The P stands for student preparation, broadly defined — the combination of innate ability and elementary-school and secondary-school preparation that students bring to college. Imagine those attributes normalized on a scale going from 0 to 1, with 1 describing the smartest, most well-educated student in the world.
The R stands for rigor, defined by individual colleges and universities — academic requirements, placement-exam cut scores, and the general difficulty of the work. R increases as standards become more rigorous, with the top values at places like the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The G stands for the odds of a student's earning a degree. An intelligent, well-prepared student attending a college with typical standards would be very likely to graduate. An ill-prepared student who enrolls somewhere with unusually tough standards would not.
The P/R=G formula dominates the way people think about college graduation rates and student success. And, not coincidentally, it puts colleges in the position of having no real responsibility or efficacy when it comes to making G higher. They can't make P higher, because raw ability is what it is, and the elementary and secondary schools are someone else's problem. And they can't make R lower, because that would betray their scholarly ideals and dumb things down for the best students. A low G is regrettable, but really, what can be done?
It's a pretty depressing conclusion. So I was glad to read a report on the Community College Survey of Student Engagement, known as Cessie, which says that the formula is all wrong.
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