Students Often Fail If All Students Take College Prep Curriculum

Five years after Los Angeles Unified passed an ambitious policy requiring all students to take college-required courses to graduate, the rate of students passing those classes remains alarmingly low, according to a district review of the program obtained by the Daily News Tuesday. Prompted by strong community and political pressure, in 2005 the LAUSD school board approved new rules for high schools requiring all students to pass a series of 15 college prep courses in order to get their diplomas. The “A-G requirements,” which include four years of college prep English and two years of lab science, math and foreign language, were supposed to help increase the low numbers of LAUSD students who were graduating college-ready. According to district statistics, in 2003 just 36 percent of Latino students, 45 percent of African-American students and 52 percent of white students completed these courses. Since the passage of that policy, the number of students passing the mandated math, science, English and foreign language classes with a C or better remains dismal. According to the district’s review, just 24 percent of Latino students, 20 percent of African-American students and 40 percent of white students are set to graduate this year with all of these courses passed (more…