I’m still on hiatus, just had to post again.

…of a sort. Lemme ’splain. According to the Post-Gazette, 75% of prospective American college students score below par on the ACT. ¹

orly?

cudnt imagn y

I have taken the ACTs. I scored below college level in Algebra, and am taking a remedial course in Algebra starting in four hours. I know exactly why American high school students need to take remedial courses. High schools do not ensure that students retain their knowledge of algebra. It is possible to not take algebra for the last two years of high school. I will elaborate

I took Algebra 1 in 8th grade. It was not the “advanced” class that you would imagine. It was more of an uncoordinated attempt to teach regular pre-algebra to 20 students out of a class of 30, while simultaneously attempting to prepare the students who had A’s in the class for Algebra 2, which they would take in freshman year due to their grades. The setup for the “advanced class” was: 10 students go to the computer lab once in a while and do extra, “advanced” work using Powerpoint slideshows. It ended up being a lesson in how to cheat when working in a large group: you just sit back and listen to the smart kids solve the problems out loud and write the answers down.

I took Algebra 2 in 9th grade. It was not the ideal setting either. We never used our books, and I never did my homework. Of course, if I sat in class and listened to the teacher blather on, I would get the idea long enough to scrape by, which I did. Mostly I doodled, talked to my friend, and daydreamed. I got a lot of head-scratching and nail-cleaning done in that class. In the end, the teacher felt bad for me not getting to pass on to Geometry with the rest of the class², so they were very lenient grading my final, I ended up getting a C-minus, which they upgraded to a C mysteriously, and signed my course sheet so that I could pass on to Geometry.

I took Geometry in 10th grade. This class was actually rather nicely structured. The curriculum called for reinforcement every night in the form of a few homework problems, and the teacher was very competent, intent on ensuring that the students in my class went to college able calculate angles of any sort, and recite the equations for SINE, COSINE, and TANGENT in their sleep. However, by this point in high school, I no longer gave a flying f#@$, and used the class as a daily opportunity to doze a full stomach away, seeing as we met immediately after lunch. I barely passed with a D-minus, which I suspect was due to the unsurpassed kindness of this teacher. If I ever meet them again, I’ll remember not to be a jerk. I’m pretty sure they realized I had scratched every equation in my textbook into my calculator with a dry pen³ in the 5 minutes allowed to review quickly before the final, and simply decided to pass me out of pity.

Rather than attempt to weasel my way into, then fail Trigonometry, which was the prescribed 11th grade advanced math course, I did not even show my 10th Geometry teacher what I had picked for next year when it came time for them to sign off on the students’ ability to succeed in their desired courses. I headed straight for Accounting, which I did swimmingly in during my junior year. In fact, I’m so comfortable with Accounting math that I’m majoring in it in college. But, apparently, even community colleges require that students be proficient in algebra to an acceptable degree.

So, that is precisely how a high-school graduate can be unable to solve an algebra problem more difficult than y=_x+_

As for the latter part of the PG article which questions whether federal taxpayers⁴ should be required to fund my remedial college courses…do you want your accountant to be able to add without a calculator? The very idea that I should have to just jump into college-level algebra courses and fail, thus wasting more taxpayer dollars, because some fatcat PG writer⁵ thinks they’re useless, is absolutely absurd.

Degree completion is not affected by the need for remedial courses.

Degree completion at community college is affected by the student’s personal wishes. In community college, you have to earn the grades, you can’t just slide by like I did in high school. There are those of us who want jobs, be they first or better, there are those of us who plan to transfer to four-year colleges, and there are those of us who attend community college simply to take up space. Degree completion is based not on how perceived-ly “dumb” the student is, based on their ability to pass tests that do not reflect the possibility of having forgotten what was learned in high school⁶.

No, degree completion is based on whether the student really wants to be there or not. People that are going BACK to school while working, 90% of them want to be there. People who are going to transfer to another school or are looking for a degree to get a job from, about 60% of them want to be there. People that are just there so their parents’ health insurance doesn’t kick them off, just so their parents can say that they aren’t ambitionless bums who would rather sit around on the couch and watch daytime programming, well, take a guess at how many of them actually want to be at college, as opposed to their couch.

By the by, I fit into the “full-time job and full-time student” category. Only I’m not trying to advance in my field, I want to go to a different field.

1. The ACT is a series of computerized multiple-choice competency tests in Reading, Writing, and ‘Rithmetic. It’s a very informal entrance exam used at community colleges and perhaps some universities. [↩]
2. AKA: the teacher did not want anything other than a 100% rate of students that passed on to the next “advanced” class [↩]
3. I still have the calculator in question. Right in front of the screen here. I’ll need to re-scratch in the equations again this year in college. [↩]
4. Might I instruct the honorable PG writer in the fact that not PA taxpayers, but federal taxpayers pay for most of the costs of community college. Need proof? I’m going to college on a Federal Pell Grant. I’m not getting a CENT from the state. Mostly because they squandered the money in ways a non-profit shouldn’t, and thus set the cut-off date for May 1. I applied for state aid on May 30. [↩]
5. I say fatcat because I can place a safe bet that he doesn’t know what a shutoff notice is. [↩]
6. as have most college students with full-time jobs. Most 30, 40, or even 50 year olds that go back to school certainly can’t pass algebra tests [↩]