CPE exam. Now all the morons you could not pass that simple English and graph comparison test will get their degrees anyway...what a joke!
Remedial classes in college? If they're not prepared, don't admit them. We paid for 12 years of education. We should not be subsidizing remediation in CUNY.
"Open Enrollment-- bringing everyone and every standard down to the lowest common denominator"
CUNY and SUNY must have standards for student admissions which require SAT scores that insure there is no remedial courses required to be taken unless they are taken prior to admission to CUNY and SUNY. We are paying for students who have not or are qualified to enter college period. PS: English is a pre-requisite requirement!
Technically, there is no open enrollment at CUNY's senior colleges, which all require a minimum high school average and various other standards. However, even those senior colleges that have standards are free to pick and choose the standards. As far as I know, York does not require a minimum score on the SAT to gain admittance, only that they took it.
Every community college in the country has "open enrollment" and offers remedial classes; CUNY's community colleges are no different. There never has been "open enrollment" at CUNY's four-year schools.
Oh there most certainly was!!!!
I attended during those years. I got to one of my classes early and sat in the back of the room of the remedial class until they wrapped up. They were teaching the difference between a noun and a verb.
Seriously. No joke. In fucking college.
"We are paying for students who have not or are qualified to enter college period."
"English is a pre-requisite requirement!"
Sounds like you are ready for remedial English yourself.
High SAT scores are no guarantee that remedial classes will not be necessary. Part of the problem is people do not prepare for their entrance exams the same way they do for their SAT's. Poor entrance exam results does not always indicate incompetence, but a lack of preparedness.
Math is probably the best example of this. Say you take a year of algebra in school, and at the end of that year you do very well on the final exam. If you do not study algebra for a year after and are given the same exam, you will score significantly lower, and possibly fail. You have learned the concepts, but forget the facts. all that is needed is a brief refresher before the second exam (or placement exam)to refresh everything in your head.
Prospective students are failing this exam in part because they do not know how to properly prepare for it.
Under a new chancellor, Matthew Goldstein, and facing pressure from Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, CUNY ended its open admissions policy to the University's four-year colleges in 1999.
CUNY students who are not directly admitted to the senior colleges because they do not meet academic admissions standards can choose to enroll in an associate degree program at one of CUNY’s community colleges, take part in "immersion" programs offered in the summer and winter months, find public or private tutoring, or participate in the one-semester "Prelude to Success" program taught by community college faculty at senior colleges.
"Poor entrance exam results does not always indicate incompetence, but a lack of preparedness."
The entrance test was a joke. I know. I took it.
Will someone please explain to me the need to study algebra?
I aced algebra in school but, to this day, I have no idea what it was for.
Why Study Algebra?
Why Study Algebra?
Algebra is an important building block for advanced mathematics. Not everybody gets to that level, or needs to, but without algebra nobody would.
More importantly, algebra (as well as other mathematics) helps you learn how to think. You may not use algebra in your day to day life, but taking it likely had a positive impact on your mental development whether you realize it or not.
I still have nightmares about the 10th year math regents.
Algebra is all about understanding abstraction and problem solving.
10th grade math, if it's still geometry was very poorly taught (at least at Brooklyn Tech). It should be all about understanding logic, of taking axioms and developing theorems from it. It wasn't till I go to college as a science major did I grasp that lesson.
Keeping math standards high is a way of keeping standards high at any school. Most liberal arts majors skate without having to pass even one semester of calculus. Two semesters of calculus and two semesters of a real science, say physics or chemistry, would put some muscle into a liberal arts degree.
@ew-3:
Blame is more in this direction:
1) Immigrants
2) Public Assistance
3) DOE forcing use of subpar curricula
There may be some dud teachers out there but most are very good if not great. Some of the most dedicated teachers I ever met worked in poor-performing schools. And yet, they are labeled ineffective based on test scores. Not fair.
@Crappy:
The new reading curriculum, which is an example of progressive education, explicitly bans the teaching of any grammar skills.
