Their High Schools lie to them with good grades and their parents believe it. This was the biggest problem I ran into trying to sell the Charter school amendment in Calif 20 years ago. We lost.
Back to the basics, again for many university students
As state universities struggle with a wave of unprepared students, Cal State Dominguez Hills offers last-chance remedial classes.
By Melissa Milios
Daily Breeze
In a windowless classroom, they review the drill: How to write the five-paragraph essay.
Understand the prompt. Outline the response. Proofread aloud. Edit for spelling, grammar and clarity.
It's basic stuff, skills they should have mastered in high school. But these are university students -- would-be-sophomores -- and this is summer school. It's their second and final chance to pass remedial English, or they'll be forced to leave California State University, Dominguez Hills until they can get up to speed at a community college.
Their instructor, Janet Peterson, writes a sentence on the chalkboard.
"Now that I think back, I was smart myself; I never fail a math quiz."
As a class, they quickly identify the grammar errors. But it's the sentence itself -- the frustration it embodies -- that they identify with.
Many are bewildered as to how they ended up in this summer school classroom. Most of them sailed through high school with good grades -- only to find themselves one class away from being asked to leave the university.
"In high school, I was a 3.8 (grade-point average) student. It was simple for me to get by with the bare minimum. I just got lazy," says Andrea Edwards, 19, a graduate of Inglewood High. "Now that I'm here, it's embarrassing -- there's so much I just don't know."
"You kind of feel left behind -- like, why is my report card lying?" adds 19-year-old Kiwanna Hines, who was in the top 10 percent of her class at Junipero Serra High in Gardena. "I have my grandma, my auntie, my mom, my cousins -- all of them are depending on me to graduate college. It's a lot of pressure."
Most of their classmates at Dominguez Hills, the CSU system's most diverse campus, have similar stories. Most are first-generation collegegoers, and many speak English as a second language. Most come from low-income, urban public high schools plagued by low test scores.
But these students were among the ones who beat the odds -- they took the requisite college-prep classes, earned top GPAs, and successfully navigated their way into four-year universities.
Skills don't match GPAs
Yet eight out of every 10 first-time freshmen who enrolled at Dominguez Hills last fall needed remediation in English. Seven in 10 students needed math remediation -- figures that belie the 3.13 mean grade-point average those same 606 students carried in high school.
Waves of students arriving unprepared for college is not just a problem at Dominguez Hills. Across the 23-campus CSU system, just 43 percent of first-time freshmen in 2004 were proficient in both college-level math and English, a number that has remained stagnant for the past three years despite a goal by CSU trustees to improve proficiency rates to 90 percent by 2007.
"There's a disconnect between what they're doing in high school to earn that GPA, and what is required and expected at the university level," said Dominguez Hills President James Lyons. "That disconnect has to be bridged. It's a national problem, and higher education has to get involved."
Indeed, there's been a recent swell of anxiety across the country over grade inflation and a lack of rigor in public high schools. After years of focusing on elementary schools, many large urban districts -- including Los Angeles Unified, whose graduates make up most of Dominguez Hills' freshmen -- are starting to tackle secondary school reform, acknowledging that many problems stem from low expectations.
Last week, the LAUSD school board approved a plan to require all high school graduates starting with the freshman class of 2012 to complete the 15-class sequence needed for entry into the state's four-year universities.
But currently, even those LAUSD students who take and pass the college-prep sequence, known as the A-G requirements, are struggling to pass university-administered proficiency exams.
Locally, for example, 88 percent of 2004 Gardena High graduates bound for all colleges in the CSU system were found to need remediation in English. Seventy-six percent of CSU-bound Gardena grads in 2004 needed math remediation.
"We see the data coming in, and it is a concern," said LAUSD curriculum chief Robert Collins. "We need to take a hard look at the work that's being produced in our classes, even our advanced classes, and increase the standard."
In the meantime, the CSU system -- by state policy -- admits the top third of California's high school graduates, and must continue to deal with those coming through the pipeline.
University represents hope
The situation is daunting, especially for Dominguez Hills. The Carson campus was established in the wake of the Watts riots, explicitly to serve the under-served communities of South Los Angeles and the South Bay. The university represents a beacon of hope to students from some of the lowest-performing high schools in the city.
The university embraces the role, and the students. But it comes at a price.
"At a minimum, this is a million-dollar-a-year problem for us," said Edward Whetmore, Dominguez Hills' acting dean of undergraduate studies. "Students who do really poorly could end up doing three extra math classes and two English classes within their first two years. It's a huge stumbling block."
In 2004-05, Dominguez Hills offered 92 sections of English and math courses for students who arrived unprepared for college-level work.
The classes cost money, but they don't count toward a degree. And traditionally, a quarter of all first-time freshmen who take remedial classes end up leaving Dominguez Hills the next year -- some because they couldn't pass and were disenrolled, some of their own accord.
Some drop back to community colleges and eventually pass. By sophomore year, about 89 percent of the remaining class is deemed proficient.
But the students' struggles -- especially with language -- often follow them as upperclassmen. It takes a toll on the school's academic climate, especially when compounded by the large number of students transferring under-prepared from community colleges.
