January 12, 2009 09:32 PM UTC

50%+ of DPS Grads Need Summer School

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• by: Libertad

Firstly I don’t understand why DPS is allowed to graduate college level students who turn out to not be ready for college.

Is this a function of Bennet’s radical pro-business/anti-union agenda; a function of radical Union Bosses that control the DPS administration and taint classroom control by taking away individual teacher freedom; or a function of a legislature that has failed to address the P-20?

I do recall Josh Penry tried his hand at an integrated P-20 requirement for math and science. Is more of this effort needed or should the legislature continue to acquiesce to the Union Bosses who oppose any reform, testing or measurements?

http://www.rockymountainnews.c…

And to think that the 50%+ of minority kids (30% total) that drop-out are not even included in these numbers!

Amber Mendoza is a freshman at Denver’s North High School who is slogging through algebra and looking forward to the day when, diploma in hand, she can say goodbye to high school math forever.

Except that, chances are, she won’t be able to.

More than half of all Denver Public Schools graduates who enroll in a state college or university must take at least one remedial course, according to a Rocky Mountain News analysis, and in most cases, that class is math.

Two problems exist here. 1) She is graduating DPS not fully prepared. 2) She enters High School with the expectation that one day “she can say goodbye to high school math forever.”

I guess I just don’t get it …

More than 44,000 students were enrolled in remedial courses in Colorado colleges and universities during the 2007-08 school year. Total cost: $14.6 million in state tax dollars.

For example, consider that Denver’s West High School enrolled 569 students in fall 2004. Four years later, 52 West graduates enrolled in a Colorado college or university. Of those, 42 students needed at least one remedial course. That leaves 10 graduates of West who attended a state school who were fully prepared for college classes.

Given that DPS received at least $6,500 per pupil per year each of those four years, the cost of educating 10 students fully prepared for college works out to about $1 million each, Schoales calculated.

“It’s not that people aren’t working hard,” he said. “It’s just that the schools are totally ill-prepared to get kids ready for college.”

Again the theme seems to be four years and no reform. I was highly disappointed that CEA/NEA had no comment for this piece.  That just shows a total lack of concern for taxpayers and more importantly our future taxpayers (the students).