Preparing Inner City Students for the ACT

As we contemplate getting more students from the inner city ready for college, we must face the difficulties of that task and do what we need to do to overcome them. We need a much better math program in our urban schools. By the end of Grade 3, all students should have mastered the four basic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) using multiple digits and correctly opting for the appropriate operation in word problems. This means of course that mastery of multiplication tables 0-9 should take place no later than the Grade 3 year--- an assumption that we lamentably cannot make in the public schools at the present time.

In the course of the Grade 4-7 years, students should master fractions, decimals, percents, ratios, proportions, simple probability, and data presentation with charts, tables and graphs. In Grade 8 students should master algebra I, and by Grade 11 students should have added algebra II, geometry, and at least some trigonometry; it would be helpful by that point for students to have the opportunity to take calculus. By this time, students should have also been given a proper science sequence that culminates with rigorous biology and chemistry courses, and ideally with the opportunity to take physics.

Then there is the matter of preparing students to take those parts of the ACT that require verbal skills (writing and reading). Reading is perhaps the most difficult area for which to prepare students in inner city schools for success on the ACT. To illustrate the fundamental problem, consider the following portion of a passage from a practice ACT, an excerpt from Joseph Conrad’s short story, “Gaspar Ruiz: A Romantic Tale”:

Gaspar Ruiz had an acquiescent soul. But it was now stirred to revolt by his dislike to die the death of a traitor…
Lieutenant Santierra, little more than a boy at the time, and unused as yet to the sanguinary imbecilities of a state of war, had lingered nearby…
“My strength is as nothing against a mounted man with a lasso,” Gaspar Ruiz protested eagerly. “He dragged me behind his horse for half a mile.”
At this excellent reason, the sergeant only laughed contemptuously. The young officer hurried away after the Commandante. Presently, the adjutant of the castle came by. He was a truculent, raw-boned man in a ragged uniform. His spluttering voice issued out of a flat yellow face…”Drive the scoundrels in there.”

My experience has been that just this portion, representing only about 25% of the passage from Conrad’s work included in the ACT practice reading exam, is replete with vocabulary items that most inner city high school students do not know. Very often words that middle class people might take for granted are not readily
understood by youth from challenged urban environments. Thus, the words,
"revolt," "lieutenant," "mounted," "lasso," "sergeant," "Commandante,"
"spluttering," and "scoundrels" are not to be assumed as fully understood by high school students of the inner city. Then there are those words that are definitely
so problematic as to distract or confuse even the best contextual readers among students from challenged inner city communities: "acquiescent," "sanguinary,"
"imbecilities," "contemptuously," "adjutant", and "truculent." This means that there are a total of 13 words in this passage alone that might cause some difficulty, with at least 6 of these likely to cause a serious impediment to comprehension.

Some of this is undoubtedly true for students in public schools of the United States, whatever their socioeconomic descriptors. But increasingly middle class and upper class families hire private tutors who train students specifically for enhanced performance on the ACT. This would include explicit vocabulary instruction, reading comprehension strategies, and test-taking skills. Students from challenged inner city environments seldom get this kind of training.

The matter of vocabulary presents a particularly tangible way of getting at the disparities in equal educational opportunity that exist according to social class and community of residence. The inner city environment, often dominated by ebonics, in fact features a lively, metaphorical, emotionally expressive way of communication. This manner of communication can rise to heights of brilliant poetry. But it is not the vernacular of the middle class culture that dominates employment environments, whether in business, academia, or the professions. And it is not the vocabulary emphasized on the ACT, nor should it be. The ACT serves as an accurate indicator of success in colleges and universities, which in turn offer preparation for work, citizenship, and culture as dominated in the general society by the middle and upper classes.

If we wish to make of our society a genuine democracy, we must recognize the responsibility that educators have in giving students a good, well-rounded liberal arts education throughout the K-12 years. All students, whatever their socioeconomic descriptors, deserve an education that imparts to them the knowledge base to succeed on the ACT, including the level of vocabulary that students must master to succeed on that exam and in the classrooms of colleges and universities.