Lexington Park, MD – High school graduation rates in Southern Maryland are reaching all-time highs. All three counties celebrated a rate of over 94 percent of seniors graduating, well-above the nationwide average. Despite these graduation rates soaring, many students are finding that completing their graduation requirements and earning a diploma isn’t enough for Maryland state public universities. Recent reports show that Maryland state requirements fail to align with university requirements, specifically in mathematics and foreign languages. Maryland was one of eight states in a nationwide study where math requirements between universities and high schools did not match. In foreign languages, Maryland was one of 23 states where the requirements were not aligned.
Southern Maryland schools are not immune to this increasingly large statewide concern. High schools in Southern Maryland only require a mathematics education up to geometry, but the University of Maryland requires that applicants must pass Algebra 1, Geometry, and Algebra II. The University of Maryland also requires that applicants take four years of math, but southern Maryland schools only require a minimum of three years of math. These trends may correlate with the growing fear that high school students are ill-suited for college.
In recent years, there has been an emerging belief that high school graduates are left unprepared for university and the workforce. Newly conducted studies show that these beliefs may be true. Though we are seeing more and more students clad in cap and gown come graduation time, many of these students have not become proficient in the subjects necessary for the collegiate level. This leads to students taking remediation courses, which are largely unsuccessful. The on-time graduation rate for students taking remediation courses is 10 percent, and 1.7 million students entering college have to take remediation courses in some form. This often results in students dropping out of college as a whole, as only 17 percent of students enrolled in remediation courses end up graduating.
Though Southern Maryland boasts a graduation rate significantly higher than the nationwide average, students graduating may not necessarily be more skilled or proficient in the necessary tasks. The math requirements in southern Maryland fail to align with college qualifications, leading to students often entering college unprepared. Without a requirement for students to take more mathematics and foreign language courses, southern Maryland may struggle to send students into universities prepared.