Students Need More Help, Counselor Says

By Anna L. Mallory, The Charleston Gazette, W.Va.

Feb. 22–West Virginia’s students need to be better prepared when entering college, and it’s up to counselors, teachers and college officials to make that happen, one school official said Tuesday.

Jim Scherr, a counselor at Garnet Career Center, told more than 150 state counselors, admissions officers and administrators that they have the power to spur higher performance on the ACT test.

The conference, with topics such as bridging the remediation gap and finding financial aid opportunities stemming from good test scores, was aimed at preparing students for the future and for the test.

More than 90 percent of the state’s students take the college-entrance exam, which tests English, math, reading and science skills.

Scherr said better scores start with more academic classes throughout a student’s academic career, and that everyone needs to pay attention to the preliminary college-entrance exams students take in middle school, such as the ACT Plan and Explore tests.

“Students should not be able to take four years of advanced physical education and have it count in their GPA,” he said. “Counties are giving seniors two periods off a day to free up teachers for electives. That’s not right.”

Scherr is chairman-elect of the state’s ACT Council. He wants the conference, a first for the state, to continue. He said it should serve as a way to teach educators what needs to be done for their students, because those in charge often don’t understand the nuances of the test.

For instance, he said, for students to earn a Promise scholarship, they must correctly answer about 130 questions on the test.

Scherr’s focus was discussing what should be done to help students obtain a composite 21 score.

His thoughts dovetail into the work of the state’s High Schools for West Virginia’s Future Task Force, which is charged with dissecting the report of the same name provided to the department of education and finding recommendations to improve the state’s rigor.

The report alarmed officials with statistics such as the rate of remedial classes required for high school graduates.

According to the 2005 Higher Education Report Card, the average student scored close to a 22 on the ACT, just one point above the requirement for the Promise scholarship. Another report indicated that 33 percent of graduates required some type of remedial class when they entered college.

Michael McKinney, a regional consultant with ACT, said a disconnect between what colleges want and what they get is common throughout the nation.

Scherr said the preliminary tests can help fix some of that. Those tests are diagnostic tools for students at the middle school level. He said counselors can determine if students will perform well on the college-entrance test based on the early test. Students’ schedules should reflect what’s needed to improve those scores, he said.

A pilot program in three of the state’s high schools allows seniors to bone up on their skills to avoid the remediation and improve their performance, but the task force is looking at what it would take to expand those classes.

To contact staff writer Anna L. Mallory, use e-mail or call 348-5163.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Charleston Gazette, W.Va.

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