Changing
mindsets
From my past 25 years in K-12 public education it has been
my experience that preparing students for college and career readiness across
our nation has been more or less a single minded approach. When we currently
think of college and career readiness in most minds it means preparing students
to enter college, namely four year colleges and all of the specific
requirements that go into that particular process. Thus, when the term of college and career
readiness comes up in most circles of K-12 conversation, it typically means
that a student transitioning out of high school that is college and career
ready has met each of the requirements to be accepted into a four year college
institution.
It is there that we assume that by students being ready to enter
college, we have set students on a stage for being equipped with the knowledge
and appropriate career preparation tools to excel in college and thus a career
of choice for their futures. We have been under the notion that the best way to
a solid career path was to earn a four year degree which in some areas of
perspective employment is very necessary. However, not all gainful career paths
require a four year college degree to set students on a successful journey
towards their employment future.
Rethinking
the approach to career preparation:
In recent years, it has been noted by industry that the
K-12 approach of “college for all” has eroded the workforce that has been
largely responsible for the industrial and technology advances we have enjoyed
as a nation transitioning from an education system that supported an
agriculture based economy in our schools, to supporting an industrial based
economy and workforce needs. Over the last three decades we have moved very
quickly into a very technology driven economy in the 20th century
where college and career preparation meant a four year college degree needed to
be attained by all who sought gainful living wage employment in the 20th
century.
As we have moved into the 21st
century, the workforce needs and the way we prepare K-12 students for those
workforce needs through high school and post high school planning has taken a
slightly different approach or so it would appear as the need to do so. According to an article published in the
Seattle times by Claudia Rowe, The old image of
college as four years on an ivy-covered campus is increasingly giving way to
programs that offer hit-the-ground-running career skills, often developed
outside of libraries and lecture halls. (Rowe,
C. (2016, November 6). Should we prepare
all students for four college entrance requirements only? Seattle Times, pp.
A1-A3.
The trouble is, Washington State has beefed-up the amount of
core academic requirements a student must meet in order to attain a high-school
diploma. Washington State’s newly adopted 24 credit graduation requirement
appears to focus primarily on more rigorous core academics requirements and therefore seem to be at odds
with the need of some 600,000 jobs forecasted in the next four years that will require specialized
training or certification, but not necessarily a four year college degree.
Meanwhile, state officials say the number of students enrolling in career and
technical education courses (known as CTE) has grown, from 18.5 percent of all
ninth-through-12th graders in the 2006-07 school year to 20 percent this year.
Those numbers represent an overall average, of course. The reality between
districts varies widely, with rural areas tending to offer more career-training
programs than urban districts.
“There are a lot of young people
who went out to college like we asked them to and had no idea why,” says Ken
Emmil, Assistant Superintendent for Career and College Readiness at the state
Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. “We have a significant
population of kids who graduate high school and go into college with no end in
mind. (Rowe, C. (2016, November 6). Should we prepare all
students for college entrance requirements only? Seattle Times, pp. A1-A3
Preparing students for 21st Century Careers
Over the course of time since the
industrial revolution, post-secondary education has been viewed as an escalator
mechanism of sorts, where within individuals who attain higher levels of education
have increased incomes over time, an improved quality of life and greater
access to educational and medical service
(Baum, Ma, & Payea, 2013).
What remains clear to me in the
second half of the 21st century is that we must change our
counseling and guidance system in K-12 schools from a reactive guidance model
that focuses on serving students who are under duress, at risk for failure or
drop out, focus on those students who plan to attend a four year college and
used in most all school sites as state assessment coordinators. In a
comprehensive guidance model, counselors would engage with students on some of
the afore mentioned focuses, however, the difference is that counselors would
focus on all aspects of a student’s social, emotional wellbeing as well as
their college and career planning that would allow for more thorough college
and career planning tool use and activities that support college and career
preparation.
Washington State has a graduation
requirement that states all students will be prepared for college and or a
career upon graduation but has not clearly defined a specific protocol that
would measure a student’s readiness for college and career success upon
graduation from high schools. Therefore, the vague description from the
Washington State School Board Directors of what college and career ready means
has left individual districts to determine what college and career preparation
for students mean for their individual district.
If school districts in Washington
State are left to interpret what college and career readiness means for all
students, it will be the same way districts addressed the former graduation
requirement of students needing to complete a senior project prior to graduation.
The intended outcomes will look different with different expectations from
school district to school district. There must be a more defined requirement
for districts to adhere to, therefore making the college and career graduation
requirement expectations uniform to all districts with the same set of expected
outcomes for student planning for college and career readiness and success upon
graduating from high school.
