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Large share of grads from some high schools require remediation at Sacramento State is an article in today’s Sacramento Bee that highlights the large percentages of high school graduates who are required to take remediation classes at Sacramento State University.

Our school, Luther Burbank High School, is targeted for having a higher percentage of graduates being required to take these courses than another other local school.

Various “experts” claim the reasons behind this including lack of collaboration between colleges and high schools and inadequate information about the expectations of college, and suggest that the Common Core Standards will somehow help this problem.

Fortunately, our principal is able to inject the one piece of common sense and accuracy into the over-simplified analyses offered by others quoted in the article:

The problem often starts well before high school, said Principal Jim Peterson. Burbank faces additional challenges, as 72 percent of its 1,776 students are considered low-income, and about a quarter were English learners last year.

“In the case of our school, demographically, a lot of our students … come to us below grade level,” Peterson said. “We work diligently as a team to get them thinking about college and get them moving in that direction. We push rigor in the classroom; nevertheless, we have kids that need some catching up.”