Further Response to Ron Force

["Dale Courtney" <dmcourtn@moscow.com>]

Dale: you may post this one. Thanks.

Jack

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Some quick thoughts, not in any logical order:

1. My source for the statement that SAT 540 verbal is
equivalent to about 60% comes from national, not Idaho, data. I think
Mr. Force is correct that Idaho's scores average a little higher. If
so, and ignoring any possible differences between the mean and the
median, this means that 540 is somewhat below 60% for Idaho students.
The fact that 866 students, over 70% of the class, are taking this
course says something.
2. Using the same data, the UI freshman class average of 549
means that about half the class is below the 64th percentile
nationally.
3. The SAT score of 450, which puts students in English 90,
is about 29th percentile nationally. I believe this course is labeled
Developmental English, and carries no college credit. (BTW, in the
education literature, "Developmental" is a euphemism for "remedial".
Another euphemism is "compensatory". Both terms are designed as fig
leaves for the fact that such courses cover what should have been
learned earlier. I find it depressing that UI has admitted 160
students, about 13% of the class, that have been assigned  to English
90, an admittedly remedial course.
4. I suppose Mr. Force and I could argue forever about
whether or not English 101 is a college level or remedial course, but
the evidence cited by Dale Courtney is pretty revealing. Since this
course  teaches students how to use an apostrophe and join two
sentences, I think Mr. Force would have difficulty arguing that this
is college level, not grade school, material.
5. One of the problems is that a "writing" course can be
taught at many different levels, so the label doesn't tell you much
about its content. This is not true for math courses, where there is
a tighter equivalence between course titles and content. I think most
would agree that at least 4 or 5 of the UI math courses offered for
college credit below Math 170 are normally high school, college prep,
courses. I once posed this question to a UI math department head, and
he agreed with me. Again, the fact that over 1700 students are
currently signed up for these courses says something.
6. I think the most revealing statistic is that only 54% of
UI freshmen graduate in SIX years. (And I ignore the presence of some
rather fluff majors around campus and the watering down of the
curriculum in other ways--like the proposed core discovery courses.)
Given that the last time I looked, 70-75% of the state budget goes to
higher and lower education, the cause and extent of remedial
education is a topic worthy of reasoned and factual debate.
Unfortunately, many are simply in denial on this problem, preferring
instead to take the cheer-leading approach that the home town schools
are always right. Since state aid is passed out on a per student
basis, schools in both higher and lower education have an incentive
to maximize revenue by maximizing student numbers, and this
inevitably leads to dumbing down the curriculum and lowered grading
standards, outcomes that would be quite different if parental, rather
than political, choice ruled in both higher and lower education.
Under present incentives, Gresham's Law is alive and well in
education. Further, everyone in the system is playing with other
people's money, so there is inevitably a lot of waste.

Jack


--
John T. Wenders
Professor of Economics
University of Idaho
2266 Westview Drive
Moscow, ID  83843