An article in The Chronicle of Higher Ed wrote about the disparity in graduation rates between whites and blacks. It was an interesting article and caught my eye.
A Minding the Campus article, however, mentions two big gaps in the studies.
1. There is no examination of Asian graduations. (This is most likely because Asians graduate more than whites and this would take away from the effectiveness of their study- ed.)
2. The study doesn’t say whether the blacks and whites came in equally prepared. If they did not, then a disparity in results is not surprising.
The question perhaps should be- how do we help students who, for whatever reason, are not prepared to do college work get to a place where they are able to do it?
I have always enjoyed teaching the students who wanted to go to college, even if they were not prepared for college. But might there be some bridge between high school and college that would work for students who aren’t ready? Is that what developmental English and math are supposed to be?