ARTICULATION

Back in the day [1980], Articulation was the name given to the process to ensure that elementary students were not surprised by the demands of seventh grade, and middle school students were not surprised by the demands of ninth grade (or tenth grade).
Educators had meetings in which they discussed articulation – not better diction for all, but a better fit between different levels of schooling – and it was always a problem. Each level wanted control over what it taught and when, and what academic standards would be enforced, and there was a lamentable inclination by high school educators to look down a bit on middle school educators and for middle school educators to look down a bit on elementary school educators.
While I am sure that this never happens now, in the new Millennium, there is another articulation problem which I believe gets far less attention than students deserve. It has been reported recently that nationally about 30% of our high school students in general drop out of high school and that the percentage rises to a shocking 50% for black and Hispanic students.
But what about the 70% (or 50%) who do graduate and get the diploma certifying that they have met the requirements of an American high school education? In Massachusetts, of those who pass the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System [MCAS] tests and get their diplomas, 37% are now found to be “not ready for college work,” according to a report last month in The Boston Globe.
In an article on EducationNews.org on student writing in Texas, Donna Garner quoted a parent who said about the writing her daughter is doing for the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills [TAKS] tests: “She basically just writes about her feelings on anything of her choice and often is encouraged to just make things up as long as it is flowery and emotional. This is apparently what they look for on TAKS.” And Donna Garner observed: “It is no wonder that college professors think our Texas high-school graduates are not ready for college. The brutal fact is that they are not ready.”


In California, Sherry Saavedra of The San Diego Union-Tribune, on April 12, 2008 reported that of the students entering the California State University system (i.e. those who have received their California high school diplomas saying they are high school graduates), 46% were unprepared for college-level English. She quotes Ethan Singer, associate vice president for academic affairs at San Diego State University, that: “They have one year to catch up through remedial classes if they want to remain…About 45% don’t make it to their sophomore year….Their academic preparation is questionable.”
One of these California high school graduates said: “I took a lot of AP classes in high school, so I thought I was more prepared.” She graduated from Serra High School in Tierrasanta, but she was told she needed to take a remedial writing course at SDSU. She reported: “I was, like, mad. It’s frustrating because you think you’re doing well and find out you’re not up to the standard.”
Once again, Articulation rears its head, but for some reason the high school people who hand out diplomas, based on whatever the HS academic criteria are, and the college people who administer the college readiness tests, based on their academic criteria, seem not to talk to each other, and each almost acts as if the other didn’t exist.
Why should students, who jump all the required hurdles, in Massachusetts, Texas and California (and elsewhere) to be awarded a high school diploma in a graduation ceremony, find, when they enter the college to which they have been accepted and for which they believe themselves to have been academically prepared, that 37% or 46% or more of them, are judged not capable of college-level work and must enroll in remedial courses in order to (again) earn a place in college?
How terribly difficult could it be, I wonder, for the people who write the high school graduation exams (MCAS, TAKS, etc.) and the people who write the college-readiness exams, which find so many high school graduates unprepared, to sit down and look at each other’s tests and perhaps try to reconcile their expectations, so that high school students could find out sooner what they need to do to get ready for college work.
It is truly inexcusable for college educators to admit high school graduates and then find them incompetent to do college work, and at the same time to ignore the HS assessments being conducted to determine whether students should receive a high school diploma or not.
Some people have made a few efforts at articulation between colleges and high schools, but clearly the high percentage of our diploma-bearing high school graduates who are still being surprised by the results of college assessment tests shows that college educators don’t care enough to fix an articulation problem the consequences of which should not fall so heavily on so many of our unsuspecting and unprepared students.
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“Teach by Example”
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
Consortium for Varsity Academics® [2007]
The Concord Review [1987]
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998]
TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776 USA
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007
www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org
Varsity Academics®