South Dakota offers $5000 to South Dakota's "most academically acccomplished high school graduates." Surprisingly, some fiscally conservative members of the South Dakota Legislature want to lower that bar of accomplishment and hand out more scholarships to less qualified students.
State law currently requires high school students to complete a series of high school courses, including two years of foreign language. The course requirements aren't too tough, and they don't give nearly enough recognition to the value of music, theater, and art, but they're reasonable. In 2010, the Legislature decided that even if kids couldn't meet this minimum requirement, we'd let them make up for their course deficiencies with a 28 on the ACT.
House Bill 1128 lowers that ACT standard to a 24, the same score that all other students must get to qualify for the Opportunity Scholarship.
In other words, HB 1128 sponsors Rep. Lance Russell (R-30/Hot Springs), Sen. Tim Begalka (R-4/Clear Lake), and their six co-sponsors, all conservative Republicans, want to effectively repeal the course requirements. They want to dumb down the Opportunity Scholarship.
Yo, Lance, did you catch Governor Jindal's line about how Republicans need to stop being the stupid party? Shouldn't you be raising the bar for recognizing academic excellence with state money, not lowering it?
The point of the 2010 revision to the Opportunity Scholarship was to give kids who maybe slacked off early and missed a couple required classes to prove their academic worth. The 2010 revision says that, to compensate for not doing the long-term work of taking the prescribed curriculum, those students have to do the short-term work of jumping over a higher test-score bar. HB 1128 basically gives those kids a free pass.
The Opportunity Scholarship should be a mark of excellence, targeted at keeping the best and brightest in South Dakota. A 28 ACT is a fair indicator of that status under the Opportunity Scholarship's alternative criteria. A 24 ACT does not.
Appropriating more money to make university more affordable for kids in need would be good for South Dakota. Lowering the academic standards for a scholarship meant to encourage academic achievement and keep smart students in our state is bad for South Dakota.
I'd like the structure of the Opportunity Scholarship reviewed beyond the requirements. It's the only aid the state gives to students and is only available if you meet the requirements in high school. I wasn't eligible for the scholarship (I only took 3.5 years of math). It's difficult to plan your schedule around the the requirements and still make room for meaningful courses. Debate was the most transformational activity in my education and the requirements don't make room for it. We're losing students in the activity partially because they can't fit it into their schedule. I'd argue that there's more educational merit in participating in debate than a number of the other requirements.
I don't really think a dip to 24 to 28 really dumb downs the requirements. At any rate, the problem I have with the requirements is that it only motivates students in high school but not in college. You only need a 3.0 to maintain eligibility. I burned through my undergrad in 3 years with a 4.0 and I wasn't eligible for the program while my friends maintain eligibility with fewer academic achievements.
Personally, I'd like to see the legislature make the program available to even more students and then ramp up the requirements when they get to college. Success in college requires personal motivation and drive beyond the supposed benchmark a 28 ACT or 2 years of a foreign language. Why don't we use the scholarship to make college affordable for more people and then have make them work hard to maintain it?
There they go again, republican legislators living down to their low expectations. How about focusing on raising more kids up to meet or exceed the standard?
Matt, thanks for your firsthand example. I would happily support giving the Opportunity Scholarship to anyone who earns a Quad Ruby.
Matt is right that the Legislature and the Regents have a narrow view of what makes a student the kind of top scholar we should want to recruit. Maybe we should drop the requirements and create an application-interview system to identify students who will add important talent to our universities and our state.
A merit-based scholarship program and a needs-based scholarship program (South Dakota is an exception among states in not offering the latter) are both good. South Dakota should offer both.
I know Matt to be a great debater and judge. I had no idea how good until now. He just got Cory to vote for a topical counterplan. I never thougth I'd see the day.
!!! Thanks, Leo, for the best debate humor I've heard this month. You should have gotten an Opportunity Scholarship, too. :-)
An ACT of 24 is no top scholar. That was put in apparently for a legislators kid. 28 might restrict the pool of applicants to much. But the ACT tells how much they learned and that eliminates one schools grade inflation. I never got on the A honor roll in high school, did not study specifically for the ACT since our principle said it is not ethical since it was a test for long term retention, and got a 29. 24 is just to low a standard unless they really were intending to make it for need based also while fooling the kids into thinking they were scholars. No matter what the school calls a class or how advanced they say it is, what the kid learned is what matters. So if it is truely a scholarship for the best to keep them in state, then raise the standard to 26 for everyone. Or do all those over thirty leave the state already.
I have no problem with the ACT at 28, I wouldn't have qualified with a 24 either so I agree that it should stay high. However I wish they would change the required classes, and my reason behind that is I think it favors large school students. It was hard in my high school for students to be able to take all the required classes. Also if you have issues with a teacher in a large school it is easier to avoid them, where in small schools you would be required to take that teacher 3 or 4 years.
