University Writing CenterAcross the U.S., educators, politicians, taxpayers, and even students and parents are talking about the issue of “remediation.” In fall 2002, 55.6% of entering freshmen at Cal Poly Pomona required at least one quarter of remedial English. System-wide, the percentage was 49%. How is it possible that large numbers of students in the top third of high school graduates test into remedial English?
One view is that the senior year is the problem. A recent article in US News and World Report notes that for many schools the senior year is “a nebulous time when collegebound students with acceptance letters in hand often lose their motivation to learn, while other students, having fulfilled minimal high school graduation requirements, report to school for just a few classes.”(*1) This situation leads to the malady known as “senioritis.” The Colorado legislature is considering a proposal to eliminate the senior year and spend the money on pre-kindergarten programs. Other states are considering similar proposals.
Some universities have attempted to address the problem of senioritis by making acceptance conditional on satisfactory grades in the second semester of the senior year.
Another view is that there is a large gap between high school standards and university expectations. An article in the Seattle Times describes a student who graduated second in her class in high school, but was “stunned” to find when she entered the University of Washington that she was expected to read 200 pages of psychology in one week.(*2) Here at Cal Poly Pomona, when freshmen who tested into remedial courses were asked to respond to the statement “My high school English courses prepared me well for EPT,” 54% disagreed or strongly disagreed. It would seem that one way to make the senior year more meaningful would be to make it more challenging.
At Cal State L.A., I ran a writing course for the Summer Bridge program, which was designed as a “bridge” to help less than well-prepared incoming freshmen get ready to do college-level work. For their final portfolios, which contained two essays and a six-page research paper, the students were asked to write a cover letter to the portfolio grader. One of the questions was “What factors do you want the grader to consider when evaluating your portfolio?” The following are typical comments:
In general, we found that bridge students could be taught to do this work, although most had never been challenged in this way in high school. Part of the problem, of course, is that a typical high school English teacher might be teaching as many as 180 students a week.
In California, the Intersegmental Committee of the Academic Senates, a body that includes representatives from the California Community Colleges, the California State University, and the University of California, commissioned a task force to investigate the common expectations of higher education faculty in the three systems. The task force report, "Academic Literacy: A Statement of Competencies Expected of Students Entering California's Public Colleges and Universities," came out last spring. In surveys of faculty, the task force found that faculty expect entering students to be able to do the following reading tasks:
However, from the faculty's perspective, most students are daunted by these challenges, particularly in tasks requiring skills in both reading and writing. Only
The report also discusses the “habits of mind” faculty expect from students, including curiosity, a willingness to experiment with new ideas, and the ability to see other points of view and challenge their own beliefs. The survey and the complete report can be viewed here.
What are the prospects for the future? The new California Language Arts Standards actually require students to do such things as “analyze both the features and rhetorical devices of different types of public documents (e.g., policy statements, speeches, debates, platforms) and how authors use these features and devices,” and “critique the power, validity, and truthfulness in the logic of arguments set forth in public documents, their appeal to audiences both friendly and hostile, and the extent to which they anticipate and address reader concerns and counterclaims (e.g., appeal to reason, appeal to authority, appeal to pathos/emotion).” High school English will no longer be exclusively about reading literary texts.
In addition, another CSU task force is in the process of designing a Twelfth Grade Expository Reading and Writing course to help teachers meet these new standards and to help students prepare for the English Placement Test (EPT). Perhaps in the near future, the gap between high school and CSU expectations will be significantly reduced. In the meantime, large numbers of students will need help from faculty and from services like the Learning Resource Center and the Writing Center in order to meet our standards.
*1 Hsu, Caroline. “Is It Time to Ditch Senior Year?” U.S. News 8 Dec. 2003. 10 Dec. 2003 http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/031208/misc/8education.htm.
*2 Solomon, Cara. “College-prep Expectations Don't Mesh with Realities.” Seattle Times 8 Dec. 2003. 10 Dec. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001810209_collegeprep08e.html
