It would be one thing if the media, colleges and policymakers were merely giving short shrift to this problem. What's frustrating is that they're also ignoring good solutions.
The education world's best answers are those that focus on high schools, those that focus on what colleges can do, and those that focus on the students themselves.
The emerging consensus in the first category is that just having high schools do a better job of what they do now won't be enough. All students need to be pushed more. They need more support. They need to see college as a realistic option. Exit exams, most of which measure what students should learn in middle school, aren't enough and may be a distraction from preparing students for college and a more-demanding workplace.
Early College High Schools, a $120-million initiative underwritten by a consortium of donors led by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, aims to nurture small, hybrid institutions affiliated with community colleges. These schools, several of which will spring up in California, are designed to simultaneously address students' skill deficits and engage them in college-level work. In five years students earn both a high school diploma and a two-year associate's degree, putting a bachelor's degree within reach if they stick college out for two more years.
Another tactic would have all students take the equivalent of a college-prep curriculum, something no state requires, according to Washington-based Education Trust and Achieve Inc., which was set up by business leaders and the National Governors Assn. Jack O'Connell, California's superintendent of public instruction, has proposed something similar.
With so many eager students queued up outside admissions offices, many colleges don't care much if students drop out or flunk out once their tuition checks have been cashed. A second group of advocates counters this approach by pressing colleges to help students get up to speed, suggesting the schools connect freshmen with mentors, increase financial aid so students won't have to work and could live on campus, and push schools to offer more of the courses in greatest demand so financially strapped students can graduate on time. A third category of problem-solvers pushes for programs such as those in Indiana, Michigan, Georgia and Texas, where the state provides scholarships to high school students who take harder classes. Research confirms the common sense of this: Students who work harder in high school do better afterward.
For these solid solutions to gain traction, however, educators, policymakers, journalists and the rest of us who managed to make the best of America's education system must first step back and take fuller notice of the inequities under our noses. We must grasp that the system that served us well is a failure, producing only two bachelor degrees for every 10 students who start high school. We must acknowledge this failure as our own and recognize it as a threat to the future well-being of our children -- even those who think they have a lock on the Ivy League.
