Differences between schoolteachers, professors on what students should know

By Mary Beth Marklein, USA TODAY

State learning standards may help high school teachers focus their coursework, but college faculty say they're focusing on the wrong things, says a report that finds a "significant gap" between what high school instructors teach and what college faculty think entering freshmen ought to know.

"States tend to have too many standards attempting to tackle too many content topics," the report says. The report examines science, math, reading and English.

"High school teachers are working very, very hard at following and teaching their state standards," she says, but college faculty "felt it was more important for students to learn a fewer number of fundamental but essential skills."

High school teachers put more weight on advanced content, while college instructors said "a rigorous understanding of fundamentals" was more important. More than half (55%) of faculty ranked "basic operations and applications" most important, compared with 40% of high school faculty. Among material most desired by college faculty but covered the least in high school were algebraic problems such as solving quadratic equations and factoring.

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The Testing Business

SATs Scored in Error by Test Companies Roil Admissions Process

By David Glovin and David Evans

Nov. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Jerry Lee Faine Elementary School in Dothan, Alabama, starts each day with two hours of reading and vocabulary. After that, there's arithmetic. ``If you can read, you can do anything,'' says Principal Deloris Potter, a spry woman of 59 who has run the school since 2002.

...11- year-old Alexis Szoka took dozens of practice exams last year leading up to the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. She wound up a nervous wreck. ``My daughter has such test anxiety, she can't take a test anymore,''...

Potter, trusting the work of her teachers, was confident of passing grades in April 2005 as students began two weeks of mandatory standardized testing in reading and math. That July, state education officials told Potter her school had failed the Alabama Reading and Mathematics Test. The state warned it might fire teachers if scores didn't improve, she says. A dozen students transferred after the substandard rating. Faculty morale plunged.

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