<p>Isn’t a 24 on Science part of the college readiness benchmark? I know many people who haven’t gotten that high and are doing fine.</p>
<p>I finally read the article and all the comments and ALL states fudge their numbers and lower their standards in order to look better (that’s the problem with NCLB and will be the problem with Race to the Top–too much is riding on the test results and schools, districts, and states cheat). </p>
<p>Poverty IS a huge problem with success in school because while the kids can get food at school [IF their parent(s) fill(s) out the proper paperwork], they don’t have food the other 18 hours each day. In addition, they could be going from house to house and not have a permanent SAFE place to live so they do not get the rest they need to be successful in school. They are also likely to only have one parent who really is working a lot (or worse, is an addict) and they don’t get the individual attention they need at home. I believe we have to fix those problems as a society in order to have most students succeed in their educational endeavors.</p>
<p>I don’t have a college degree and my husband just has an AA. We urged both of our kids to go to college and the oldest is set to graduate in June and our youngest just started her freshman year. We do value education because we realized what we missed out on.</p>
<p>We’ve had to sacrafice a lot to pay for college and I don’t think a lot of parents are willing or able to do that. The cost of college is probably one of the greatest reasons we don’t have many college graduates and I worry that we won’t have the money for our youngest daughter to continue after this year. She is definitely well prepared for college with her public high school education but it could be wasted because our income cannot support her college education.</p>
<p>I’m that receptionist who moved up the ladder without a college degree. I make a good salary (for just having a HS degree) and my husband did make good money until Hostess went out of business (it was more profitable for the investors who owned the company to sell it off than to run it even though that meant 17,000 people lost their jobs). We live in a greedy society that doesn’t seem to care that by sending manufacturing jobs overseas they have caused the majority of our residents to have no means to support themselves or their families. Yes, consumers want cheap products but if we had our manufacturing jobs back, people would be able to pay a little more to buy a product made in the USA and we would be more self-sustaining. </p>
<p>Sorry this is so long but my last point is that people can become over-qualified for jobs with their college degrees. I just conducted interviews for a senior administrative assistant position. The job requires a 4-year college degree but that can be substituted with experience. We had someone with a MBA apply and we interviewed her but someone else had more relevant experience and that’s who we hired. We did question whether we were willing to hire someone with that much education knowing she would most likely leave us as soon as she found a job that fit better with her degree. We decided that she could do the job and that’s how we picked our interviewees. I don’t know that most employers would overlook the graduate degree. Until our workforce can absorb the people with college degrees, I don’t know that a college degree is worth it anymore unless it really is required for the field the student wants to go into.</p>
<p>My ACT scores indicate that I’m ready for college, but I’d rather go live in the mountains in solitude.</p>
<p>Emberjed - apparently an ACT score of 21 across the board indicates that a student is college ready.</p>
<p>Since there are not enough jobs to go around for those that have degrees, what is to be gained by the mind set that everyone needs a college education? More frustrated, unemployed or underemployed college grads living in their parent’s basements with crippling student loans wondering where things went wrong?</p>
<p>That doesn’t surprise me. I’m an Illinois resident, and I currently attend a community college here. I work in my schools tutoring lab, and I work as a private tutor, mainly tutoring math, chemistry, and physics. It never ceases to amaze me how many students that are basically fresh out of high school are seemingly incapable of doing basic algebra. Obviously not all students are going to take AP math and do calculus in high school, but many of these students really can’t even do basic algebra. A lot of the fresh out of high school students here have ended up having to retake algebra I and algebra II before even going into college level math. It’s kind of disheartening. </p>
<p>The same is true of many subjects though. I was in an intro to the humanities class last semester that basically consisted of art analysis/interpretation. A lot of students couldn’t get a handle on the class because it required them to think creatively. Our final project was an art catalog that involved analyzing/interpreting 12 different paintings with accompanying artist biographies and descriptions of the eras/schools. There wasn’t a strict rubric for it to follow though, and a lot of students had trouble with that fact. They weren’t being told to “put this here, do that there, make this part this long” etc. They were required to ‘create’ something, rather than simply completing something. A lot of them did very poorly on it. I’m a non-traditional student at 27, and I thought it was a pretty easy project. The other older students in the class all did great on it too. </p>
<p>High school seems to not do a great job of teaching kids how to think in Illinois. It just teaches them a mechanical process.</p>
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<p>I don’t think it’s a cover up. Setting a composite score for college readiness makes more sense than setting individual scores for each subject test. You don’t major in everything, you major in one thing. I “failed” reading and science but I didn’t major in the related majors and I’ve done fine. Perhaps 21 is too low a score but it is the national average. </p>
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<p>Not true. Switzerland’s minimum wage works out to $15,457/year. Let’s say we’re looking at dual incomes, so just under $31K USD a year. Now let’s look at the cost of living: [Cost</a> Of Living Comparison Between United States And Switzerland](<a href=“Cost Of Living Comparison Between United States And Switzerland]Cost”>Cost Of Living Comparison Between United States And Switzerland)</p>
