Comment

Barbara Schneider has written an important and well-researched paper. The key conclusions concerning essential high school courses and parent-student strategies that increase postsecondary attendance and completion are based on solid longitudinal data. Little argument can be raised in terms of what Schneider presents, but much is available to expand upon in terms of policy implications. Much of Schneider's paper focuses upon students who go to selective postsecondary education institutions.

As she suggests, however, the biggest student preparation problems are evidenced in the approximately 80 percent of the students who go to minimal or nonselective institutions, including community colleges.³⁷ These students are accepted because they are eighteen years old or have passed the required high school courses to be admitted. These institutions may require the SAT but rarely use it for admissions decisions.³⁸ More than 50 percent of their students are in remediation, and their completion rates are low.³⁹ The students who attend these institutions face many obstacles. High school counseling resources are minimal, parents know little about higher education, and high school teachers in the middle- and lower-ability groups do not provide much college knowledge. Because admission is certain, the de facto key academic standard for these students is a placement test once they enroll in postsecondary education.⁴⁰

Baltimore City Community College (BCCC) provides an extreme example but illustrates the depth of the problems.⁴¹ Of 1,350 first-time students who entered BCCC in fall 1996, only 13 had received a vocational certificate, an associate's degree, or transferred to a bachelor's degree-granting college. Ninety-five percent needed remediation, and 45 percent required three math courses to reach the credit level. The math placement test, Accuplacer, was not matched to state high school math standards that emphasized authentic problem solving (for example, word problems with applications to real-life scenarios). The BCCC placement exam included content beyond algebra 2.

Schneider's paper primarily takes a bottom-up view of the educational system from secondary to postsecondary schooling. Improvements in the system, however, require looking down from higher education to secondary schools as well. The most relevant four-year postsecondary schools for Baltimore high schools are Choppin State, Morgan State, and the University of Baltimore, not the selective schools that receive most of the media attention. What signals do these types of schools send secondary school students about what they need to know and be able to do for completion of their college programs? Interviews reveal many students believe their high school graduation requirements are sufficient, and they have scant information on placement standards that direct them to postsecondary remediation.⁴²

While the reality for high school graduates is that 70 percent will likely continue past the secondary years, state and institutional policies continue to reflect a significant separation between K-12 and postsecondary education. The current organization of secondary schools and postsecondary institutions is such that communication and information dissemination between levels is often difficult. For instance, students—especially those who are economically disadvantaged or whose parents did not attend college—often do not know what colleges expect of them in terms of meeting their admission or placement requirements. Many students believe that nonselective four-year institutions and community colleges do not have academic standards. This is not the case as is evidenced by the widespread use of placement tests for access to credit-level courses. Also, policies across the segments—particularly those concerning the transition from high school graduation to college admission—are fragmented and confusing.

Education standards have swept across the United States, engulfing almost every state. Forty-six states have created K-12 academic content standards in most academic subjects, and all but Iowa and Nebraska have statewide K-12 student achievement tests. At the state level, progress has been made toward focusing on, and clarifying, what students must be able to know and to do in the K-12 grades and how to align standards, assessments, textbook...