New diplomas to encourage H.S. students
The state Board of Education may decide to offer “super diplomas” to high school students, to encourage them to be better prepared for college.
“The purpose as I see it, is that it better communicates to the high school students what is needed to get into a university,” said Joyce Kinkead, vice provost of Utah State University.
The idea for super diplomas came out of discussions at the state Board of Education about a new program they are developing called “Performance Plus.” According to the Oct. 29 revision of the Utah State Board of Education’s proposal on Performance Plus, the program is intended to be “a tune up for Utah’s marvelous education engine.”
Pending funding, the program will call for the implementation of competency tests for all elementary, middle and high school students in the state, to make sure the students have learned what is necessary in each grade level. According to the proposal, reports will be made of the test results from year to year to help students, parents and teachers know which subjects they need to focus on to make sure the students are on track for high school graduation. The program also raises the amount of required credits to graduate from high school.
Although more required classes would be needed for graduation if this program were implemented, the proposal admittedly states that “institutions of higher education … may have additional entrance and high school course requirements.” This is where the super diploma comes into play.
If implemented, the super diploma would map out for college-bound students exactly what those additional requirements are and how they should go about meeting them.
“What they are proposing is this super diploma would indicate that a student has done exceptional work and is on track for a university education,” Kinkead said.
Kinkead went on to say that many high school students in Utah don’t really understand what it takes to get into a university.
“We have applications of students right now who, I assume, think they can get into a university, who if they were admitted would be almost guaranteed to fail,” Kinkead said.
Part of the problem is that high school students in Utah often don’t start preparing soon enough for college, said Kinkead.
“Utah has kind of a history of waiting till the last minute,” she said, describing how many students wait too long to take the ACT test and to find out what classes they should be taking in high school to prepare for college.
The Performance Plus program gives a baseline; it requires students to meet the minimum level of competency, while a super diploma would build on that to give more direction to college-bound students, she said.
“If you want to go to Harvard, you need to do some additional things to prepare for that,” Kinkead said.
USU already has a program to help high school students to be better prepared for college.
Project Big Blue visits with ninth-grade classes across the state to help get them thinking about college, so they can start preparing early.
“The earlier they start planning where they want to go and what it will take to get in, the better off they will be,” Kinkead said.
Although super diplomas would help students to be better prepared for college, it wouldn’t really affect admissions at the university.
“I don’t think it would affect enrollment at all,” Kinkead said. “[Super diplomas] would be just one part of what we look at.”
Currently, admission to the university is based on ACT score and high school GPA. The university is always setting goals to improve the quality of students that are accepted.
This year, incoming students had an average ACT score of 23.6 and an average GPA of 3.56, said Kinkead. She also said USU President Kermit L. Hall wants the average ACT score in 2004 to be 24 and has set the goal of an average ACT score of 25 for 2007.
-sjeppesen@cc.usu.edu