A mind is still a terrible thing to waste
Michele Siqueiros
What if we told you that no matter how hard you tried, you only had a 5 percent run a risk of succeeding? What if it was your kickoff day of kindergarten and nosotros told you those were your odds of getting a college degree at a California university?
We don't tell our kindergarteners that. In fact, we tell them the contrary. "You can be anything you want in life if you work difficult plenty." But in California that'southward just not the instance for the nearly 4 one thousand thousand students who are Latino or African American. They have a 1 in 20 chance of graduating from a California public university. California's prosperity is dependent on us changing these odds.
Co-ordinate to a recent study from the California Competes Quango, California will need five½ million new college degrees and technical certificates by the year 2025. We but cannot come across these needs without improving results for our Latino and African American students, who are the vast bulk of our pupil population.
Arun Ramanathan
Currently nearly 2 thirds of Latino and African American students brand information technology to graduation. Only near i quarter of those students complete the coursework necessary to utilise to a four-yr California higher. For those who brand it to higher, the results are just equally poor. Co-ordinate to the Entrada for College Opportunity, but virtually 25 percent of Latino or African American students who enroll in a community college complete a degree, document, or transfer program. Many are stuck in remedial pedagogy or repeat the same courses twelvemonth later on year. In the CSU system, the outcomes are just slightly better.
At an individual level, these results export millions of Californians to an ongoing cycle of poverty. Higher graduates will earn $i.3 million more than over their lifetimes than high schoolhouse diploma holders and have far higher rates of employment. At a country level, these results portend a full-blown economic crunch.
However, instead of investing in a pathway through college, California's leaders seem more interested in investing in a pathway to prison. Over the past decade, they accept increased spending for prisons even as they have cutting our education system. This is clearly the wrong choice. For every $one our state spends on college education, the state yields $4.50 in return. Our leaders must brainstorm to view 1000-12 and higher education as a unmarried educational pathway and develop a long-term solution to the state budget crunch that prioritizes success in college education.
Funding alone will non solve this crisis. By building a kindergarten-through-college data system, nosotros tin identify the investments with the greatest post-graduate payoff. For instance, a recent Education Trust-West report plant some high-poverty loftier schools with uncommonly high graduation and college enrollment rates. Just without a statewide data arrangement that connects Grand-12 to higher instruction, nosotros cannot identify how many of those students successfully completed their degrees.
Finally, our leaders must make an equal delivery to both college admission and completion so that students graduate with a caste, skill, or certificate that allows them to effectively join the workforce. Lawmakers should ensure that Latino and African American students have equitable admission to rigorous higher- and career-fix coursework in loftier school and sufficient financial help. They must adopt the recommendations of the California Community College Student Success Task Force to ensure that all students have well-defined pathways to success in our customs colleges and four-year universities.
The stakes are incredibly high. The sometime commercial from the United Negro College Fund stated that "A mind is a terrible affair to waste." Our leaders must brand a existent commitment to the education investments and reforms necessary to build a true pathway through college for all children, specially those who have been traditionally underserved. If we waste material the minds of another generation of Latino and African American students, we will sacrifice the hereafter of our country.
Michele Siqueiros is executive director of The Campaign for College Opportunity, a broad-based, bipartisan coalition dedicated to ensuring the next generation of Californians has the opportunity to go to college and succeed. Arun Ramanathan is executive director of The Education Trust—West, a statewide education advocacy organisation that works to close the gaps in opportunity and achievement for students of colour and students in poverty.
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Source: https://edsource.org/2012/a-mind-is-still-a-terrible-thing-to-waste/18027
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