Only a fraction of South Dakota’s students are fully proficient in major subjects when they graduate high school. That’s according to Secretary of Education Melody Schopp. She tells lawmakers in Pierre than 88 percent of public high school students graduated last year, but the diploma doesn’t mean they are ready for the future.
"Of all those students we just talked about, only 33 percent of them, based on the ACT, which is the only measure we have at this point in time, and not all of our students take the ACT, but if we just said of all the students, only 33 percent met both benchmarks in English and math and could enter a post-secondary system without the need for remediation," Schopp says. "That’s the number we have of that universe of kids."
Schopp says the state is offering remediation strategies for students to take as seniors in high school. Otherwise students have to pay hundreds of dollars for college classes that don’t count for any credits.
The education secretary says getting kids to graduate isn’t enough. She says K-12 education must prepare students for whatever choices they make after high school – whether it's more education, work, or both.
