Arecent article on the front page of the Sentinel concerned Metuchen’s rate of recent graduates continuing on to four-year colleges. According to the organization Metuchen Citizens for Quality Education (CQE), they believed that steps should be taken to bolster this number.
The CQE, while having good intentions, are approaching this problem in the wrong way. It’s not a matter of the curriculum that Metuchen students are not attending these four-year colleges, it’s a matter of specific factors that vary from student to student. These factors include their own personal drive to attain higher education, affordability, other responsibilities, family support, etc. With that being said, all of the suggestions from the CQE are not addressing these factors with the exception of hiring an extra guidance counselor. The exposure of four-year colleges to students while they’re in Metuchen High School is frankly one of the poorest I’ve seen, and an extra guidance counselor can provide more of the individualized attention needed.
All of the other suggestions will only further segregate and hurt the upcoming classes. Making nonhonors classes more difficult? While perhaps increasing knowledge, this decreases GPAs needed for college. Increasing school hours? It will do nothing to change whether students go to college or not. The issue is getting students to get to the colleges … not the curriculumand courses offered, and as a result, the CQE needs to approach this differently, through increasing awareness of four-year colleges, the financial options available to students, and assistance to go about it.
Ethan Grossman
Metuchen