<p>Costs look to be about 85% higher in Switzerland than the US. So that 31K there is equivalent to about 16.8K here. Now, you can say they have things for free there that we don’t have for free here, like healthcare, but there are still going to be impoverished people.</p>
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<p>I definitely believe most people are going to be incapable of doing one of those things, I don’t believe that most people are going to be incapable of doing all of those things. Most people can learn to be proficient in something. Though there’s still a question of whether pouring in the resources to make as many people as possible proficient in something academic is a valuable use of taxpayer dollars. </p>
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<p>For the ACT, they list scores that correspond to a certain chance of achieving a certain grade in a college-level class corresponding to that subject test. You can definitely argue that they’re unreliable (I doubt they’re ever actually studied the reliability of their own claims) but the idea of the ACT is that they can in fact predict college performance. </p>
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<p>To clarify, that is using Illinois definition. The ACT definition requires students exceed specific scores in each of the subjects. I don’t recall the specific scores but you can look them up. I believe it works out that someone achieving those specific scores would receive a 21, but if they were higher in one and lower in another, they could achieve higher than a 21 but still be considered “not college-ready.”</p>
<p>*are not enough jobs to go around for those that have degrees, what is to be gained by the mind set that everyone needs a college education? *</p>
<p>Education is still the best way to improve socioeconomic standing.
Skills gained in college can be translatable to fields that haven’t even been thought of yet.
Just as Steve Jobs did not realize his calligraphy class at Reed would be integral to the development of the personal computer, what students are taking in 2013, may not bear fruit for ten or twenty years. Or it may be useful right away.
As it is much easier to complete a college degree in the ten years after high school, rather than waiting till you have a home & family and realize that you have hit the ceiling in your career without further education, I am all for as many people as are interested to work toward further education.</p>
<p>"Do you think that in most low income family both parents are working two jobs? Do the math … $20,000 per job, $80,000 per family. They won’t be low income. "</p>
<p>“Both parents”? If you look at the U.S. Census data from 2010 you will find that not every low-income family has two parents. That changes the math.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>Given that being a single parent is a choice most of the time, how much should single parents bear responsibility for the result of their choices? Is it all of it, none of it, or somewhere in between?</p>
<p>The article Dave Berry posted references the idea that not everyone can or needs to go to a four year college. </p>
<p>I agree. The number of those who might be successful a 4 year based in ACT score does not surprise me. </p>
<p>We emphasize a four year college path in the US, but the reality is that not everyone needs a BA or BS to get a good job or make a decent living. We emphasize college track in high scjools, but some students no matter their SES will not be successful in those subjects. Some intelligent kids are also bad test takers or take them once without prep, or do not even realize they should take them and when. </p>
<p>Some people start in community college with intent to transfer, do not end up doing so. Or they take classes for vocational training only. </p>
<p>Technical or vocational education is often ignored. A plumber or auto mechanic does not need a four year degree. They need specialized training. Most of us would be surprised if you really looked around at people you see everyday who learned the skills for their job without a 4 year degree. Your dental hygenist might even make more than you do. </p>
<p>That person that saves your life and gets you in stable condition before taking you to hospital just mught be an EMT. </p>
<p>The hair stylist that makes you gorgeous probably did not go to college, but beauty school. </p>
<p>The tile contractor I hired did not go to college, but his skills at laying the most exquisite, perfectly aligned tile are unquestionable. </p>
<p>I am applying for a job currently that asks for a masters, but in no way shape or form does the skill set “need” a masters. There are similar, higher level jobs that do and should require that in same department, but it is ridiculous to expect that for this job.</p>
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<p>First of all, being a single parent is not a choice most of the time. Studies show that with non-married parents (which is the majority of births now in many places and is not always a bad thing), both partners overwhelmingly are committed to raising the child when the child is born. But, life changes in ways you can’t predict. You can’t control the other partner. </p>
<p>Second of all, it doesn’t matter how much “responsibility” the parents have- it’s the children who pay. We can blame the parents all we want, but that doesn’t solve the issue of what to do about children caught in between. </p>
<p>FWIW, studies show that stable single parent families have children that are better off than a custodial parent with multiple partners and multiple resident “parents”. Most who engage in multipartner living situations do so out of survival, as we do not have a system designed to enable single parents to BE single parents (expensive childcare, poor public transportation, no mandatory parental leave- of which we are one of FOUR countries in the world, pathetic minimum wage, etc). Perhaps we should work on that.</p>
<p>Yes it’s true that if you are lucky you can spend a year or so in cosmetology school and with additional post liscense training, can even find a job making more than minimum wage. ( average income is <$30,000.
