Education Post and Education Reform Now<\/a> revealed that when high schools fall short in preparing students, it also cost students and parents.\u00a0 According to the report, more than half a million college freshmen \u2013 approximately one in four students who enter college the fall after high school graduation \u2013 had to enroll in remedial coursework during their first year of college. That costs the students nearly $1.5 billion annually, including $380 million in loans for content and skills they should have learned in high school.\u00a0 The $1.5 figure does not include the extra general taxpayer costs for postsecondary education subsidies.<\/p>\n\u201cIt is astounding that failing a quarter of our students has become acceptable in America,\u201d Mehan said. \u201cWe will not stand by and accept that in Missouri.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cost of this failure is more than just remedial courses. Students that require remedial coursework in college have significantly higher odds of never completing their degree. Those who do graduate take almost a year longer than their peers to complete a bachelor\u2019s degree, according to the report.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is not just a financial concern,\u201d said Mehan.\u00a0 \u201cWe are setting our students up to fail by ignoring this obvious problem in our education delivery system.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bill requires each school district in Missouri to develop a system by 2018 for identifying ninth-grade students who are at risk of not being ready for college-level work or for entry-level career positions. The bill gives students the opportunity to develop a personal plan of study with help from the school\u2019s guidance counselors to help set goals to keep the students on track.<\/p>\n
In addition to legislative action, the Missouri Chamber is working to address the growing problem of remediation through a program called Show-Me Scholars. The program is designed to encourage students to take more rigorous classwork in high school by bringing in business leaders as mentors.\u00a0 Eighth-grade Students meet with business mentors when signing up for high-school classes. The business mentors continue to meet with students throughout high school to keep them on track.\u00a0A joint effort of school districts, chambers of commerce and the business community, the Show-Me Scholars initiative is a proven way to show students the importance of challenging themselves for their future continued education and careers.<\/p>\n
The underlying bill also addressed the need for increased civics education, another Missouri Chamber priority. \u00a0The law requires all high school students to pass a test similar to the United States Naturalization test that immigrants take.<\/p>\n
For more information on education policy, contact Ryan Stauffer at rstauffer@mochamber.com, or by phone at 573.634.3511.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Only 15 percent of Missouri business owners believe that Missouri high schools are preparing students for the workplace, according to a Gallup survey commissioned by the Missouri Chamber of Commerce […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1351,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"templates\/article-post.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mochamber.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9581"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mochamber.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mochamber.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mochamber.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mochamber.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9581"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mochamber.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22686,"href":"https:\/\/mochamber.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9581\/revisions\/22686"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mochamber.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mochamber.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mochamber.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mochamber.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}