WHO'S PREPARED FOR COLLEGE? J. asks a good question about my comparison between French and American high schools. Do the French prepare fewer kids for college, and is that why their bac exam is more challenging and predictive of educational success? Here's the answer: About half of French high school students, or 600,000 people, sit for the bac annually, and 70 percent earn a passing grade. In the American high school class of 2005, 1.2 million students took the ACT and 1.5 million took the SAT of about 2.7 million total high school graduates. So virtually every high school graduate endures one of these exams at least once. And 68 percent of American students complete at least the suggested four years of English and three each of social studies, science, and math to prepare for college. What this all boils down to is that yes, a larger percentage of American students are "preparing for college." But that preparation is much less stringent and leaves only 25 percent of us fully prepared for college-level work across all four curriculum areas. --Dana Goldstein
