Common factors behind successful "college and career readiness" include good reading and writing skills, and Conley notes the differences between the demands of reading/writing in high school and college. In college, students read much more, are required to understand and decipher more complex texts, and are challenged by new critical thinking modes and questions of their texts. In writing for college, students are required to finish longer works in much shorter amounts of time, and arguments, points of view, and thorough research are usually required (not to mention good use of mechanics and grammar).
Chapter 1 discusses the "four dimensions of college and career readiness," and they include:
(For this blog entry, we will discuss the first two.)
1. Key Cognitive Strategies
2. Key Content Knowledge
3. Academic Behaviors
4. Contextual Skills and Awareness
The core of these are key cognitive strategies, and the majority of first year students, as Conley noted, struggled with critical thinking and problem solving. Students must be aware of the continuous demands of courses, their own ways of thinking, and effective approaches to different academic scenarios like effective research, problem and answer development, interpretation, and communication. "The entering college student either struggles mightily until these strategies begin to develop or misses out on the largest portion of what college has to offer, which is how to think about the world" (35).
The second dimension is that of content knowledge. Conley notes that unlike most of the rest of the world, the United States' postsecondary institutions require general education courses for all students. In other countries, students simply jump into their "major," which sometimes begins in some form of specialized high school curriculum. American students must follow through with the core subjects, the "basics," of English, Math, Science, the Social Sciences, Languages, and the Arts. In all of these, of course, students must employ the skills as mentioned above, including successful execution of writing/reading demands and tasks.
When considering the large Mexican student population of the Rio Grande Valley, it is simply interesting to note that most high school and college programs in Mexico follow through with this jump into the major field of study as Conley noted – in regards to differentiating American institutions with international ones. That is a factor we should consider when looking at the immigration population of older students who struggle with reading and writing after transferring in at the high school or college age.
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ReplyDeleteIn regards to college readiness in general I would have to agree with Conley that what we need is "a more comprehensive conception of college readiness" (19) and NOT base college readiness on state exams or high school GPA's, which by the way isn't an accurate way to measure college readiness to begin with because of high school grade inflation (as mentioned on page 11) which was actually the result of higher education institutions basing college acceptance on high school GPA's, among other things. One of the ultimate results of not focusing on actual college readiness has led to an appallingly high numbers of students in need of developmental education. This of course is not what bothers or appalls me; what does make me sick to my stomach however are the statistics that are mentioned "nationally, only 17 percent of students who must take a remedial reading class receive a bachelor's degree or higher; of those taking two remedial classes (other than reading), only 20 percent receive such a degree or higher" (27). This means that in a reading developmental education class of 20 students, only about 4 will actually graduate. I cannot begin to wrap my mind around these figures. I am literally shocked by these percentages. Throughout the first chapter I kept one question in my mind "who is to blame for these numbers?”. Interestingly enough, my first thought of high school educators was wrong, it seems to begin with the lack of alignment between high school and college curriculum. This gap in alignment starts a trickling effect that ultimately dooms students in college.
ReplyDeleteThere are of course, steps that can be taken in order to assure that students succeed while in college, regardless of the level of knowledge they possess upon entrance. These are the "four dimensions of college and career readiness" that are mentioned in this post. These four dimensions as Conley mentions "interact with one another extensively".
What got me going in this book is that I feel like I should have read this years ago. I looked at my transcript and I don't how I made it this far.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of things about college readiness that I myself did not know. This is definitely an interesting read because of the four dimensions. Key cognitive strategies and key content knowledge have a relationship that can not be broken.
In the section "Overreaching Academic Skills, what the author states about reading made me freak out. My students obviously do not possess these skills. Some of my students call academic articles stories. It's gonna get rougher before it gets better.
Being able to help students though, as a teacher in higher ed, make them aware of these dimension because I am now aware of them, may make a difference. In my experience thus far in reading this book, I have become hyper-aware of what our students need to succeed.