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Creating
Standards for Success
By Jeff Neu
As graduating high school seniors prepare
to make a smooth transition to college, many are in for a rude
academic awakening. Scores of incoming freshman, even the best,
brightest and most diligent ones who easily meet admissions
requirements, will struggle in entry-level courses. In reality,
admission requirements only hint at what is expected once students
are enrolled in college classes. The University of Missouri-Columbia
and the Association of American
Universities (AAU) are working to solve this problem through
a new project entitled Standards for Success.
MU is a member of the AAU, an organization
of 62 leading public and private research universities in the
United States and Canada. The project, sponsored by AAU and
The Pew Charitable Trusts,
involves distributing college-readiness resources to each of
the nearly 20,000 public high schools in the United States,
as well as to state education departments and university leaders.
Those resources include:
- The Understanding University Success
booklet and CD-ROM, which contain Knowledge and Skills for
University Success (KSUS), a comprehensive listing of what
university faculty expect from students in entry-level courses.
KSUS is divided into six academic disciplines: English, mathematics,
natural sciences, social sciences, second languages and the
arts.
- A library of more than 250 university
work samples and syllabi that illustrate the quality of work
that AAU-university professors expect of freshmen.
- A State High School Assessment Database,
which will provide detailed information on educational assessment
policies and statistics in each state. It includes such information
as average SAT and ACT scores, state expenditures per student
and descriptions of state assessment tests.
These materials are free of charge to the
high schools; however, a small fee is assessed for extra copies.
They also will be available at no charge on the Standards
for Success web site.
“Intelligently conceived, comprehensive,
meticulously researched, detailed and effectively organized,
Standards for Success provides a major step forward
in tightening the links between high schools and universities
and thus increasing the chances for both achievement and personal
satisfaction for our nation’s students,” said Gil
Porter, former associate vice provost and director of general
education at MU. “Faculties, too, on both sides of the
freshman class will profit from these thoughtful definitions
of teaching and learning standards.”
Three years ago, a group of AAU-university
presidents requested the Standards for Success project
to help the organization improve the alignment between K-12
education reforms and university expectations. Four hundred
faculty members from 20 AAU-member universities developed the
materials in a series of meetings held around the country. Seventy-one
of those faculty members were from MU.
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Copyright © 2007 — Curators of the University of Missouri
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Published by the Mizzou Alumni Association
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Last Update:
November 15, 2007
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