What Does It Really Mean to Be College and Work Ready? The English Literacy Required of First Year Community College Students
Author: National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE)
Date: 2013-05-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: College Readiness,Career Readiness,Community Colleges,College Freshmen,Two Year College Students,English Instruction,Freshman Composition,Introductory Courses,Textbooks,Reading Assignments,Difficulty Level,Writing Assignments,Grades (Scholastic),Reading Skills,Writing Skills,Reading Comprehension,Academic Achievement

In the fall of 2009, the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) initiated a series of research programs designed to support the high school reform program, &quot;Excellence for All,&quot; based on more than 20 years of research on the school reform programs of the countries with the most successful education programs worldwide. A large and growing fraction of high school graduates go to community college either to launch their careers or to prepare for transfer to a four-year college. If a student leaves high school unable to succeed in the initial credit-bearing courses of the local community college, that student is ready neither for work nor college. The fact is that a large proportion of high school graduates are indeed unable to succeed in their first year in community college, and those who are assigned to remedial courses have a painfully low rate of college completion. This report addresses a simple question: what kind and level of literacy is required of a high school graduate if that student is going to have a good chance of succeeding in the first year of a typical community college program? NCEE collected course materials (syllabi, required texts, graded mid-term and final exams and, in some cases, graded assignments) from seven community colleges randomly selected from within each of seven states that are interested in this work. These colleges are in Arizona, Connecticut, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Mexico and New York. They serve a mix of rural, urban and suburban populations and their enrollments range from 3,000 to 30,000. To review and analyze the evidence, three different studies were undertaken: (1) An analysis of the complexity of the texts used in the English Composition and initial introductory courses; (2) An analysis of the complexity of reading tasks based on texts used in these classes in order to understand what students are asked to do with respect to their assigned reading; and (3) An analysis of a sample of graded writing assignments collected from these classes in order to understand what kind of work generally receives grades of A, B and C. In conclusion it was found that: (1) Students must be able to read difficult texts in unsupported environments; (2) Students must be able to negotiate or process large amounts of new information; (3) Students must have sophisticated academic vocabularies; (4) Students must read a lot and in multiple genres; (5) Students must have experience working with difficult academic texts in classroom settings; (6) Students must know how to recognize and use text structures to scaffold their comprehension; and (7) Students must be able to read and comprehend &quot;documents.&quot; [For &quot;What Does It Really Mean to Be College and Work Ready? The Mathematics Required of First Year Community College Students,&quot; see ED598414. For &quot;What Does It Really Mean to Be College and Work Ready? The Mathematics and English Literacy Required of First Year Community College Students. Executive Summary,&quot; see ED598415.]