Closing the College Readiness Gap - Panelist Event November 5th

BOSTON - Oct. 26, 2015 - PRLog -- When underprepared students enter postsecondary education, they face steep odds.  90 percent of individuals who start community college in remedial courses leave without any sort of credential. And for low-income students, who make up 70 percent of those taking remedial courses, the odds are truly devastating. Such students have no better chance at a good- paying job—or a middle class lifestyle—than those who don’t try college at all. They leave with nothing but debt and regret.

This bleak prospect faces over two million  students each year across the US. With our slipping college graduation rate and declining workforce skills, it weakens our social fabric and threatens our economic future.

How can we address this crisis before students reach campus? What measures need to be put into place to ensure that kids who aspire to college do not graduate high school underprepared?

Some high-school intervention programs have seen great success. JFYNetWorks [ https://jfynet.org/ ] is one that has demonstrated results in helping students reduce remedial requirements in Boston and other school districts. It’s time that policymakers help bring high school-based college readiness programs to scale.

Join the Fordham Institute on TKTK for a live discussion on how we can ensure that students make it to college with the skills they need to succeed, with a particular focus on intervention programs that close skill gaps while they are still in high school.

Moderator:

Mike Petrilli, President, Fordham Institute

Panelists:

Gary Kaplan, Executive Director, JFYNetWorks

Damon Smith, Headmaster, Cambridge Rindge and Latin School

Andrew Kelly, Director, AEI Center on Higher Education Reform