Florida should make college a hurdle-free goal for all students

There is a higher-education deficit in Florida.Two out of every three jobs in the U.S. will require an education beyond high school by 2020. But in the Sunshine State, only 35 percent of adults have an associate degree or higher.

With these statistics, access to college is more important than ever before for young Floridians. All high-school students, regardless of background, should be encouraged to pursue post-secondary education ? and K-12 educators and policymakers have a responsibility to make this process as hurdle-free as possible.

With that goal in mind, the College Board launched SAT School Day three years ago to make the college-going process more seamless and accessible to all students.

This year the program will provide more than 10,000 juniors in the School District of Palm Beach the opportunity to take the SAT during classroom hours free of charge. The School District of Palm Beach was the first in Florida ? and one of only two nationally ? to pioneer the SAT School Day initiative.

By offering the SAT on a school day, students who might find the traditional Saturday test date problematic are able to participate in an important step in the college-application process.

And by providing SAT School Day at no cost to students, the financial burdens that can prevent lower-income students from participating are removed.

In Palm Beach County, one student reported that he would not have thought to take the SAT, "but now that it's offered in my school, I've gotten to see what a college entrance test feels like."

Administrators in the district were excited about their students' broad and deep exposure to an SAT assessment that measures high-school curricular learnings layered into critical-thinking questions. They are "big-time experiences for our students," said Becky Youngman, administrative leader in the county's Department of Safe Schools.

The Florida Department of Education and the College Board formed the Florida Partnership for Minority and Underrepresented Student Achievement in 1999. Its purpose is to identify schools in need of support to develop a college-going culture and to prepare students for the transition from middle school to high school and from high school to higher education.

Of the six districts participating in SAT School Day this month, four ? Baker, Hamilton, Sumter and Walton counties ? were identified for the program through the Florida Partnership.

Schools throughout Florida use data from College Board's assessments ? including ReadiStep, Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test and SAT ? to help identify gaps in students' academic readiness for college and develop strategies to address these gaps.

For example, Florida, which has had the greatest and most diverse growth in advanced-placement participation of any state, has used national merit-test scores to help identify low-income and minority students who had the academic potential to succeed in rigorous, college-level AP courses but had previously been overlooked.

Among SAT takers in the Florida class of 2012, 82 percent reported taking national merit tests. Those students scored 195 points higher, on average, on the SAT.

A high and ever-increasing percentage of Florida graduates score a 3 or higher on an AP exam. Florida remains the only state in the nation with a relatively large population of Hispanic/Latino graduates who have achieved equity in both AP participation and AP success.

The Florida Partnership also provides AP and other advanced-course teachers with additional training to further develop their content knowledge and instructional skills.

These initiatives are just some of the ways Florida school districts are helping more students get going on the college-admission process. Nearly every four-year undergraduate college and university in the U.S. uses the SAT in the admission process.

So students who participate in the SAT School Day are able to complete an integral component of their application in the comfort of their home school without any financial impediment.

Education organizations, policymakers and lawmakers in other states are also working together and making similar strides.

The progress in Florida is encouraging, but we need to keep going further so that every high-school student in the state has a shot at college.

We will be in serious trouble if we don't.

Jenny Krugman is vice president of the Southern Region at the College Board.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/orlandosentinel/news/opinion/~3/rGSRe5qadJc/story01.htm

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