COUNTYWIDE : Honig Tells Plan to Steer More to College

State superintendent of public instruction Bill Honig on Friday detailed an ambitious partnership plan between community colleges and high schools, aimed at steering 25% of high school graduates to four-year universities and another 25% to community colleges or technical schools by the year 2000.

Speaking before educators gathered at the Westin South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa for a “Plus in Partnership” conference, Honig warned that the plan cannot work unless educators make “a radical shift in the way we do business.”

“We’re going to have to reconstruct our entire curriculum,” Honig said in his luncheon address. “We’re going to have to redevelop courses. . . . We’re going to have to make structural changes within our classrooms.”

The partnership plan--known in education circles as “articulation,” or a planned process linking together two or more educational systems--calls for teachers at both levels to form curricula that will smooth the transition between high school and college or technical school.

The restructuring will also help direct students bound for four-year colleges to the appropriate high school courses to pursue career goals.

The goal, Honig said, is to raise the percentage of high school graduates seeking bachelor’s degrees from current levels of about 12% to 25% by the year 2000, and of those seeking associate’s degrees or completion of technical school from the current 19% to 25%.

In a separate plan, Honig said the state hopes to develop partnerships with business that would steer an additional 40% of graduates directly to the workplace, leaving a projected dropout rate of about 10%.

“We’re going to make it in this country on how effectively we get these kids into technical jobs,” Honig said.

Honig said partnership programs between high schools and community colleges should be geared toward four areas of academic achievement: basic academic skills, helping students develop personal goals, training students to work in groups (or “cooperative learning”) and specific technical training.

David Mertes, chancellor of the state’s community colleges, preceded Honig at the podium and said educators will “have to rise to new levels of interaction with each other” to succeed in bridging the gap between secondary schools and community colleges.

He also said concerted efforts by college and business recruiters must be “an ongoing act” if students are to be comfortably eased into institutions of higher learning or the workplace.

Honig said that while teachers, administrators and businessmen facing a severe shortage of technical workers are eager to start the program, developing lines of communications among institutions will be difficult and take time.

“We’re talking about institutions that have never worked together,” Honig said after his address. “We’re talking about making teachers at two different levels jointly responsible for 100 students.”

Despite the potential obstacles, Honig added, educators throughout the state are “very excited” about the partnership plan.

“We want to say to you that it is very high on our agenda,” Honig told the audience.