Connecting high school and University for student learning - High School/College Connections

Liberal Education, Spring, 2003 by Terry L. Rhodes

As a university administrator and faculty member, I am aware of many ways to think about the connection between high school and postsecondary education. Universities and colleges are constantly concerned about recruiting new students to their institutions, in the cyclical changes in the number of new students emerging from the secondary schools and the quality of the students arriving on our doorsteps. Traditional modes of connecting, though, have tended to be through admissions office contacts with high school counselors, information on applications, financial aid arrangements, and through all the wonderful programs and events happening at the university that would appeal to students.

Ultimately, the questions most asked about the high school/university connection revolve around the preparation of high school students entering universities. For years states have passed legislation to articulate expectations for high school graduates. Most of the time these regulations have taken the form of certain types and numbers of courses. In the state of Oregon, for example, high school graduates are required to complete a set number of units in English, mathematics, social sciences, science, and foreign language. More recently a set of student learning expectations have been created for high school graduates called Certificates of Initial Mastery, or CIM. The CIM standards are based on rubrics that enunciate gradations of mastery in each of the major subject areas such as science, social studies, writing, oral communication, etc. For the most part, students meet the CIM standards through the same assignments that they complete in their classes for course grades. Teachers are trained to read student work using the statewide rubrics and to assign scores for their respective subject areas. To achieve CIM, students must receive scores of Exceeds, or Meets the respective standards.

Demonstrating student learning

The thinking behind the development of CIM was to move away from seat time and course-grade calculations toward more authentic demonstrations of student learning in areas broadly accepted as necessary for student success in the workplace or in postsecondary education. In keeping with trends in higher education led by Alan Guskin, former president of Antioch College, the Pew Course Redesign Project, and the Greater Expectations initiative of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), the CIM standards focused assessment of student learning on demonstration of levels of performance in skill and knowledge areas, rather than the accumulation of courses and grade points.

The Oregon University System (OUS) also began to establish a set of student learning expectations for entry into any campus of the university system. The Proficiency-Based Admission Standards System (PASS) was developed by teams of high school teachers and university faculty across the state. The teams met for years to develop and refine the rubrics and the scoring expectations for each of the PASS standards. Patterned on the CIM standards, i.e. rubrics for each subject area, levels of performance, and demonstration through authentic work in the regular courses taken by high school students, the PASS standards are an alternative to the traditional grade point average and standardized test score entry requirements to the university. Indeed, Meets and Exceeds performance standards on CIM translate into performance standards for PASS. By completing CIM in high school for graduation, a student can at the same time demonstrate proficiency levels for admission to the university. PASS standards incorporate the CIM s tandards and build upon them for higher-level performance scores possible for PASS. The complementarity is intentional.

An initial pilot study of students who had achieved CIM/PASS standards for admission to the university and their subsequent performance in university classes found a high correlation between CIM/PASS achievement and university performance. The point here is not that students who do well in high school are more likely to do well in college, but rather that CIM/PASS is measuring the abilities that are critical to success in postsecondary education--and doing it well. Because the scores are grounded in actual student work, they also provide richer information for placement purposes.

Portland State University approach

Before CIM and PASS were developed, Portland State University (PSU) embarked on a different approach to align student learning expectations between high school and university. A general education reform in 1994 moved Portland State away from the traditional distribution model to an interdisciplinary, four-year general education program called University Studies, built on four broad learning goals: communications, critical thinking, understanding the variety of human experience, and ethics and social responsibility. One part of the University Studies program, Freshman Inquiry (frinq), an interdisciplinary, team taught, year-long learning community course, was created for entering first-year students. Shortly after it was introduced on the PSU campus, frinq was adopted as Senior Inquiry in two area high schools.