Most community college students aren’t ready for college or the
workforce concludes a National Center on Education and the
Economy study. Colleges have lowered standards to accommodate
poorly prepared students, writes the NCEE’s Marc Tucker. Very
little writing at all is required in most programs. The writing
that is required is of a very simply sort. Students, for
example, are rarely required to argue a position logically and
marshal data on behalf of that argument. The typical first year
community college text is written at an 11th or 12th level
(which one would think would be a year or two below the level of
community college), but it turns out that most high school
graduates cannot read with comprehension at that level, because
the typical high school text is written at the 8th or 9th grade
level. So our community college instructors prepare Power Point
presentations to make sure that the students get the main points
in the text. Community college students don’t need to know high
school math, but they do