Principals will literally reprimand teachers caught teaching spelling, phonics, grammar etc. skills. The program's founder explains that kids shouldn't be worried about things like spelling correctly and writing mechanics because they should develop those skills naturally on their terms.
I have never seen such poor writing skills in my students in all my years teaching as I have the last several years.
And that reason, Queens Teacher, is why my kids go to Catholic School. Not because the teachers are better, and not because the discipline is better (it used to be, not any more) but because the teachers are "allowed" to teach the 3 Rs: reading, writing and arithmetic. And they're allowed to actually write on the kids papers and make comments, such as "good job" or "needs improvement." The stuff that goes on (or doesn't) in the public schools is seriously F'ed up!
Nearly three-quarters of city high school students entering City University community colleges failed placement exams in reading, math and writing this year.
If at first you fail in high school, simply fail, fail, and fail again!!!
About 74% of first-time freshmen who graduated from city schools and are attending CUNY's community colleges needed remedial classes this year after exams deemed them unprepared for college-level work.
Question: Why are these imbeciles even in college in the first place?
Education Department officials could not explain the uptick
That's not surprising - most of the folks in the Edukayshun Department are probably "graduates" of the CUNY remedial program.
Students who need remedial classes are much less likely to graduate than students who are prepared.
We need Edukayshun Department bureaucrats that are paid $100,000+ a year to tell us this?
"They come in thinking they're ready for college, and then they're given an assessment test, and they're told they have to take two or three semesters of high school math."
Good thing these remedial "geniuses" didn't get accepted to the MIT Physics department! They'd be taking calculus until they're 79!
Students must pay for those courses, even though they don't count towards their diploma.
And then we all wonder why there's a problem with student loan defaults?
CUNY also sets its passing rate for the national placement exams lower than the national average - 30 out of 100 for math, compared with 45 nationally, and 70 out of 100 for English, compared with 81 nationally.
Those standards are quite generous actually. If you're a "minority" and can write your name on the paper, they give you 65 points on the English exam.
Queens Teacher said...
Ah yes, the "voice of reason" - edukayshun bureaucrat "Queens Teacher", formerly known as "Italian Girl", parachutes onto the scene to straighten things out for us uninformed readers!
We are paying for all these illegal aliens to go to college. They get everything for free. This is why it takes 5 years to graduate from CUNY. There is not enough space for all these kids and not enough classes. Open vocational schools for them. Since we have to pay for them anyway, they probably have a better chance of learning a trade than learning and comprehending subjects in English.
This blog has turned into an asshole competition.
This blog has turned into an asshole competition.
So is that a butt plug in your hand, or are you simply happy to see us?
Re Algebra "exercising your thinking muscle":
We were told to do crossword puzzles to offset the advent of Alzheimer's Disease. It "exercised your thinking muscle". Now research shows that doing the crossword has absolutely no bearing on offsetting AD.
2x + y = z is a true mental workout? This will prevent dementia?
Yes, it will georgie.
I suggest you get to work...
http://www.kutasoftware.com/FreeWorksheets/Alg1Worksheets/One-Step%20Equations.pdf
GTA - It really does work.
Didn't go to college till I was 35, after being a hardware and software engineer for 15 years. Trust me, taking calculus even at that age I could tell the difference. I've been many times more productive and capable of much more abstract thought after going.
York College! That place is still around, it not a real school and sheepskin is not worth anything unless your going back home to Guyana to work.
All the other so-called senior colleges really suck because of the professors. These folks are not enlightning or accomplished, in fact most were NYC high-school teachers.
In fact if these schools had standards, no one would go to them as they would apply to schools that do. What to do to make this all work - raise the standards, have a stricter residency requirement and hold a green card and not a birthright claim.
i must agree with the previous comments, immigration and overcrowding is part of the problem, my teachers in HS were all good at what they do, the students really
were the problem,most likely because of poorly educated parents, hate to admit it.
Hopefully Obama's new initiatives are a remedy to some of these problems.
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