Making new preparations

To watch the crowd in the president's office at Northeastern University yesterday, one could easily have thought they were celebrating good news, but that would have been mistaken.

The mayor, higher education honchos, and civic leaders had assembled to unveil a study showing that Boston's public school graduates are not faring well when they get to college. According to the study by the Private Industry Council and the Boston Public Schools, about two-thirds of the high school graduates of 2000 who entered college failed to earn a degree.

Not only is that below the national average, it is a clear indictment of the preparation, or lack of preparation, they got in high school.

If there is one thing officials agree on, it's that the sheer expense of college does not account for the high rate of failure. Too many leave high school unprepared for college, enroll in remedial programs, and then succumb to frustration and lack of progress. And these, remember, are the system's good students.

This failure was spun yesterday as a "challenge" to be met by a combination of government, colleges and universities, and nonprofits. The Boston Foundation has agreed to pony up $1 million next year to address the issue, envisioned as the start of a five-year commitment. Northeastern University president Joseph Aoun described a hastily conceived remedial program for Boston students that sounded more like 13th grade than college.

The good news for Boston schools in the past few years is that test scores have crept up incrementally, and more students go to college. But the new study shows the limitation of that good news, strongly indicating that they leave unprepared for college - or the work force, for that matter.

"If anything, I think the data is a little better than expected," said Paul Grogan, president of the Boston Foundation. Grogan was blunt about the lack of preparation for many students, which leads them to begin college in remedial programs. For many, that spells doom. "Kids who go into college in remedial programs have a very low graduation rate," he said.

Passing the MCAS - the test that was supposed to usher in an era of "accountability" - does not mean a student will succeed in college. "MCAS is not a college standard," Grogan said. "It's a floor. It's not where you need to be to do college work."

School Superintendent Carol R. Johnson has her hands full, dealing with budget headaches, school closings, a stubborn achievement gap, and now, demands that her students perform better after they graduate from the public schools. Nevertheless, she was upbeat.

"It really sets a new target, a new goal of how you measure success," Johnson said."

Johnson noted that the study is only one measure of how the system is performing. "One sobering piece is that this study follows those who actually graduated," Johnson said. "We know that there is a disproportionate number of African-American and Latino students, especially boys, who aren't graduating at the rate that we need them to."

Menino deserves credit for bringing institutions together to seek a solution to this problem. But addressing an issue of this complexity will require more than a grant or two and a program that appeared to have been whipped up so there would be something to announce at a press conference. It will require thoughtful and sustained effort.

Johnson said the school system is working to sharply increase the number of Advanced Placement courses, so more students will be exposed to college-level course work. She said preparing students for college will require educating parents as well about the rigors ahead.

Boston schools have accepted mediocrity, and worse, for far too long. There's simply no good reason for so few Boston high school graduates to be prepared for college. They deserve far more for their effort.

Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com.