Blog Stage 2: State faces challenge in helping underprepared students graduate from college

I noticed this article on statesman.com and the photo associated with it is an ACC student hugging her instructor because this student is on track to graduate from ACC despite the fact that the student had to start with developmental courses.

The article titled "State faces challenge in helping underprepared students graduate from college" states that half of the state’s 473,487 community college freshman and a fifth of 103,900 public university freshman matriculating in the coming weeks will need developmental education and many of those students will never earn a certificate or a degree.

Raymund Paredes, the state’s higher education commissioner, had his agency, The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board compile records which showed that only 14 percent of community college students in developmental math courses go on to complete a college-level math course, while only about a third complete a college-level reading or writing course.

In Texas, about 30 percent of students who enroll full time at community college to pursue a certificate or a degree achieve that goal within six years while the six-year graduation rate for public university students is 56 percent. However, there is a problem that occurs earlier in the educational pipeline since 20 percent of Texans age 25 and older have not finished high school. This statistic is higher than in any other state according to a report by the Texas Guaranteed Student Loan Corp. The national average is 15 percent.

This article just goes to show that government and politicians should not cut funding from Texas education. The huge amount of layoffs from school teachers and budget cuts in education in the state of Texas will not help this situation at all. In fact it will worsen it. When our children attend elementary, middle and high school we expect that they are receiving a good education to where they can attend college and actually take college level courses. Newly graduated high school students should have the proper tools to be prepared to take and pass college level courses. The fact that half of the state’s community college freshman as well as a fifth of the state’s public university freshman entering this year will still need to take developmental courses says something about the lack of proper education in Texas.