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Peer Review, Winter 2003
From the Editor
David Tritelli
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As it enters the twenty-first century, the United States
is approaching universal access to higher education; fully
75 percent of high school graduates now go on to some form
of postsecondary education within two years. This achievement
is greatly tempered, however, by the fact that many of these
students arrive on campus underprepared for college-level
study. For example, fewer than half of the students who enter
college directly from high school complete even a minimally
defined college preparatory program. Once in college, 53 percent
of all students must take remedial courses. Those students
requiring the most remedial work are the least likely to persist
and graduate. Clearly, access is not enough.
Moreover, the common sense goal of aligning the expectations
of the high school graduate with those of the entering college
student is made more difficult by legitimate concerns about
the general direction in which K-12 reform is headed. Many
in the higher education community distrust the prevailing
discourse of accountability--especially as it is embodied
both in federal "No Child Left Behind" legislation and in
many state-based K-12 reforms. And even as secondary education
in the United States rushes headlong into standards-based
reform, new research--into the links between high-stakes testing
and student achievement, for example--is emerging that should
strain the credulity of even the most test-happy of policymakers.
The goal of a seamless educational system must be to provide
all students with an education of lasting value. As important
as it is, articulation between school and college must be
situated within a larger vision of the kind of intentional
learners students must become to thrive in the complex, interdependent,
diverse world of the twenty-first century. In other words,
the challenge is not just for secondary education to better
prepare students for college but for all educational sectors
together to prepare students for the twenty-first century.
To meet this challenge, undergraduate education is undergoing
a dramatic reorganization. From learning-centered innovations
on campuses of all kinds, one can discern the emergence across
higher education of a broad reform movement, the emergence
of what AAC&U is calling a "New Academy." This New Academy
is the site of praxis for a practical and engaged liberal
education. In this dynamic process of becoming, the New Academy
is confronting its own questions of alignment as it addresses
issues associated with student transfer, as it forges closer
connections across the disciplines and between general education
and the major. It also is facing significant challenges. One
with obvious implications for school-college alignment has
to do with changing staffing patterns.
It is important to acknowledge the impact on school-college
alignment efforts of the trend explored in the previous issue
of Peer Review: undergraduate education's increasing reliance
on contingent faculty. K-12's under-preparation of students,
combined with higher education's over-reliance on contingent
faculty, may set the stage for a train wreck with devastating
and predictable consequences for student attrition, retention,
and completion. It is almost certain that the courses in which
these underprepared students will be enrolled during their
first two years of college will be taught by contingent faculty.
These faculty are, for example, less likely to spend time
with students out of class, less able to advise students,
less available to write letters of recommendation, and less
likely to be at the table as curricula are (re)designed. This
means that the students most likely to benefit from increased
faculty involvement are being paired with the faculty least
likely to be involved. And if, as many think, we are trending
toward a two-tiered system and a formal separation of the
teaching and research functions, K-12 may well be seeking
to connect with a higher education system that is itself fragmenting.
How then to align with an academy in transition? Successful
alignment, and successful articulation, should begin with
a clear and shared understanding of what constitutes college
readiness. Regrettably, many of the current efforts at school-college
alignment are proceeding without such an understanding. This
issue of Peer Review provides a critical overview of selected
ongoing alignment efforts and makes the case for more active
involvement on the part of higher education in shaping them.
The stakes for the New Academy, as for the students it hopes
to prepare for the twenty-first century, are very high indeed.
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