Quote:
Originally Posted by SWTXBelle
Do you teach many freshman classes? If not, I would guess that they are gone before they reach you. How many of your students drop per semester? It may be those who feel overwhelmed simply drop before you have much interaction with them. Or all of your students come to school totally prepared - which is great.
My comment was based on observations from friends (teachers) at other high schools, several students I know, and a series of articles. I know that when we tracked students who attended the community college at which I sometimes teach then transferred we discovered that they had higher g.p.a.s than those who had gone straight to a 4 year school. I'd say we pull from a mix of schools - but the majority are not high-performing schools.
I do think that someone should do an actual review of the students from a variety of schools to see how many of those who go to UT and A&M actually graduate. We track graduation rates for athletes - if we are going to discuss the 10% it would be nice to have statistics to help inform the discussion.
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I have taught freshmen classes about half the time. Some of my friends have taught almost all freshmen classes. My boyfriend taught the intro writing course last year, which is essentially a remedial course, although the department says it isn't - but most students from prestigious high schools will be able to get out of this course, leaving some of the weaker admitted students plus nontraditional adult students and international students as the majority in these sections. Obviously this isn't statistical (and I'm not sure how easily we could really measure this - we could track students admitted under the top 10% rule, but that's almost everybody from Texas. And I doubt UT would track "students admitted by the top 10% rule from sh*tty high schools" or whatever rubric we'd need to actually figure it out.)
Like I said, the kids I get who are flunking out often seem to be A) Greek and drinking too much B) from the major cities, just like everybody else C) really homesick/having emotional/family problems and not going to class. I did have ONE student admitted under the top 10% rule, ONCE, who I felt maybe should not have been admitted to UT. She admitted that she was struggling a lot but she worked really really really really really hard with me and came to office hours every week to improve. Unlike my entitled kids from Dallas and Austin who slack off and then protest their grades at the end of the term and tell me their dads are lawyers, in ominous tones.
In my boyfriend's experience teaching freshmen writing, I should add, the adult students (whose HS credits have "expired" or are not applicable or whatever) usually do the best in the intro writing classes, followed by kids from rural high schools. The kids who usually fail are girls from Dallas/Fort Worth who come into his office hours and cry because they've never really been forced to do their own work before and skated by as student council president or head cheerleader or whatever. And the guys who go Greek. The international students try really hard but often are still working to overcome the language barrier, and end up somewhere in the middle.
I truly, honestly, wish I was exaggerating but I'm not. I think the rich kids screw up more often than the rural kids or inner city kids because the latter two groups are trying to prove themselves and improve their stations in life.
That said, I honestly don't find UT's undergrad courses to be particularly rigorous. In the freshmen courses especially, the difficulty is nonexistent (well, I do think intro writing is harder than American history intro), particularly compared to my freshmen courses at W&L, where I was probably assigned 3-4 times the amount of work assigned to my students. If you're really struggling in a freshmen course at UT, you're just not trying at all. I honestly feel that anyone who graduates in the top 10% could handle it if they tried (and I went to a small, crappy, rural high school myself, where I was valedictorian, and wasn't too impressed by all of the kids in the top 10%, honestly). I really think that most students' struggles - ESPECIALLY with intro courses - is due to emotional/personal problems or partying way too much. At W&L I didn't feel that way. I felt some students couldn't handle even intro courses because there was so much difficulty. I don't think UT students have much excuse.
Disclaimer: not that I think UT is a bad school. It's an awesome school and probably a jillion times more rigorous than most state schools. But it doesn't compare to someplace like W&L.