HARRISBURG – One in three Pennsylvania high school graduates who enrolls in a state-owned university or community college cannot pass a first-year college math or English course, and the failure of our high schools to prepare those students costs taxpayers more than $26 million annually, according to research presented to the State Board of Education.
Education Secretary Gerald L. Zahorchak said the findings show the commonwealth must do more to better prepare its graduates, including implementation of statewide graduation requirements.
“These figures are startling,” the secretary said. “When fully one-third of our recent high school graduates who enroll in community colleges or state system schools with a high school diploma in hand – some 20,000 students a year – cannot head directly into a college-level math or English course and must instead take additional coursework just to catch up, it’s clear there is a problem in our high schools. Just as distressing as the lack of academic preparation is the financial toll it takes on students, families and all taxpayers.”
The research presented to the State Board of Education examined course enrollment trends at the state’s 14 community colleges and the 14 institutions in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. The data, provided by PASSHE and the community colleges, shows that during the 2007-08 school year alone:
· 20,465 of the 62,247 recent Pennsylvania high school graduates who enrolled in state system institutions or community colleges required one or more remedial courses in core academic subjects so they could catch up to their college-level peers.
· Those students enrolled in a total 37,311 of these “remedial” courses at the college level.
· The students requiring these additional courses came from 522 local education entities, including school districts, charter schools and vocational/technical schools.
· The cost of those courses totaled nearly $26.5 million – an average of about $1,300 per student.
· While student themselves incurred about $12.8 million of these additional coursework costs, the remainder of the costs were paid by taxpayers at the local and state levels.
Zahorchak said the remediation data is further proof of the need to implement statewide graduation requirements to ensure all graduates have the academic skills needed to compete at the college level. The State Board of Education has a critical role in reviewing and adopting graduation requirements.
While Pennsylvania has statewide academic standards that define what students should know in each grade, each of the state’s 501 school districts sets its own requirements for earning a diploma. The secretary said the existing system has resulted in disparate graduation requirements across the state, leaving too many students ill-prepared for the academic challenges at the postsecondary level.
“Just because a Pennsylvania high school graduate is accepted at a college or university doesn’t mean they are ready for the rigors of college coursework,” Zahorchak said. “We owe it to those students – and to the commonwealth – to make sure every one of those graduates can compete alongside college peers from other states and nations.
“Right now, we are failing those students by giving them the false sense that they are ready when, in fact, they are not,” he added. “And those students, their parents and all Pennsylvania taxpayers are paying dearly for our collective failure to make sure every high school diploma represents readiness.”
For more information on Pennsylvania’s education initiatives, visit the Department of Education Web site.
