
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, September 10, 1994                   TAG: 9409210032
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

COLLEGE IS TOO LATE FOR CATCHING UP

AMONG THE principles of the quality-management movement sweeping American business is this: Product flaws should be corrected as early in the process as possible, not when the widgets are about to come off the assembly line. Ideally, defects should be prevented before they occur.

Young people aren't widgets, of course, and schools aren't industrial plants. Even so, education in Virginia could profit from application of the principle. One example: costly college catch-up courses that should have been taken in high school.

When a college freshman must take that second year of algebra that he or she should have had in high school, or that course in English composition before he or she is ready for college-level work, the burden is expensive for both the state and the student.

How to improve the process?

In a way, the work already has begun. Simply in the fact that the State Council of Higher Education is keeping numerical track of the problem, Virginia is ahead of most states. No national norms exist against which to measure the Old Dominion's performance, but Virginia is developing a baseline against which to measure its own progress: another good idea according to quality-management principles.

For each of the past two years, about 26 percent of the in-state high-school graduates who are first-year students at Virginia public colleges have needed remedial work to some extent. That's too many; the goal should be to reduce that percentage without devaluing the definition of college-level work.

Several of the state's four-year institutions - including Virginia Tech, Radford University, the University of Virginia and Virginia Military Institute - don't offer remedial courses. One measure of progress would be even fewer of Virginia's four-year institutions in the remedial-ed business, leaving it entirely in the hands of the two-year community colleges. A second measure of progress would be a decrease in remedial-ed enrollment at the community colleges.

For that to happen, the principal site of change must be earlier in the process, at the high-school level - and before. Standards for graduation must be raised for everyone. And more middle-school students must be counseled, encouraged and expected to think farther into the future, and to begin taking the courses that will smooth the path to college aspirations. Judging from the council's school-by-school statistics, this task is particularly important where many young people are not from families with a college background.

Virginia should never cut off the opportunity for ill-prepared students to remedy learning gaps in pursuit of further education. Not being widgets, young people shouldn't have their fates cast in steel by decisions made at age 13, or 16, or for that matter as adults.

But Virginia should reduce the need for remedial opportunity. Students and their families should be made more aware that schoolwork decisions made early on, while not determining the future absolutely, can have a powerful influence over it.

by CNB