It is troubling to read about the high percentages of Hamilton County Schools graduates who have to take remedial courses when they go to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga or Chattanooga State Community College.
Almost 40 percent of graduates from our local public schools need remedial courses when they go to UTC as first-time freshmen.
At Chattanooga State, more than a third of local students fresh out of high school need remedial courses to prepare them for college-level work.
That is a losing proposition all around. Time and resources spent getting a high school graduate “up to speed” to do college work are time and resources that cannot be spent on the actual work that a college or university was designed to do.
One of the purposes of high school is to prepare students for college-level work. Not every student will go to college, of course. But for those who do, a high school diploma should be a general indication that the graduate is ready for the rigors of freshman-level college course work.
“What we’re telling parents is that their kids are prepared for college, and, in a lot of cases, that’s just not the case,” Hamilton County Board of Education member Rhonda Thurman told the Times Free Press. “A lot of these kids are getting diplomas that aren’t worth the paper it’s printed on.”
Board member Jeffrey Wilson noted that “a disproportionate number of our young people are illiterate. We need to work hard; we are graduating too many children who are not where they should be in terms of literacy and problem-solving skills.”
During his work with Hamilton County Juvenile Court, he added, many students who were in the court for various reasons had trouble reading court documents.
Tennessee is implementing tougher academic standards that are supposed to prepare students better for college.
We hope the standards help. But it is more important that students and their parents take greater personal responsibility and take fuller advantage of the opportunity to learn.