The college hype machine

Teenagers choose colleges based on reputations. The participants in my study often post or talk about wanting to go to universities like Columbia, University of Arizona, USC, or UCLA. Those preferences are not random; they are based on the schools’ images and the students’ reactions to those images. Columbia is an intellectual powerhouse. Arizona has a great basketball team. USC is a football juggernaut. UCLA has a legendary basketball tradition. Unfortunately, reputation doesn’t always equal reality.

Growing up, I cheered for University of Maryland athletics. During my senior year, my father agreed to pay for college. He gave two conditions: First, I had to go to community college for two years. Second, I had to go to the state school. Although I really wanted to attend an Ivy (again, reputation), I loved Maryland. After two years of community college, the choice was easy. In the spring of 2002, the Terps won the national championship. That fall, I matriculated to college. 

Although I love Maryland, the school was the wrong choice. Circumstances changed the week before I began classes. My mother and I were left to finance my education. I commuted an hour to and from campus everyday, and my college experience diverged significantly from most of my peers. During my time in college, I was given little career advice. After graduation, I was left with student loans and no obvious next step.

An undergraduate degree is no longer a golden ticket. 

We often speak in broad strokes: College is important. Go to college. Pick the right school. But, we ignore the details— financial aid, student debt, faculty-to-student ratios, graduation rates (for everyone and for low-income minorities), and career readiness. Those details add up. For a lot of first-generation, low-income college-goers, they are the difference between graduate school and a successful career and returning home and joining the working poor. 

Postsecondary education has become a reality for an unprecedented number of teenagers. What is their reward? Often, they get to spend two years in large seminars where they rarely interact with professors. At best, they are motivated and skilled. They figure out what to do. At worst, they do not receive the support they need and dropout with substantial debts. 

High schools need to do a better job of teaching the right questions to ask, and universities need to be held accountable for the success of their students. This week, a young man I’m mentoring was accepted to USC. He was absolutely ecstatic. I worry he will not have that same feeling four years and five months from now.

The first three hours after school

After the last school bell rings, teenagers have a variety of options to occupy their time. The number of options multiplies due to several factors. First, older age correlates to increased freedom. In addition, parents or guardians are likely to work after school lets out. Second, in urban neighborhoods, teenagers have access to a variety of locations. Friends’ houses, parks, fast food restaurants, and public transit are all within walking distance. Teens are not dependent on rides from parents or older siblings.

From participating in after-school activities to hanging out with friends, what teens do and the people with whom they interact either reinforce or detract from college access. Meaningful after-school activities provide extended learning opportunities and engender college-going behaviors. That knowledge and those behaviors even extend to informal activities such as playing basketball or eating at a fast food restaurant with friends. During those times, teens discuss a range of issues including choosing and paying for college. In contrast, informal activities such as gangbanging or doing drugs have the ability to derail college access. Poor choices out of school lead to poor grades in school. Not only are the teens participating in illicit activities, the conversations differ starkly from those of their more academically engaged teens. 

President Obama is sounding the alarm for increased postsecondary opportunities. At the same time, district administrators are making tough choices. Those choices include which programs to fund and which positions to staff. Unfortunately, after-school activities are often the first to go. The reasoning goes something like, “We have to focus on the core, not the periphery. An after-school college prep program is nice, but it won’t improve test scores.” That reasoning ignores the value of after-school programs, which provide supervision, mentorship, and extended learning opportunities.

If we want to improve college access, it’s time to focus on the first three hours after school.

Preparing students for success now and later

“What does this have to do with anything?” is the question I have heard, in some form or another, from high school students over the last seven years. The question is a valid one. What does Macbeth have to do with a teenager from South LA? Why does he need to know the definition of an isosceles triangle? The answer has to be more than “because it’s important.” The reality is I have forgotten about as much geometry as I have learned and I still manage to function throughout the day. 

There are answers, even good ones. Many of the themes in Macbeth parallel contemporary issues. Triangles form the basis of construction and architecture. To learn about them is to see the world a little differently. The challenge is for teachers to draw connections between abstract concepts and real life, to show how critical thinking and learning translates to success now and the future.

Extending the above argument to schools and neighborhoods, something more complex is happening. The rise in school choice has coincided with a select few “no excuses” college prep schools. From kindergarten on, these brand name schools excel in creating college-going cultures. The expectations are clear: College or bust. The stories are well known as journalists report how, against all odds, students make it from Harlem to Harvard. The problem, however, is not the students who succeed. It is the students who do not. And, there are a lot of them.

College-going prep schools have extended the curriculum from basic skills to everything individuals need to know to succeed in mainstream society, which includes how to speak and act. Questions of relevancy have been answered. Learning becomes future oriented, for a time when students leave their low-income neighborhood to attend college. The unintended consequence is that the future orientation often devalues students’ present contexts and cultural knowledge. 

Often, ideas sound so good and gain so much popularity that they go unquestioned. After all, if a group promises and delivers a high performing school to a neighborhood where the schools have historically underperformed, why would anyone complain? My argument has focused on the worst-case scenario, when education becomes acculturation. Of course, there are culturally responsive college prep schools. We cannot, however, assume that speaking about college access is the same as working towards socially just educational outcomes. 

Sometimes, even the best intentions go awry.

Are the kids really alright?

A few weeks ago the New York Times published a blog entitled “The Kids Are More Than Alright.” The author had several major points:

• Teenagers’ use of marijuana is lower than it was thirty years ago.
• Teenagers’ use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs is far lower than it was thirty years ago.
• Teenagers have less sex and lower rates of pregnancy than the previous generation.

These three points lead the author to conclude:

Every few years, parents find new reasons to worry about their teenagers. And while there is no question that some kids continue to experiment with sex and substance abuse, the latest data point to something perhaps more surprising: the current generation is, well, a bit boring when it comes to bad behavior.

After I read the short blog, I was stunned. I have no doubt that the initial report is valid and reliable. From a national perspective, drug use and teen pregnancy may be declining. But, at such a grand scale, what does that really tell us? What do we learn when numbers are stripped from context? How does drug use differ among race, class, and gender? The report provides further evidence to support the need for well-designed studies that include quantitative and qualitative data. The blog, which includes a quote from an editor of Seventeen and references to Teen Mom and Gossip Girl, introduces questions about the blurring of journalism and entertainment in one of the nation’s most influential newspapers. 

The majority of the sixty teenagers in my study of a low-income neighborhood have experimented with drugs. Marijuana is now easier to get than alcohol. I recently discussed my findings with a colleague who grew up during the 60s. He was surprised at my surprise about the prevalence of drugs. Drug use and experimentation, he said, was much more pervasive thirty years ago. Of course, the study supports that. However, such a stance ignores the changing nature of drug use. It is true that many of the participants of my study only experiment with drugs. However, it is also true that a number of them use drugs as a coping mechanism. 

Maybe drug use across the nation is the lowest it’s been in thirty years. However, a statement in like “the current generation is, well, a bit boring when it comes to bad behavior” trivializes what is occurring in low-income neighborhoods. It also moves us no closer to understanding or solving the pressing social issues of our time. Maybe it’s just a blog, but it’s also the New York Times.