Low Income Students And Parents Do Not Agree On College Prospects

The Southern Regional Education Board- www.sreb.org -has a new report on Keeping Middle Grades Students On The Path To High School Success. It is a comprehensive report , but I was interested with the college statistics on page 29. 87% of the middle grades students said they were going on to college, but only 73% of the low income parents believed their child is “college material”. Only, 20% of the parents encouraged their child to seriously consider or apply to college, and 57% said the decision to attend college is up to the student. But only 15% of the students said they would rely on themselves for college information.

Clearly, we need to do a better job of providing parents of low income middle grade students about college.  The students need to have much more college knowledge because college completion and entry can be predicted with high probability at the end of grade9.