News - Columnists - Charlie Mitchell

Tuesday, Nov. 03, 2009

If challenged, state’s students will respond

VICKSBURG

Mississippi has lots of good public schools. A key to making them better might be making them harder — even in the earliest grades.

Ponder this: “Under current conditions, the level of academic achievement that students attain by eighth grade has a larger impact on their college and career readiness by the time they graduate from high school than anything that happens academically in high school.”

Think about that next time you visit a doctor. It means if he or she had not established a solid foundation for learning before the age of 15, medical school would have been out of the question.

The quotation is from ACT, the company best known for devising exams 96 percent of Mississippi high school students take and college admissions staffs use as a predictor of success in higher education. ACT, based in Iowa City, Iowa, is not a government agency, as some might believe. It is a business, just like McDonald’s or Wal-Mart, although nonprofit.

The company has invested decades in studying what habits and skills it takes to develop brainpower. More recently, ACT has been getting into the business of nurturing brainpower, too.

In many ways, the company’s studies mirror what we’ve known in our heart of hearts for a long time. We persist in believing more money, better teachers, an array of gizmos and innovative instructional tactics alone can do for fertile minds what hard work and motivation can’t. If we approached physical fitness the same way, we’d buy the most expensive treadmill at Wal-Mart, set it up in the den and then go sit in our recliners waiting for our weight and blood pressure to decline.

Schools that challenge students will raise student performance, while those that slack off will bore the students with the most potential, stifling their development, and create a false sense of accomplishment in students with less academic potential.

Such research, no doubt, was key to the state Board of Education in Mississippi devising the more rigorous MCT2 assessments now being used and to increase math and science requirements for a high school diploma. It has been an unpopular, but necessary move.

In terms of college readiness, the ACT report card on Mississippi’s class of 2009, showed:

n One in 10 ready for college work of any type compared to 23 percent nationwide.

n 57 percent ready for college English compared to 67 percent nationwide.

n 20 percent ready for college algebra compared to 42 percent nationwide.