<p>I agree not everyone can do everything and I think it is ridiculous for society to push everyone in the direction of college.</p>
<p>But to not give anyone any chance again after high school is a bit ridiculous as well, especially to people who have been paying taxes into the system for years and years.</p>
<p>There are many high schools that are just broke, I came from a high school that had a 35% drop rate at the time, now fixed thankfully. But for some reason I am suppose to be held accountable for the rest of my life because one time, when I was young, I did not put the extra effort in? </p>
<p>No, not everyone can do everything, but people can do somethings. While the example of statistics given is fine, that is just one example, someone that excelled in statistics may not be able to write a 12 page essay over Germany’s health care system using 15 references, that does not mean that person would not kick ass in engineering.</p>
<p>I happen to be horrible at math, though I made nothing but A’s in my required math courses, but anything higher would just have been a downhill slope. I graduated summa cum laude in political science and now am on my way to law school, and yes, I dropped out of high school and got my GED a couple of years later, that does not mean I am stupid or a bad student. I took a remedial math course in college, without the math course, they would not have allowed me to enroll in the needed college level courses. Remove that requirement, then fine, do away with the remedial courses, but until then, there still must be a gateway for people to start college.</p>
<p>The underlying problem is that some people would like to attend college but are missing pieces of the college-prep foundation they need to succeed there. There are numerous reasons why this might happen:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Some high schools simply fail to adequately teach the college-prep curriculum to anyone. This is beyond the student’s control.</p></li>
<li><p>Some students drop out of high school. This can happen for many reasons, not all of which are entirely within the student’s control. I know someone who dropped out partly because she was ostracised by her peers. Her high school was conformist and predominantly upper-middle class, and she wasn’t tolerated. I even know someone who dropped out of an inner-city high school because she was beaten up on a daily basis. Someone could also drop out because they need to work full-time to support themselves or their family.</p></li>
<li><p>Some students are tracked into vocational courses, sometimes for the wrong reasons. Someone else I know repeatedly talks about how he only got a ninth grade education because he was tracked into shop courses. Such students may subsequently decide to attend college.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>There needs to be a way for these people to learn the parts of the college-prep curriculum that they missed out on. Otherwise, they are far less likely to succeed in college. Developmental classes in colleges are useful in that they can help fill these gaps. Other formats are possible. But there needs to be some program enabling people to learn the college-prep curriculum as adults so that they can succeed in college. Otherwise, large numbers of people will be excluded from college, the intellectual benefits it offers and the careers it enables.</p>
<p>Even if it were possible to improve all high schools nationwide so that all students receive an adequate college-prep education, this doesn’t retroactively solve the deficiencies of students who already went through the school system. Thus, some way for adults to learn the college-prep curriculum is likely to be needed for the foreseeable future.</p>
<p>I disagree. SATs may not be a perfect predictor of success (i.e. direct correlation) because of other factors such as work ethic, but they are able to determine whether or not a student is ready for college. A 500 on the SAT signifies that a student is not ready. While it may not be his or her fault, it shouldn’t be the taxpayers job to re-educate them. And in all honesty, for someone aspiring to get a college degree, getting a 500 average on the SAT should not be that hard. If we let people into the higher education system with any less it lessens the credibility of a college degree.</p>
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<p>I know that it might not be hard science, but Malcolm Gladwell did address this issue in his book Outliers. He pointed out that studies showed that poorer students were not doing poorly in school because the school systems that they attended were inadequately preparing them, but instead that they were doing poorly because of what they were not learning outside of school. In other words, the culture surrounding education in poorer families is less conducive to learning and scholastic achievement.</p>
<p>They offer a full slate of high school courses, taught a bit faster, for those who just missed out back in high school. Those courses don’t count toward the higher level courses needed for an associate or to transfer to our flagship 4-year college nearby. There is a separate set of real “first two years in college” type classes. This has been a boon to those students got off track for all those reason gracefully described in post #42 above.</p>
<p>"It’s been a gripe of mine for a while that we spend plenty of money bringing the exceptionally challenged students along but we don’t spend much money to develop the exceptionally talented to the academic levels they are capable of achieving. It would do our country well to give strong support to both groups. "</p>
<p>You need to look no further than the school budget to see that there’s oodles more money spent on low performers.</p>
<p>The only use many CA high schools have for high-achieving kids is to keep them in school for as long as possible (regardless if they really shouldn’t be there) to collect the attendance-based $38 a day from the state.</p>
<p>one poster said that students are not ‘college material’ if they make below 1550. Sorry but that comment sounded pretty ridiculous. Plain and simple one three hour test should not determine your destiny in life. And SAT scores on CC are really skewed: isn’t 1550 the national average or close to that? Correct me if I’m wrong</p>
<p>1500 is the average (I think that College Board resets the test every now and then so that 500 will be the average per section). It is also the mark of someone who, while they might not be intellectually incapable (far from it), they are not at college level. If that means that the average American isn’t ready for college, so be it. College shouldn’t be an “everybody” institution anyway. It should be for our more gifted students (and I’m using that term loosely since 500 is a low score indicating an average ability to comprehend high school, not college, material). And while it may be dehumanizing that a 3 hour test (actually longer than that if I recall correctly) can accurately predict your abilities (within 100 points), the fact is that it’s the truth. Also, if this cutoff was made, it would mean that our society would be forced to recognize that a college degree is not needed for a lot of jobs. Only the intellectually harder jobs (the ones that students scoring above a 1500 are already working at) would require a degree.</p>
<p>thinker88 I agree that anything below 1500 is low. But you can’t paint every student with the same brush. There are loads of colleges that accept students with SAT scores below 500 (shock!). I scored a 450 on the math section which i am definitely not proud of but still got accepted to schools whose SAT math score averages were a good 50-100 points higher than mine (UGA, Emory-Oxford campus, Agnes Scott College). Colleges do not look at SAT scores and automatically think that one student is going to succeed and the other isn’t. And by the way the SAT is NOT a good indicator of college success (there is a thread that refers to this somewhere?)</p>
<p>On the remedial course issue (which this thread was started about!), I think that they’re not such a bad thing. Schools have yet to come up with a homogeneous standard for all students, even the incredibly gifted ones (causing a need for remedial courses even at Harvard). But there definitely are things one should have learned in high school if one wants to go to college.</p>
<p>On the need for college preparation issue, I think that definitely not everyone needs or even wants a college-based career. However, I was reading a magazine on a Chinese airplane, where there was an interview with the flight attendant of the month of that company and while I don’t know how honest he was, he actually said in the interview that flight attendants should have a college degree.</p>
but still got accepted to schools whose SAT math score averages were a good 50-100 points higher than mine (UGA, Emory-Oxford campus, Agnes Scott College). Colleges do not look at SAT scores and automatically think that one student is going to succeed and the other isn’t. And by the way the SAT is NOT a good indicator of college success (there is a thread that refers to this somewhere?)</p>