Playing Catch-Up in College

The most dispiriting news in California State University’s report card on last year’s freshmen is not the rising number who flunked remedial English and math but how many had to take the classes. Half of the 36,000 men and women who started at the system’s 23 campuses last fall learned so little in high school that Cal State gave them a year to catch up or face dismissal. A stronger indictment of California’s middle and high schools is hard to find.

The 3,000 students who will probably be kicked out, 8.2% of the freshmen who entered in September 2001, may be tempted to blame the university for setting the bar too high. After all, they earned a 2.0 grade point average in high school, the threshold for admission to Cal State. But the real culprits are the harried or incompetent middle and high school teachers who passed them to the next grade when they shouldn’t have.

In recent years, state lawmakers and local school officials have made elementary school their priority. Classes of 20 youngsters and an intense focus on reading, for example, lifted test scores even in beleaguered Los Angeles Unified schools. But because many young adults never got that attention in grade school, they wrestle to solve simple algebraic equations or write a cogent essay.

As college professors spend more lecture time teaching those basic skills, they have less time to prepare students for careers as engineers, lawyers or social workers. That’s why Cal State in 1996 required all entering freshmen to pass a placement test in English and math. One of the questions on this year’s math exam was, “The sale price of Kathy’s new briefcase was reduced 30% from the original price of $80. What was the sale price of the briefcase? (A) $30 (B) $40 (C) $50 (D) $56 (E) $104.” Pretty basic stuff.

Cal State professors, who train thousands of new K-12 teachers every year, are working with high school teachers to prepare their students for these tests. That’s nice, but responsibility for a solid K-12 education still rests with the schools themselves.

The proposed 11th-grade proficiency test would help. But state officials are still dithering about whether all California students should have to pass it to get a diploma. Why? Because more than half of all current 11th-graders, the first class that could be required to pass, failed the test when they took it voluntarily -- even though some who flunked have grades that would qualify them for Cal State. This buck-passing is bad for students, colleges and taxpayers. If students can’t pass the exam, they shouldn’t graduate and Cal State shouldn’t have to accept them.

The sale price of Kathy’s briefcase? (D) $56. The price of lousy schools? Far more than society should tolerate.