http://proftitutes.blogspot.com/2006/09/new-york-post-and-community-colleges.html

Over at Community College English, my pals are discussing this article from the New York Times. The article basically slams community college students, but, really, I think it slams our K-12 system more. Students aren't prepared for college. Many are remediated in basic English and math. Some aren't prepared for the work of college and spend more time and energy negotiating grades than doing actual work. Some highlights:

"As the new school year begins, the nation’s 1,200 community colleges are being deluged with hundreds of thousands of students unprepared for college-level work."

This is actually a good point. At my school, we will see a whole host of students that placed into our remedial program but were members of the National Honors Society in HS. Of course, we keep seeing funding cuts...so, by gosh, how will we ever manage to teach these kids what they suposedly learned in HS???

"Though higher education is now a near-universal aspiration, researchers suggest that close to half the students who enter college need remedial courses."

Clearly, this person must also need remedial instruction since she doesn't actually cite her statistics. Which researchers? I actually believe this statement is true, but if it came to me in a paper, I would write "sources?" in the margin.

"The efforts, educators say, have not cut back on the thousands of students who lack basic skills. Instead, the colleges have clustered those students in community colleges, where their chances of succeeding are low and where taxpayers pay a second time to bring them up to college level."

4 year colleges are tired of providing remediation. I don't blame them. Students not prepared for college level work shouldn't be at a 4-year school; it is a recipe for disaster. Community Colleges are great places to send these students. Yet, the Times is wrong in saying that tax-payers pay twice. Not all CC are funded the same way, and I can assure you that we do not see much tax payer money.

"The unyielding statistics showcase a deep disconnection between what high school teachers think that their students need to know and what professors, even at two-year colleges, expect them to know."

Yes, there is a great adjustment period for students at both types of colleges.

“That’s why we’re trying to use pop culture in the classroom, to get their attention,’’ said Betsy Gooden, an English teacher who, in a remedial reading class one day last spring, tried to coax students to discuss a television documentary."

I would teach the same way at Princeton. I don't dumb down my classes; I raise the bar and students make it.