Free Republic

Caught in the ACT Malcolm A. Kline, April 28, 2010 Although public schools like to trumpet their relevance, the education they deliver usually shows how out of touch they are. “Of the 1.5 million high school graduates who took the ACT during academic year 2008-2009, 33 percent were not ready for college-level English, 47 percent were not ready for college social science, 58 percent were not ready for College Algebra, and 72 percent were not ready for college Biology,” Cynthia B. Schmeiser, the president of the education division of ACT, Inc., told a Senate committee today. “Overall, only 23 percent...

Remedial Rules for Radicals Malcolm A. Kline, March 8, 2010 Campus Progress is bent out of shape over the mere prospect of federal and state budget cuts in higher education programs. “Today students are taking bold action to highlight the crisis in college affordability and access,” Pedro de la Torre III, Campus Progress’s Advocacy Senior Associate, stated on March 4, 2010. “We can no longer afford to ignore our shortcomings in these areas: the average student debt for graduates has reached more than $23,000, and at least 37 states are slashing higher education budgets which will lead to increasing tuition...

Community College Bowl by: Malcolm A. Kline, October 30, 2007 Community colleges have tried just about every promotional gimmick short of a “Going out of business” sale. Ironically, given their increasing use of remedial coursework, that might be the most appropriate stratagem for them to use. “Estimates vary, but many community-college educators and experts say that on average between 40 percent and 70 percent of new students entering two-year colleges around the country place into remedial math,” Debra E. Blum reports in The Chronicle of Higher Education. And the news gets even worse. “There are students taking these courses three,...

Ironically, while college administrators acknowledge the literal failures of higher education, they are loath to admit that political bias on the part of professors has anything to do with them, or even exists. The irony is multiplied when those instructors freely acknowledge using their classrooms to achieve political ends, rather than instructional goals. “In the classroom, I situate myself as a materialist feminist teacher, working to help students understand the ways in which ideology and history are powerfully connected forces in our lives,” J. Elizabeth Clark writes in Radical Teacher. Radical Teacher bills itself as “a socialist, feminist and anti-racist...