Is that enough to pay your bills in the us?
Hygienists do make more, about double. They need at least two years of college including math & science courses.
Whatever vocational work got you through your 20s & maybe your 30’s, you are liable to wish for a degree on your resume when you get older and can’t do physical labor as easily, or perhaps need more regular hours for your family or simply just want to change fields.</p>
<p>In this day and age, I think it’s almost inexcusable to tell students that they’ll be able to get a halfway comfortable job and live on it without a college degree.</p>
<p>Speaking as a college English professor, I have noticed that ACTs and SATs do a very rough but reasonable job predicting success in college. I’ve never been able to tell the difference between a student who scores, say, a 22 ACT and one who scores 27. But I’ll offer some observations about general trends (emphasis on trend):</p>
<p>score < 10: Very confused. Very poor reading, writing, and math skills. Will take a lot of remedial courses, but they won’t be enough. Unlikely to complete a bachelor’s or the kind of two-year degree designed for transferring into a bachelor’s program.</p>
<p>score < 18: A little lost, but typically able to earn one of those degrees after 1-2 remedial courses and with a fair amount of hard work. Unlikely to complete a STEM degree. Generally able to well in a technical program.</p>
<p>score < 25: The student you probably imagine when you think of a public university.</p>
<p>score > 25: This student’s success depends almost entirely on the amount of effort he/she puts into school. Hard work and few distractions generally lead to a high GPA.</p>
<p>Again, these are trends, not absolutes, and based only on my personal observations. Also, low scores can mean a lot of different things when we’re talking about non-traditional students. Often, they just need a brush-up.</p>
<p>I’m from Illinois, and my sociology class talked about this a lot. I believe it’s because the better the school does, the more funding they get from the state. While that’s great for the high achieving schools, it’s backwards because the schools that are having trouble preparing students for college are the ones that need the funding the most.</p>
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<p>If you re-read what you wrote, you will see there are in fact two choices. The first is to be a non-married parent. The second is to split up. The first causes the second to be more likely. It has large costs to the children and to society.</p>
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<p>There are two laudable goals in conflict here, which is why I asked the original question. On the one hand, the children are innocent of the mistakes made by their parents. On the other hand, there should be some real benefit to parents doing the right things (providing a supportive family, stressing the importance of learning, saving for their children’s education, etc.) compared to those that don’t.</p>
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<p>Yes, but that still doesn’t at all solve the issue of what to do irt the children.</p>
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<p>It won’t be comparable but there are plenty of jobs that pay well and don’t require an education. They’re just undesirable for one reason or another. There’s a lot of oil stuff going on in North Dakota and Alberta now which is paying pretty good money for uneducated work for instance. </p>
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<p>Score below 10? That sounds more like someone just bubbled in randomly and went to sleep than they don’t know what they’re doing. Isn’t 10 like less than the 1-percentile level? Did you mean to say maybe 15 or a score that some people actually get?</p>
<p>Many, I’d say most, low-income parents value education. But since they themselves didn’t get far with education, they don’t have the knowledge base that college-grad parents do to help their kids.</p>