Ready for college?

DALTON — Students are taught to dream about college from the time they’re in elementary school. Getting an education is more important than ever to landing a well-paying job, they’re told, and financial aid options since their parents’ time have greatly expanded.

But what if students aren’t ready for college level work when they get there?

Reports show many local kids aren’t.

According to the Georgia Department of Education’s annual report card, some 41.3 percent of Dalton Public Schools graduates from 2009 who attend Georgia public colleges needed remedial classes. For graduates of Whitfield County Schools, the number was 47.6 percent, and for Murray County Schools grads it was 53.6 percent. That’s roughly double the statewide average of 23.8 percent needing remedial work for the 2009-2010 school year.

At Dalton State College, some 1,418 of the school’s roughly 6,000 students were in some kind of remedial class, also known as learning support, during the 2010 fall semester.

College officials and school administrators said there are likely a variety of reasons local students need remedial classes more often than high school graduates from other parts of the state. One, said Dalton High School Principal Debbie Freeman, is that Dalton State College — where most local students attend — sets higher requirements than colleges like Kennesaw State, Georgia Southern and North Georgia College and State University.

For example, Dalton State students must score at least a 70 on the Compass exam in English and 80 in reading to go straight to regular level college classes. Those with lower scores must enter a learning support class. The required minimums at several other schools are as much as 10 points lower, she said. The Compass test measures whether students are ready for college-level English, reading and math.

“The majority of my students go to Dalton State,” Freeman said. “Because I have the majority of my kids going to Dalton State instead of (for example) Kennesaw, I have more kids in learning support.”

Murray County Schools Secondary Curriculum Director Cheryl Thomasson said the situation is the same in that school system.

Mary Nielsen, dean of the School of Liberal Arts at Dalton State, acknowledged the school’s minimum Compass score requirements are higher than at many other schools. She said they’re based on past comparisons of how high students needed to score to do well.

“We are using higher numbers,” she said. “We use higher numbers because these are numbers where students are more likely to be successful with college level work.”

Dalton State students no longer have to take the Regents exam. That exam is given at colleges within the University System of Georgia to test basic college level knowledge before graduation. Dalton State is one of several colleges that applied for and received an exemption. One of the reasons for that exemption, Nielsen said, is because students there were so successful on it — and one of the reasons for that success is the requirement that students not begin college level courses until they demonstrate they’re ready.

Learning support for older students, those who have been out of school for years or decades, is not uncommon. Heather Ridgway, who graduated from a high school in Charlotte, N.C., said she was always good at math in high school. Yet she needed two remedial math classes after being out of school for 10 years before she could take college algebra.

“It really rehashed everything,” she said. “I got A’s in college algebra (but) I would have really struggled.”

But many students need remedial work coming straight out of high school.

Brittany Walls said she attended school in Towns County, Ga., until this year and will finish out her senior year at Murray County High School. She’s thinking of attending Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah but said she may opt instead for Dalton State where she can get used to being “challenged” again before her next big step.

“I don’t mean to have this area sound bad, but where I’m from, I have more help in high school,” she said. “At my old school, it was more like a private school setting because the classes were smaller ... I don’t have to take remedial math, but I’m going to just because I feel like I haven’t been challenged.”

Local school administrators don’t deny something needs to change. Dalton High has been on a path of continuous effort to make school more challenging and relevant, Freeman said, beginning with the school’s decision about eight years ago to eliminate lower level classes. Students who aren’t ready for higher level math, for example, are provided extra tutoring and assistance, she said, but they’re still required to do the work.

“Certainly, it is a concern for me because I want all students to graduate being ready to go forward with whatever the next step is in their lives,” Freeman said. “I want (everyone here) to be college ready.”

Still, she said, the question remains: What does it mean to be “college ready?”

Dalton State officials have been working with local schools for several months to answer that question, at least as it relates to Dalton State, and to increase the number of students who can enter college without needing learning support. One part of those efforts is working with local high school teachers and administrators. Freeman said officials are looking into whether the questions on the Compass cover the same kinds of questions as are covered on the Georgia High School Graduation Test and other assessments high school students take.

“We’re looking for gaps in that alignment,” she said.

DSC Vice President for Academic Affairs Sandra Stone said some high school teachers have dropped in to take the Compass exam to learn more about what their students will face. They may also begin bringing students to sit in on Dalton State classes to get a better feel for college level work. There is a feedback loop, she said. High schools prepare students for college, but colleges prepare students to become high school teachers — who will prepare students for college.

“We’re just pretty open to exploring some different things we might be able to do together because it really is a shared problem,” Stone said. “We’re funneling the teachers out there, and then somehow they’re not getting the results ... It’s a national problem. It’s not just a Georgia problem, and what’s beginning to happen now at the national level is the Department of Education is beginning to require states on an incremental basis ... to have a shared data system so you can track students all the way through school and whether they go into some kind of post-secondary program or not in terms of achievement, and connect that with teachers who teach in the classes and connect to schools who gave them their degrees.”

Whitfield County Schools spokesman Eric Beavers said collaboration with the college for that school system is “in the early stages and still in development.”

Beavers said he didn’t know enough about how state officials gathered data on remedial class needs to be able to offer any answers for why the numbers are so high. He did suggest it could be because of “misalignment” of the state’s grade school curriculum to the curriculum set by the Board of Regents.

“We believe every student is different and each of those individuals is capable of doing great work,” he said. “We strive to customize learning to help all of our students continue to meet their higher goals and encourage them to continue to raise the bar for themselves.”

Thomasson said she wasn’t trying to criticize Dalton State, but she and other Murray County school officials would like for college officials to review whether their Compass score requirements are “a little high.”

“That’s been a concern of ours for at least two to three years,” she said.

Thomasson said the school system is constantly looking at ways to raise students’ preparedness for college, work or the military. She said the high schools are using a Georgia Appalachian Center for Higher Education grant to provide programs and visits to help students prepare for college. They also have teachers as advisers in a kind of mentoring and academic assistance program and are taking a harder look at the results of students’ preliminary SAT (PSAT) scores. The PSAT is typically taken in 10th grade and gives an idea of how prepared a student is for college.

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