"I can ask questions on an exam, and not really be sure if some of my students really understand the words," said biology professor David Nishioka, who used to teach at Georgetown University. "It's such a diverse crowd, ranging from the best I've seen at Georgetown to really bordering on illiteracy."
It's a challenge, Nishioka said, but one he and many others at Dominguez Hills feel it's their mission to tackle. Nishioka runs Gateways, a $3.2 million bridge program with Cerritos College targeted at helping Latino students succeed in math, science and technology classes.
His wife, Caron Mellblom, is director of Dominguez Hills' Center for Learning and Academic Support Services, or CLASS, which offers free individual and group tutoring six days a week, 12 hours a day.
Through CLASS, Mellblom also is helping to coordinate the Enhanced Critical Literacy Project, a $2 million federal grant earmarked for Latino-serving universities that is helping train Dominguez Hills professors to integrate critical reading and writing skills into a broad range of upper-division classes -- from math to sciences to the arts.
"It's a big shift in the pedagogy of teaching," Mellblom said. "The old philosophy is that if I'm a sociology professor, I teach sociology. Now, if I teach sociology, I'm also focusing on reading, writing and critical thinking skills. It's not focused on what I know, but what you as a learner need to know."
Many students arrive needing so much, though, that in previous years, the CSU trustees considered setting firm proficiency requirements and doing away with remediation entirely, or forcing high schools to foot the bill.
Instead, CSU in 1998 began laying the foundation for a system that would alert high school juniors as to whether they meet or fall short of college expectations.
Those placement tests used to be available only after students arrived on CSU campuses. Students would end up filling their high school senior year with electives -- and arrive at university with rusty math skills, or lacking practice in critical reading or writing.
In spring 2004, high school juniors for the first time had the option to complete just one extra essay and 15 additional questions each of math and reading comprehension during their year-end California Standards Tests.
Test option provides warning
The results can either test them out of CSU remedial classes, or give them the red flag early enough to plan their senior year accordingly -- an extra math class for some, an intensive writing class for others.
"The senior year experience is a critical part of this strategy," said Mary Fennessey, director of Dominguez Hills' Early Assessment Program, which publicizes the junior year exams to area high schools. "There's often such a huge disparity between where they are and where they think they are. This gives them a more accurate snapshot."
Now that it's integrated into the California Standards Tests, the Early Assessment Program is quite popular. In spring 2004, the first year it was offered, 150,000 high school juniors statewide took the English portion, and about 115,000 took the math portion.
This fall, those students will be the first CSU freshmen to enter the system having had the benefit of the early warning.
CSU Assistant Vice Chancellor Allison Jones said he believes the EAP has the potential to dramatically raise college-readiness rates -- even up to the trustees' goal of 90 percent by 2007.
"We are hearing from teachers and principals that students are taking this seriously, because it has a direct outcome," Jones said. "The response we have been getting is really quite tremendous."
But even with an early warning system, it's up to high schools to deliver the needed help in senior year. And in a state with the nation's highest student-to-teacher ratio, that quickly becomes a question of capacity, said UCLA Professor of Urban Schooling Jeannie Oakes.
"Classes are so overcrowded that high school English teachers who are expected to teach students college prep writing skills are saddled with around 175 students," Oakes said. "If a teacher spends 10 minutes going over each student's paper, it takes nearly 30 hours to get through the whole set."
Not surprisingly, she said, high school teachers often don't assign as many papers as struggling students, especially English language learners, might need to master the basic skills. Math teachers, especially those with the credentials to teach higher-level classes, are in short supply.
Again, the university system is stepping in to help bridge the gap, offering professional development to secondary school teachers to make sure they know what CSU is looking for.
Banning High School English teacher Mark Williams volunteered for one of the first two-day training workshops last fall.
Then during the school year, he used two CSU-created units in his American literature class. He said they helped his juniors practice forming opinions and thinking critically.
"These kids are at an age where they're used to being told, so sometimes when you ask them a question they don't know what to say," Williams said. "It also helps us realize what they expect us to be teaching. It's so much more expository. It's persuasive writing."
To date, more than 800 teachers statewide have participated in the teacher training programs, which are also available in math.
Struggles may be inevitable
Still, there will be struggles. One extra English class or critical writing unit might not have helped Itzel Magana, who was 12 years old when she arrived the United States from Mexico with her family.
"Those first years, they didn't really teach me what I needed to know. I was quiet," she said. "Then in high school, I had to start writing essays. My verbs aren't very good -- our tenses are backward."
Still, she managed to graduate from Leuzinger High School with a 3.8 GPA. She was admitted to UC Santa Barbara, but enrolled at Dominguez Hills, where she's currently in this summer's last-chance remedial English class.
"Everybody was so proud of me. Now if I don't pass ... " she said, tears welling up. "If I have to go to community college, they'll all be like, 'What happened?' "
"My mom would be devastated," said Janet Mandugano, 19, another native Spanish speaker. "She says I'm her only hope."
Their teacher, Janet Peterson, has taught dozens of remedial classes at Dominguez Hills over the past decade. She said the students who make it out of her class are the ones who rise to the challenge of higher expectations, and learn to ask for assistance.
"When they come in, I tell them, 'I've got good news, and I've got bad news,' " she said. "The bad news is you're in here, and this is your last chance. The good news is, we're here to help."
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