... for the shortcomings of the American education system, but this study seems a little off to me. For those of you who don't want to subscribe (though it's free, and if you read this blog a lot, you might want to), the basic point is that the people behind the ACT released a study saying less than a quarter of the nation's high school students finish high school having learned the skills they need for college. Putting aside the whole argument about whether a standardized test can truly effectively measure learning, the methodology used for calculating these "benchmark" scores was as follows:

ACT sets its college-readiness benchmarks - including the reading comprehension benchmark, which is new this year - by correlating earlier students' ACT scores with grades they actually received as college freshmen. Based on that data, the benchmarks indicate the skill level at which a student has a 70 percent likelihood of earning a C or better, and a 50 percent chance of earning a B or better.

OK, start naming the number of people you know who got poor or below- their-own-standards grades their freshman year (especially the first semester) because they were too busy celebrating the freedom to stay up until four a.m. talking about 80's cartoons. No, wait, stop, I can't find my pencil.

This is a common phenomenon, right? Yeah, it doesn't happen to everyone (myself included), but without sounding too elitist about it, doesn't it seem even more likely to happen to those who weren't the ideal student (and thus, apt to get lower ACT scores) in the first place? There's no indication that ACT factored this in, and I'm not sure how you would -- short of asking the students if they slacked off, which a) they can't really do since the data is anonymous and b) they might not get the truth, anyway.

It's kind of like my favorite Faulty Education Statistic: the NCAA's graduation rate, which only counts kids who graduate from the same four-year institution at which they began -- even though a significant portion of college atheletes transfer, either to another four year school, or from a junior college to a four year institution, and many of these graduate. 1) I don't understand how it serves either the NCAA or the ACT to set up their statistics in a way that won't portray them in the best light (not so much the ACT, but still). 2)Wouldn't it be nice if the people trying to measure the progress of college students actually seemed to know something about the typical college student experience?

OK, that's my rant for the day. I'm going home now.