Dual Enrollment Not Just for High Achievers Early College Improves Outcomes for Disadvantaged Students Too | California Progress Report

My research focused around high performing secondary schools. In my initial identification of schools I noted that many of the best schools in California were “Middle College” schools. Middle college schools are typically high schools that are housed on a college campus and allow students to take college classes as part of their regular course load. Now the College Progress report seems to provide some data to support my casual observation in Dual Enrollment Not Just for High Achievers Early College Improves Outcomes for Disadvantaged Students Too. Moreover, tying into my post yesterday, one suggestion is that having all students be part of the college expectations supports all students.

Tracking

Tracking is a dirty word in education. Most commonly it refers to the practice to placing students on a “track” towards college or on a track that doesn’t go to college sometime referred to as “work ready”. Historically in the United States this has had racial implication with White students being on the college track and non-White students on a non-college track. Today, many people hold that this practice through a variety of court decisions, laws, and change in social mores has been addressed and that all students now have the opportunity to go to college if they want.

As any social issue with a long history in any society the problem is much more complicated than simply having a policy place that is supposed to solve the problem. The question of what student gets to go to college touches upon issues of expectations as well as practices both de facto and de jure.

Kelly and Price (2011) tackle this issue and find that current tracking policies vary from school to school. In fact they find that “…the choice is not whether a school will track students but how it will.” Many schools today still have “college” tracks that are not explicitly for White students but end up up under representing non-white students. Some schools attempt to address the issue of under-representation by having academic criteria but when schools that under-perform are schools with a predominantly minority population these students of color become “ineligible” for the college track classes. Some schools allow students to sign-up for the college tack if they desire. However, Kelly (2009) and Broaded (1997) found that this practice may make the racial tracking worse as “…White students and thier parents more readily capitalize on electivity…”

To me the issue folds into the issue of expectations. All students should graduate from high school prepared for college. This eliminates the issue of tracking. Some critics suggest that not all students want to go to college or  are not college “material”; society needs plumbers and mechanics just as much as doctors and lawyers. Society needs a wide variety of people; what it doesn’t need to do is limit the potential of it’s children.

Thoughts?

Going digital

Getting access to textbooks and instructional materials should become standard. Now with new legislation online access to textbooks may be in California. I would love to send kids home with an e-reader instead of 25 pounds of books.

Coordinated testing

One of the most common laments about testing is that there is no incentive for students. Dr. Randall Delling’s research focused around student interest, or the lack thereof, in participating in testing and the subsequent effect on scores for schools. While there are steps schools to ameliorate the situation the State has taken up the issue with legislation to tie testing to college acceptance. I was part of the group that discussed the issue when the legislation was under development. My largest concern is was about not shutting out students from going to college prematurely while dealing with the issue of student participation.