Surprise! Maricopa County High School Graduates Not Prepared for College Level Work
From the East Valley Tribune:
In terms of preparedness for college reading and math courses, a growing percentage of Maricopa County graduates are not ready for those rigors when they move up to Maricopa County community colleges or Arizona universities, an Arizona Community Foundation report suggests. That’s 59% of high school grads in the county. Among the class of 2008, an average 70 percent of county students were college-ready in English, 42 percent in math. Those figures are down from 77 percent and 51 percent in 2006.
Among the Class of 2008, an average 70 percent of county students were college-ready in English, 42 percent in math. Those figures are down from 77 percent and 51 percent in 2006…
Standardized testing has played an issue in the readiness decrease, Garcia said, with the unintended consequence of student complacency. To graduate, students must pass the state’s AIMS test — which is a measure of student progress at the 10th-grade level, not college readiness.
“I’m seeing schools run into this struggle all the time,” Garcia said. “They struggle with getting students to take advanced course work to get them ready for college, because they are under the impression that, because they passed the standardized AIMS test, they are ready to graduate, ready to go to college.” [emphasis mine]
The results of the study, which was commissioned by the Morrison Institute for Public Policy and carried out by ASU and the Arizona Community Foundation, can be found here. Analysis below the fold:
Idiocracy Watch- September 2, 2010
UA Athletics, putting the ‘Zoo’ back in ‘Zona Zoo.’
Zona Zoo fans wanting to rush the field will have a new obstacle this football season.
A 7-foot concrete wall blocks the student section. The wall runs the 140-yards of the stadium.
Students sitting in the first row of the Zona Zoo section cannot see over the wall without standing. The field is visible from all other rows.
“You can sit in the second row and still see the sideline,” said Suzy Mason, associate athletic director for Events and Operations. “Since 1998, I’ve never seen our student population sit.”
The wall was estimated to cost $190,000 and was funded by Arizona Athletics.
Priority registration for…anyone with scholarships?
This morning, the Daily Wildcat announced that veterans will be receiving priority registration with athletes–not with honors students, but before even seniors and grad students get to register. The justification for this, from the article, is that vets paying for school with the GI bill have a limited time to complete college:
Through the G.I. Bill, veterans are able to have their degrees paid for but only if they finish within 36 months. If they go beyond that, they are on their own.
“If you miss one class and it offsets your semester by one you have a whole semester, you have to pay for by yourself,” said V.E.T.S. Vice President Robert Rosinski. “So if you are a freshmen and you are just starting and you already missed that one semester, you just kind of look at it and go well, I’m already screwed.”
It should be noted that 36 months does not necessarily correspond to only having three years to finish the degree, but rather the number of months in school–equivalent to four academic years, like most academic scholarships. The article seems to dismiss the possibility that, perhaps, other students might also have to pay their own tuition if they get behind on their four-year plan. By this logic, one could argue that anyone with a four-year scholarship (or tuition waiver) should be granted the same priority registration, lest they might be required to invest in their own education!
According to Rosinski, V.E.T.S. students at the UA average close to a 3.0 GPA or better and have a 94 percent retention rate.
Retention of veterans doesn’t seem to be the issue here. When we already have significant retention issues among students as a whole, taking the coveted class seats from freshmen to give to students who are already sticking it through the whole way doesn’t appear to be an effective choice. While we can appreciate a student organization’s dedication to its members, this change will be less than helpful to students as a whole.
ASUA Meeting, 1 September 2010
At today’s meeting (agenda available here), the Senate approved the Appropriations Board’s allocation of $1,253.00 to the Deutscher Studenten Club. The Senate also approved a request by Senator Travis for $34.96 from the Senate fund, to be used on dorm poster displays.
In a special meeting held Sunday 29 Aug (agenda here), the Senate approved EVP Weingartner’s appointees to the ASUA Appropriations Board, Leah Edwards and Mitchell Manburg. The Senate also approved the appointment of Weingartner’s Chief of Staff, Jason Brown.
