Not Getting Enough Kids Ready for College –

More Kentuckians ‘Get’ It!

“The CATS scores in many districts are good, so we are giving parents and kids the impression that they are doing quite well, when in reality they are not.” “I’m continually amazed at the lack of uproar about this issue.”

---Hancock County board of education member Dale Gray, as quoted in the November 2008 Kentucky School Advocate.

Why is Gray so upset?

He just heard these statistics, also found in the Advocate, which is published by the Kentucky School Boards Association.

• For every 100 Kentucky ninth-graders, only 12 successfully obtain a four-year college degree – in six years.

• Eight in 10 students enrolled in the two-year Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) are underprepared to do postsecondary studies.

• By 2009, KCTCS estimates that 43,000 of its enrollees will need remedial English help, 57,000 will be assigned to developmental reading classes and a whopping 77,500 will be in math prep courses.

Problems with getting more Kentucky public school students ready for college are no secret to our readers. We’ve been talking about this for a long time, such as, here, here, and here.

Sadly, the public school system has experienced a lot of difficulty in coming to grips with these “frustrating statistics,” as Floyd County Superintendent Henry Webb labels them.

Now, it looks like members of the Kentucky School Boards Association are waking up to what the Bluegrass Institute has pointed out for years – Kentucky’s school system isn’t getting kids ready for what needs to come next, and the CATS assessments aren’t telling us there is a problem.