The Rhetoric and Reality of "College for All"
Riffing off my Nation piece on the "college for all" debate, Max Bean has written a really thoughtful series ofposts about his time teaching math in a "no excuses" charter school, and the way in which the entire school culture was built around the expectation--an unrealistic expectation--that every child would attend and graduate from a four-year liberal arts college.
Max's school began in sixth grade, and most students arrived several grade-levels behind in reading and math. Though standardized test scores jumped by the end of seventh grade, less than 10 percent of students had achieved "mastery" in any given subject. As Max writes, few of his students were on-track to perform in college alongside peers who had attended suburban public schools, urban test schools, or private prep schools:
the instruction, particularly in mathematics and writing, focused heavily on state-test content and memorized rules. Many students could simplify algebraic expressions and solve linear equations, but few of them could solve even a simple application problem or adapt their knowledge to an unfamiliar context. Several of the weakest ones could not tell you what number comes below