More news from the week’s two meetings below the fold: Read the rest of this entry »
If the pen is mightier than the sword, should those who live by it die for it?
Today’s Wildcat features an article by Gabriel Schivone entitled “Intellectuals have responsibilities in times of war and militarization.” So far as the headline goes, we at the Lamp couldn’t agree more. But Schivone apparently expects intellectuals to be held responsible for their opinions not just in the court of public opinion but in the court of law.
The fate of all warmongers should Schivone get his way: an eternity of British synthpop.
Schivone introduces his piece with an anecdote discussing a case of scientific misconduct at Harvard, and then begins another article entirely. He cites the work of Lois Beckett of the Harvard Crimson, who “reviewed similar questions of responsibility and accountability but extended them to the role of intellectuals in times of war, specifically the U.S. invasion of Iraq.”
He intends to compare the practice of “slovenly science” to the endorsement of questionable foreign policy, but the comparison is misleading at best. Science as a social institution has a set of standards and practices by which all scientists are expected to abide (science is, of course, not as cut-and-dried as the received view of the scientific method would have it, but this is a subject for another article). Further, there are objective (again, as objective as humans can manage) criteria by which the truth-content of scientific work can be evaluated. There are no such criteria for political opinions. How could there be? In order that this be made manifest, some governing body would have to settle upon political truths and persecute dissenters.
ASU Ranks #1 in…
Via everyone’s favorite tabloid-in-political-drag HuffPo, Arizona State University has finally made a top ten list not compiled by Playboy: College-content site Unigo placed ASU on its “Top 10 Sexiest Schools” list.
From the description, compiled from user reviews on Unigo (all is sic):
Arizona State University is perfectly situated between Tempe and Phoenix, two hotbeds of sun, skin and carousing. Tempe’s Mills Avenue, in particular, is a popular spot for college-aged crowds to roam about — and the romantic pickings are far from slim. The guys and gals of Arizona State are “absolutely beautiful men and women,” one student says. This leads to “the ‘Barbie and Ken go to college’ stereotype,” but students insist –- by the time they graduate -– their beauty is almost always matched by their brains. “Seriously, you can’t graduate from college based on looks alone,” one says. As the years pass most students learn to behave with some modicum of discretion, but that doesn’t change the reality of freshman year at ASU, which many summed up in two words: “Completely hedonistic.”
Financial Aid Leveraging and the UA: Who Are We Trying to Buy?
Yglesias linked this article the other day (like, two weeks ago), and it is a must-read for anyone who wants greater insight into the clandestine world of higher-ed economics. The timing of this find is impeccable, considering the Lamp’s recent administrators-aren’t-all-they-seem-to-be bent. Quirk’s article focuses on the widespread practice of financial aid leveraging, which he illustrates with the following model:
Financial-aid leveraging is the enrollment manager’s secret weapon. It has become highly sophisticated since it was first developed, in the 1980s, but the underlying logic remains simple: targeting financial aid will further the interests of a school, typically by bringing in more net revenue or higher-scoring students. Take a $20,000 scholarship—the full tuition for a needy student at some schools. Break it into four scholarships of $5,000 each for wealthier students who would probably go elsewhere without the discounts but will pay the outstanding tuition if they can be lured to your school. Over four years the school will reap an extra $240,000, which can be used to buy more rich students—or gifted students who will improve the school’s profile and thus its desirability and revenue.
The financial aid office is in many ways the perfect mechanism for such a scheme. Its mission, unlike that of other administrative offices, is clear and its benefits are immediately tangible; people trust them. Of course, in the contemporary cut-throat industry that is higher-ed, no advantage is left unexploited.
