This is too much

Via the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required) we are to be informed that parents aren't doing enough to ensure that their children get into college.

In Middle School.

Far too few parents of middle-school students are doing what they need to do to ensure their children can go on to college, with the parents of minority and disadvantaged students being especially likely to lag in such preparation, according to a report being released here today by the Institute for Higher Education Policy.

The report, based on a national survey of 1,800 parents of children in sixth through eighth grade, says that 87 percent of such parents fully expect their children to go on to college, and that fewer than 1 percent are certain that college is not in the cards for their young ones. Although the researchers found that some subsets of the population—such as Hispanic Americans and parents without a high-school diploma—were less likely than others to be confident their children would go on to college, overwhelming majorities of all of the groups studied had college expectations, reflecting a widespread belief that a college education is necessary to get ahead in today's world.

When, however, it comes to taking the steps necessary to plan to finance a college education and make sure their children will be academically prepared for college, many parents admit to dropping the ball, the survey found.

The report says 45 percent of such parents had not taken any of the college-planning actions the survey asked about, such as looking into the college-admissions process, doing research on specific colleges, or meeting with a teacher or counselor to make sure their child was adequately preparing for college in the years ahead.

"More than a third of parents reported having no sources of information on college preparation or admission," the report says, and those with lower levels of education were much less likely than the better educated to have such information access.

The most common step for parents to have taken was saving for their child's college education, but just 34 percent of all parents had started putting money aside. The likelihood of parents saving for their child's college education varied drastically by education level; 55 percent of parents with a graduate degree, but just 22 percent of those without a high-school diploma, had done so.

And while 94 percent of all parents believed their children would get financial aid for college, only 11 percent had done any research into what types of financial aid might be available.

And so on and so forth.

Now, don't get me wrong. "Getting into college" (read broadly -- as the people who wrote this article are doing -- as making something of your life) requires that you start early. Taking the SAT's, for example, is something that you need to start prepping for in 2nd grade. Not by taking test prep courses, but by studying and reading. The education of a child is an ongoing, long-term project that requires effort early, effort in the middle, and effort at the end.

But that's not what these fools are talking about. They aren't saying that parents are dropping the ball on making sure that their kids have studied, that their kids know how to read, write, multiply, etc. They aren't saying that parents aren't stressing the importance of memorization and synthesis.

They're saying that parents are dropping the ball by not looking into financial aid, looking into admissions, etc.

This is material that is entirely inappropriate for parents to be considering when their children are in middle school. It's not necessary for Johnny to get into the right pre-school so he can get into the right kindergarten so he can get into the right elementary school so he can get into the right junior high school so he can get into the right high school so he can go to Harvard (and such a course is beyond the means of most of the parents with which the article is concerned, anyway). That sort of hyper-anxiety is bad for the family, bad for the kid, and generally bad.

But it's also not appropriate to start worrying about admissions processes (something that takes a few days research AT MOST) when the kid is in eighth grade. Stress academics, sure. Make sure the kid stays out of trouble.

But don't listen to the alarmist views in this article.

Posted by Imparfait at December 12, 2007 02:12 PM | TrackBack