By Tom

Eighty-eight percent. That's the proportion of freshmen at a large, urban university who had to take remedial courses in math or English before they could start on their regular college-level classes.

In other words, 88% of these college students were not “college ready.”

I learned about this state of affairs at a recent NCATE accreditation visit. I can’t name the specific school (or else NCATE would fire me from a job for which I’m not even paid) but it doesn’t really matter. This is typical in colleges that serve urban, high-needs populations. Their students routinely come from high school with something less than a high school education.

We can take some comfort in the fact that these students probably aren’t the best of the bunch. This was, after all, a second-tier state school. The best high school students in the area presumably went to private colleges or more prestigious public universities. And you’ll also be pleased to know that two years ago, ninety-four percent of the freshmen needed remedial classes. Progress! On the other hand, these are the students who are going to college. Reread that last sentence and think about it for a minute.

No matter where you stand on education reform, you can’t pretend this isn’t a problem. And you have to ask yourself two questions.

The first question is obvious: why is this happening?

I can’t say for sure, but here’s my best guess: These kids grew up in high-poverty neighborhoods. They didn’t have great healthcare and they weren’t exposed to much literature or cultural enrichment.

Then they entered school. They had ordinary teachers. Some might have been superb, others mediocre, but by and large – and by definition – their teachers were ordinary. These teachers probably assessed their students at the beginning of each year and taught lessons appropriate to where most of their students were at. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s what ordinary teachers do.

These students probably went home after school to places in which education was not the most critical item on the agenda. Remember, the area around this college is tough: gangs, drugs, etc. There aren't a lot of role models who were successful in school. And since most of these kids speak Spanish, there aren’t many adults at home with the capacity to help them with their homework, since it’s written in English.

As the years went by, these kids kept up with each other; never knowing that they were gradually falling far behind their contemporaries across town. But after they graduated from high school they figured it out, because that’s when their college required them to take high school math and English courses.

Like I said, that’s my best guess as to why they ended up in those remedial classes.

The second and more important question is what to do about this. One answer, of course, is nothing. Maybe having the college remediate these students is the best solution we have. And I don’t say this lightly. In fact, given the pace at which America solves its social problems, college remediation courses might very likely be the best solution we ever come up with.

We could, of course, try to solve the root problem: poverty itself. Without poverty, there’d be no disadvantaged students, no high-needs schools, and no achievement gap. Life would be wonderful without poverty.

Poverty, however, has always been a tough problem to solve. If anything, there’s more of it now than ever. One in five American children grows up in poverty. Eliminating poverty would do wonders for our education system, if only it was possible. But it’s not.

Another answer might be better early learning. Something like Head Start. We tell ourselves that effective preschools keep kids from being in last place before the race even starts. That’s why people like me make sure our children are enrolled in quality preschool programs when they’re three and four. The problem, however, is that we’ve already done that. Most of these students – probably all of them – attended Head Start. Yet there they are, thirteen years later, unprepared for college.

So we can’t fix poverty. Early learning is critical, but it doesn’t seem to be enough. What do we do?

Let’s take another look at those ordinary teachers, the ones who worked with those students for those thirteen years before they got to that college. We know that having an extraordinary teacher makes a huge difference in the life of a student. Perhaps finding extraordinary teachers would seem to be the answer.

The trouble, though, is that it’s very difficult to be an extraordinary teacher. It takes a lot of talent, which is rare, or a lot of time and effort, which can take a toll on a person and on that person’s family. I know this first-hand. Like every other teacher, I have to decide each night when to call it quits. When to stop re-reading student work, when to deem a lesson plan “good enough,” and when to stop thinking about my class. And when to start thinking about my own family and how my own children are doing in their schools and what I need to do to support them.

It’s a life of constant compromise.

But if it’s difficult to be extraordinary, it’s even more difficult to be extraordinary in tough working conditions. There is, after all, a reason why they made a movie about Jaime Escalante. He was rare. Expecting everyone – or even anyone – to work that hard is completely unreasonable.

Well that’s too bad. It might be unreasonable to expect teachers to work extraordinarily hard, but it’s far more unreasonable to condemn a child to a poor education – and a dismal future – because of where she was born.

I just returned from a trip to New York City. I spent two days with an open mind in Harlem and the Bronx touring several charter schools: visiting classrooms, interviewing teachers and administrators and watching students at work.

I didn’t see any magic. I didn’t see anything flashy. But what I saw was pretty impressive. What I saw was extraordinary teachers working extraordinarily hard in extraordinary schools. What I saw were schools that supported and encouraged solid, no-nonsense teaching and hard work for long hours. I saw schools that quickly rid themselves of teachers who didn’t feel like working extraordinarily hard. What I saw was what it’s going to take to turn things around for these children.

Anyone who’s hung around this blog for any length of time probably knows that I’ve been a sharp critic of charter schools. And while I’m not saying I’ve been born again, I will say this: I liked what I saw and I think there are some important implications, not only for education reform in Washington State, but everywhere else.

In the next several posts I’ll try to communicate in detail what I saw and what I think it might mean.

Stay tuned.