The fulcrum of the practice of financial aid leveraging lies in the office of the enrollment manager, a position that has been gaining increasing traction in universities around the country. Indeed, our very own fair institution has one, though its website is conspicuously sparse– no supplementary information, no names, just a phone number and a juicy reference to student affairs. Read a little bit further into Quirk’s piece, however, and it becomes clear why those who fill the enrollment manager position are keen to stay behind the scenes:
Sour Grapes Shelton Celebrates Rec Center LEED Rating: It’s a Question of Attitude
Via UAnews:
The University of Arizona Student Recreation Center expansion project team set out to achieve a LEED silver certification and more than surpassed that goal by attaining a LEED platinum certification.
LEED certification and categories are issued by the U.S. Green Building Council, which provides independent, nationally accepted verification that a project meets the highest green building and performance measures. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.
UA President Robert N. Shelton’s construction policy called for a minimum of LEED silver certification. Midway during construction, the team was happy to find that LEED platinum – the highest level for sustainable construction – was within reach without additional project cost, said Peter Dourlein interim associate vice president of UA Planning, Design and Construction.
“To achieve this platinum level without having it as a mandate early on in the project is a phenomenal accomplishment and confirms that the University’s practices are among the most sustainable in the nation,” Dourlein added. [emphasis mine]
Shelton’s statement is in many ways emblematic of the inanity of the university’s inexorable drive towards sustainability. Although our university’s President spurns rankings that value trifling metrics like graduation and retention rates, his mandate when it comes to sustainable construction is clear and non-negotiable: silver or bust. Even if we accept that, despite increased construction costs, buildings constructed according to LEED guidelines have lower operating costs in the long run, the point remains that the push towards sustainable construction and the accompanying enthusiasm do nothing to address the fundamental problems that are preventing the UA from becoming a solid undergraduate institution. It would be a different matter if demonstrable savings from following LEED guidelines could be funneled into the academic sphere. However, the Health/Rec fee, which I assume is the one referred to in the article, is not fungible, and therefore the money saved by investing in sustainable construction is simply more money that can be pumped back into the rec center in the form of fingerprint scanners, TV-equipped treadmills, and staff salaries. And here’s the kicker, courtesy of Paul Dourlein, interim VP of UA planning, design, and construction:
“The most sustainable building is the one you never have to build so it holds true that making the most of outdoor space and therefore reducing the indoor conditioned space we build is one of the greenest things we can do,” Dourlein added. [emphasis mine]
That’s a hint, if I’ve ever seen one. The rec center, in all of its monstrous, unsustainable plasma TV-ridden glory, is peripheral to the academic mission of the university, and Dourlein’s insistence that UA’s “practices are among the most sustainable in the nation” serves as a convenient facade behind which administrators can hide the university’s shortcomings.
BwtAP.4: “All organizations are crooked”
A friend “digging through the Daily Wildcat archives” passes along this quote to President Fritze:
“Its organization may change, but it’s ideals, motto, and creed never change. Political conditions can be made better and will be made better when students begin to place the worth of their school ahead of their personal enterprise.”
Perhaps ASUAers are actually trolling the musty stacks of the Park Student Union – let’s hope they’re inspired by ASUA’s all-too-forgotten campaign to allow drinking on campus. It’s far more likely, though, that President Fritze’s source was browsing the website of the Bobcats Honorary, and stumbled across the quote (which references the Bobcats, and not ASUA, as one might assume from the brief post) there.
Taken by itself, it’s a banal quote, the UA-based equivalent of “Be the Change” you want to turn into lunch at the end of the month. But the website’s history offers a far more interesting – and, for an official UA organ, refreshingly candid – sketch of school history, worth reading in full. A proscribed version follows below the fold.
Monday Morning Links- August 30,2010
Sorry about the delay- had some hosting issues this morning.
- The Wildcat has an article on Ultrinsic’s financial incentive system for grades. See our 2009 post on the same topic.
-In a somewhat similar vein, it’s a sad day for cricket fans everywhere. The Pakistani team is once again embroiled in a match fixing scandal. Even worse, two of the implicated players happen to be the most exciting fast bowlers around.
