Colleges holding public schools accountable
Rightwingprof has some interesting ideas about No Child Left Behind and federalism. Being a wingnut, of course he isn't going to suggest just pitching the whole putrid mess of public education...and that's OK. But this, I think, is not:
If universities started exercising the power they have by refusing to accept graduates of schools with low SAT scores, those schools would have no choice but to raise their standards and change what they do.
The problem here is that it's individual punishment for somebody else's guilt. If the university refuses to accept brilliant students who learned in spite of their schools (that could describe me) because of the school's ineptitude, it's a negation of the American individualist tradition...not that a wingnut would care about that. And while RWP might be willing to accept a few martyrs for the cause of school reform, I think he would get more than he bargained for, because of the entrenched interest in the status quo. He thinks the schools are reformable; I don't. Putting the doughnut on may get us back on the road short-term, but it doesn't fix the flat tire.
Comments
Posted by: jeffrey smith
Posted on: January 8, 2007 11:27 PM
Also, don't they do that already, through including SAT scores in admission requirements? Obviously, kids from schools with low SATs will be less frequently admitted because they will (statistically speaking) have lower SATs to begin with.
Also also, given that almost anyone can get into community colleges and public four year universities even with fairly low qualifications, this would have limited impact, especially if what I suspect is true--that students from schools with low SAT scores tend to go to those schools anyway, for economic reasons as much as academic. A kid here can graduate from Miami Central HS (on the low end of the academic scale), attend Miami Dade Community College for the first two years, Florida International University for the last two years (or even all four years), while living at home and having a part time job to keep up the cash flow, with almost no regard to academic success in high school or SAT scores. And given the neighborhoods from which Miami Central draws its student body, that's the only economically feasible way of attending college even for those kids who would do well even in schools with better academics than Miami Central.