Will graduates have the skills they need?

The Courier-Journal reports that up to 6,000 students may graduate from Jefferson County high schools this June.

Actually, that’s not very good news. You see, the Jefferson County Class of 2013 entered high school four years ago as ninth graders with 8,391 members in attendance.

One year later, this class had already been whittled down to just 7,728 students in the 10th grade.

Even if 6,000 of the Jefferson County survivors of this class graduate, an Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate calculation like that currently used for school accountability in Kentucky shows less than three in four of the first time students in this class will survive to graduation.

Furthermore, one must wonder if the students who do graduate will have more than a hollow piece of paper in their hands after they cross the stage.

The Class of 2013 took the ACT college entrance test one year ago as 11th grade students. With the class further whittled down to only 6,228 students as of the March ACT testing last year, the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education’s ACT Benchmark Score results showed that less than half of the class was ready for Freshman English at a Kentucky university or two-year college. Little more than one out of three were ready in math and reading. The rest of these students will likely require non-credit bearing remedial course work if they do move on to postsecondary education, assuming they actually do graduate this June.