-Fidel Castro follows in President Fritze’s footsteps, starts a blog
-What is politics really about, via Overcoming Bias
-College writing classes with real-world application
Fun Police To Ratchet Up Presence On Campus, Escaped Murderers Still on the Loose
Courtesy of Anthony Daykin, Chief of Police:
Alcohol Abatement / DUI / Traffic Grant Deployments
The University of Arizona Police Department will be deploying additional officers to enhance enforcement capabilities in alcohol, DUI, and traffic laws in selected areas of the campus. Deployments started on Tuesday, August 24th, 2010 and will continue until the end of September, 2010.
The deployments are intended to enhance the safety of the community through the enforcement of laws and by providing the community with alcohol and traffic safety information. The deployments are made possible by grants provided by The Arizona Governor’s Office of Highway Safety.
The University of Arizona Police Department would like to remind the community to remain alert while driving and to obey all traffic laws and to drink responsibly and legally. [emphasis mine]
Who are they trying to catch? Drunk rickshaw drivers who forget to signal their right turns on the mall? That the state is willing to actually dedicate funds to UAPD so they can place extra officers on campus, in spite of the fact that we have convicted murders escaping from contracted prisons, really rankles my feathers. Even more vexing is the UAPDs attempt to disguise its effort behind the facade of educating people about DUI laws and alcohol safety. The timing is no coincidence; the first month of school invariably sees droves of newly-liberated, harmless freshmen wandering inebriated about campus at odd hours of the night, and this program is surely meant to target them. Of course, we now have a time window to test this hypothesis and will be following the police beat closely. Stay tuned.
ASA AIMS and Misses
We have a Letter to the Editor in today’s Wildcat in which he address some of the concerns voiced by Elma Delic regarding our column on the AIMS scholarship. The full text is included below:
Defense of AIMS scholarship ignored pertinent points
For all its efforts, Arizona Students’ Association chair Elma Delic’s letter in yesterday’s Wildcat fails to address any of the major concerns facing the AIMS scholarship and, by extension, the students of Arizona’s universities.
In describing the AIMS scholarship as “financial assistance,” Ms. Delic elides the distinction between need-based and merit-based financial aid. Perhaps this is because she knows that the scholarship — even with ASA’s proposed reforms — does not take into account financial need. Further, because wealthier students tend to outperform poorer students, the scholarship ends up giving full-ride scholarships to those who need them least.
Nor are recipients of the scholarship particularly meritorious. Because the award is granted to those with a 3.50 GPA or higher, it gives students a strong incentive to choose easy classes over more challenging ones. It’s also hard to believe that simply taking the SAT or ACT tests should be a qualification for a full-ride scholarship, as Ms. Delic asserts.
Low award requirements combined with an indifference to financial need mean the scholarship muddles the important goals of accessibility and merit, at a cost to students, universities and the state.
Ms. Delic informs readers the ASA plan called for “getting data to show the type of financial need that students have by having recipients fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).” This would do nothing to address the underlying problems with the AIMS
test itself and would only serve to shunt off poorer students to the federal government — making the AIMS scholarship an even bigger honey pot for the well-to-do and even less necessary than it already is. Minority students for whom accessibility is a pressing concern consistently perform worse than their white counterparts on the test, and these same students also tend to be the ones most deserving of financial aid.
There is only so much financial aid money to go around. If the program is not changed, the cost of the AIMS scholarship will continue to increase. Tuition will have to increase at the current or an even more rapid rate because universities must account for the cost of unnecessary programs like the AIMS scholarship.
We all agree that financial aid should be distributed in order to help genuinely deserving students and attract the best and brightest to Arizona’s universities. The AIMS scholarship fulfills neither of these missions, and, unfortunately, Delic and the ASA seem uninterested in exploring new options.
Below the fold, a couple of points that we had to omit from the letter due to space constraints: