Building College-readiness in DC schools
The District of Columbia government has made a commitment to radically increase the number of district graduates attending and completing college. The “Double the Numbers” initiative spans two mayors and is actively supported by district and federal agencies and nonprofits and private businesses.
Ensuring that our high schools are aligning courses, teaching styles and standards to what post-secondary institutions expect of incoming freshmen is critical. The Alliance for Excellent Education in its report High School Teaching for the Twenty-First Century: Preparing Students for College provided this definition developed by David Conley at the University of Oregon of college-readiness:
• First, habits of mind are what professors consistently identify as the skills needed for learning college-level content, including critical thinking skills such as analysis, interpretation, problem solving, and reasoning (National Research Council 2000; Lundell, et al. 2004).
• Second, key content knowledge is the essential knowledge of each discipline that prepares students for advanced study, the “big ideas” of each content area. Numerous organizations and initiatives have carefully outlined those big ideas in core subjects (see below), and organizations like ACT and the Education Trust have identified thinking skills and teaching practices that lead students to develop college preparatory knowledge and skills (ACT 2006d, Education Trust 2005).
• The third facet, academic behaviors, includes general skills, such as reading comprehension, time management, and note-taking, which students need to engage in college-level work. Metacognition, or self-awareness of how one is thinking and learning, is also a critical academic behavior for high school students to master, because they will no longer be able to count on teachers or on parents to keep track of their progress once they get to college.
• Finally, contextual skills are practical skills for getting into and succeeding in college (“college knowledge”). These include understanding the admissions process, placement testing, financial aid, and the academic norms and expectations of college life, such as how to communicate with professors and peers in an academic setting (see Lundell, et al. 2004). Contextual skills are not generally the responsibility of classroom teachers, but they are key to a successful college transition, and disadvantaged students are less likely to possess them (Venezia, et al. 2003; Conley 2005). That is why organizations like the College Board have created courses like CollegeEd, an academic and career advisory course for grades seven through twelve that informs students about careers and college majors and what knowledge and skills students need to prepare for them (College Board 2007b).
