More than 60% of high school graduates are not adequately prepared for college. This is so because high schools do not prepare them for college (Rosenbaum et al, 1996)
Most high schools are concerned on how a student performs. They do all their best to ensure that a student scores high mark neglecting the core role of preparing them for college life and life after school. The best way to prepare high school students is by monitoring their achievement in all fields and not only on their scores. For one thing students avoid core and substantive courses that could help them prepare for college. High schools have failed to advice students to take advanced placement courses that will show them what college work is all about.
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High schools should give all students clear signals using teachers and administrators and all other stakeholders about college grounding, preparation and admissions in general. They should also give proper counseling and present more opportunities for high school students to meet with recruiters and visit college and university campuses. More importantly economically underprivileged students or those who are sometimes referred as first-generation college-goers whose parents lack know-how and information concerning colleges is often left without the above mentioned information.
Another problem is that on college preparedness amongst the high school students is the fact that there is lack of better communication and synchronization between the governing boards of high schools and broad of various college institutions. Tests and courses in high schools need to be coordinated and harmonized with college placement exams.
High schools lack incentives like financial aid policies that reward those students who have completed numerous college preparation courses. Another incentive that high schools lack is educator or teacher professional development efforts which can help to raise the possibility of students meeting placement test standard (Sizer, 1997)
Lower and higher education need to work together. This has characteristically taken the blameworthiness for the lack of educational vigilance amongst the youth. Needless to state high offer poorly defined career and technical preparation. Inadequate articulation between school levels is another problem that high schools have failed to address. In high schools a communication between basic, middle levels. Devoid of this information it is impracticable for principals to cooperatively identify and target student spots of need that are in need of paramount and access to higher-level coursework essential for college as well as career readiness.
The final and perhaps the most important are curricular barriers. Many students fail to complete their education up to college because they are simply not enrolling in the right courses and nobody has the responsibility of advising them. Most frequently, we see that students do not have access to the obligatory math, science laboratory, as well as world language courses. Access habitually varies by the socio-economic structure of their school, with far less admittance to higher-level assignments or courser-work offered in high-poverty schools (Sizer, 2004). This therefore clearly point out that there is a deficiency in high schools in preparing students for college.
- Sizer, Theodore R. Horace’s school: Redesigning the American high school. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1997.v
- Rosenbaum, James E., Shazia Rafiullah Miller, and Melinda Scott Krei. “Gatekeeping in an era of more open gates: High school counselors’ views of their influence on students’ college plans.” American Journal of Education (1996): 257-279.
- Sizer, Theodore R. Horace’s compromise: The dilemma of the American high school. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004.