Class scheduling is a HUGE problem for high school students. If you open enroll to a different district, then it becomes tougher still.
ACT test scheduling may affect scores. I dropped off my son a little before 8 at DSU for his test. He would've done much better in the afternoon.
HB 1128 addresses Home Educated students who are currently excluded from the program. We do not see it as a "dumbing down" for anyone, but making entrance into the scholarship program equal for all students.
The 2010 legislation HB 1160 also addressed Home Educated students and only Home Educated students. It does not go into effect until Fall of 2014, hence our Home Educated students are still excluded from the program. The author of the article is not accurate in his assessment that this bill is for students who "slacked off early and missed a couple requirements to prove their academic worth." Without HB 1160, Home Educated students would not be a part of the program at all.
The 2010 legislation included the ACT score of 28 with all 4 subtests at 24 or above for Home Educated students ONLY, while their public school counterparts may enter the program with ACT score of 24 and subtest scores at Eng 18, Read 21, Math 22, Science 24. We have very bright students acheiving ACT score of 28 and above who are still excluded from the program!
Students are not going to score a 24 or 28 on the ACT without taking appropriate classes. HB 1128 seeks equity for Home Educated students. Isn't equality for all a liberal idea?? Shouldn't SD keep the best and brightest in the state?
The author not only insulted Home Educated students, but he insults all students with his last assessment of "A 28 ACT is a fair indicator of that status under the Opportunity Scholarship's alternative criteria. A 24 ACT does not."
28 ACT score is in the 91st percentile and a 24 ACT score is in the 80th percentile! I believe the national average is 20.
Monica, I'm not anti-home school, and this isn't a liberal-vs.-conservative issue as you imply. So let's get off that horse right now and look at the text of the law.
Neither the 2010 revision nor this year's HB 1128 is home-school-specific. The 2010 revision applies the 28-ACT alternative (plus the subtest benchmarks) to "any student". HB 1128 preserves the phrase "any student." Unless I'm missing something, HB 1128 has exactly the effect I explain above: any student—home school, private school, public school—who fails to meet the course requirements can get the OS with a 24 ACT, down from the current requirement of 28. HB 1128 effectively repeals the high school course requirements for all OS-seekers, not just the home-schoolers.
Ah! I failed to mention earlier that OS-seekers can take the SAT instead... and HB 1128 lowers that criterion as well, from 1250 to 1090.
But if test scores mean anything (and our Legislature thinks they do), then lowering the test score you need to qualify for the OS is about as literal a "dumbing-down" of the scholarship as we could write. With insult toward no one, I stand by every word I said above.
Joe, there's no getting around that small-school disadvantage... and given the Legislature's desire to cut funding from small schools, that problem will only get worse.
By the way, where's the budget line where the Legislature is authorizing more funding to cover the increased number of scholarship recipients? Or will they have to water down the monetary value of the scholarship as well?
Those liberal legislators proposing this bill want to hand out taxpayer money to all students to generate votes for themselves. They want everybody to be "the 47%," and they want to be the sugar daddies. (-;
I agree with Matt and Roger. We expect too little of kids when this scholarship was initially started to award "academically accomplished" students. My son scored a 30 on his ACT, his SAT equivalent was a 33, but because he was homeschooled and graduated in 2012, he is not eligible without this bill. He's a freshman studying Civil Engineering at SDSM&T and made the Dean's List last fall with a 4.0. Because he tested out of so many classes he already has 40 college credits. He sits in class and sees kids that do not work as hard as he does (some don't even bother to do homework!) and did not score as high as he did, but they get this scholarship and he never will unless this passes. I hope to see this pass and then next year I'd like to see them raise the score to 26 for all students. And as far as the budget for this goes, speaking from a homeschool perspective, there really would not be that many more kids brought into the program through this bill. There is a provision in the law already to address the issue of having more kids and not enough money to award them the full amount, they simply reduce the amount awarded. I would rather see all kids who deserve this get $800 than play favorites and exclude some kids simply based on the route they took to graduation. Thanks for a great discussion on this, but I do hope you'll see the real life kids this would have a huge impact on. Thanks, Taffy
Taffy, I appreciate your sharing your experience, and I regret that your son, like Matt, was left out of this opportunity despite their being excellent students. This shows part of the problem with a scholarship program based strictly on test scores and course credits. You and Matt get me thinking: would the Opportunity Scholarship achieve its purpose better if we added an application and essay process to better identify the unique capabilities of students in different fields and from different educational backgrounds?
Steve Sibson, only guy to testify against Common Core Standards when Board of Ed adopted it. HB1204 would put that power in Leg's hands. RT @ua14 josh verges
Sibby re-rebutted: "Dianna Miller, large school group lobbyist, on Common Core Standards: "It is not mind control."" RT @ua14 josh verges