Over the past three decades or so
our student focus has been to graduate students and prepare them for success in
completing a four year college degree which will lead to gainful employment and
a larger lifetime earnings has left our nation ill prepared to fill the soon to
be vacated careers by a skilled labor force with a nation of liberal arts
degrees that do not apply to the skills and training needed to access many blue
color careers. Preparing students for all post high school pathways seems to be
the need of our state and our nation. We tend to forget that two year and
technical degrees, apprenticeships, industry certifications, technical
training, the military and four year college degrees are all viable pathways
for students to be college and career ready upon graduating from high school.
We need to make a paradigm shift in our approach to this work going forward in
the 21st century or risk further eroding our workforce with less
qualified workers prepared to enter these careers. We should prepare students
during high school to access some type of higher education training post high
school that will specifically prepare students for the expectations of their
chosen career path.
Integrate career explorations into the curriculum in the
elementary grades:
The popular preparation moniker
currently is that college and career explorations exposure should begin as
early as elementary school with planning to continue to be more definitively
focused as students advance in grade levels. Starting the exploration process
in high school has been deemed by many as too long to wait to begin having students
focus and prepare for their futures.
Rethinking College Access and Readiness:
Preparing students for college in
the mindset of many educators and parents has been thought of as preparing high
school students to enter a four year college. That has long been the
measurement of a high schools success profile, how many students they send to
college each year. Moreover, how many they send to a four year college is the
milestone of success when speaking in terms of college entrance. Little thought
is put into the rationale for attempting to push all students through the four
year college tube, except for the fact it is good to seek higher education at
the bachelors level. However beneficial a college degree might be, as many
Bachelor degree earners have found, it is good to seek higher education but
with a rationale and purpose for doing so with a well thought out plan or
course of what level of degree, certificate or technical training might be
needed for the career a student seeks. Otherwise, students can find themselves
with a degree that has left them deep in debt to attain with little gainful
employment outlook for the degree they have earned.
Community and technical college
student average age of attendance in Washington State is 28 years old. The
community and technical colleges in Washington State tend to focus on
recruiting the retrained worker rather than the high school senior. Thus, the
data pointing to the average age of a community college student being students
who are retraining for another career, need additional training after attaining
a Bachelor degree or decided to delay their entrance into higher education for
whatever reason. The data indicates again, most high school students are being
prepared to largely attend a university after their high school
completion. Programs such as Upward
Bound, Gear Up, VIP Scholars are all programs that help facilitate student
planning and preparation for college but these programs only exist mostly in
urban or rural high schools.
They are not normally programs
utilized by most school districts as a planning program preparing students for
college, two or four year (Howard, Tyrone C., Tunstall, J. Flennaugh, T. K.,
2016).
Upward Bound: Upward Bound provides fundamental
support to participants in their preparation for college entrance. The program
provides opportunities for participants to succeed in their precollege
performance and ultimately in their higher education pursuits. Upward Bound
serves: high school students from low-income families; and high school students
from families in which neither parent holds a bachelor's degree. The goal of
Upward Bound is to increase the rate at which participants complete secondary
education and enroll in and graduate from institutions of postsecondary
education.
Gear Up: This discretionary grant program is designed to
increase the number of low-income students who are prepared to enter and
succeed in postsecondary education. GEAR UP provides six-year grants to states
and partnerships to provide services at high-poverty middle and high schools.
Earning college credit while in high school:
Most
students are encouraged to take a heavy load of college prep courses offered
while attending public, private comprehensive high schools and some skills
centers, especially private high schools. Advanced placement and International
Baccalaureate and Cambridge courses are the courses students are most commonly
encourage to take to prepare them for college entrance. Data tells us that many
high school students do not take or pass the subsequent culminating assessment
affiliated with each of those courses that would allow students to earn the
college credit for the course while in high school. This would therefore
seemingly cut down on a student’s time and cost of paying for college. There are
several other ways high school students can earn college credits while in high
school. Tech Prep, College in the High School, and Running Start are all dual
enrollment programs that high school student have access to and earn more
college credits in but are seldom looked at with the same college prep esteem
as AP or IB courses. The cost of taking some of these courses can be
prohibitive for some students to take the final AP or IB exams to earn the
college credit. Generally the culminating assessment is around $85 for a
student to take. College in the High School costs vary from college to college
but there is generally a cost associated with each credit earned. Tech Prep and
Running Start are generally cost free for earning credit. There may be some minimal
administrative cost associated with these two models. Here is a list of the
most commonly used programs that offer students the ability to earn college
credit while in high school, therefore aiding their ability to adequately
prepare for college by starting to earn credit while in high school and
demonstrating to colleges that they are taking a load of rigorous course work
that will prepare them to be successful with the remainder of their college
program.
Dual Enrollment:
Concurrent enrollment provides high school students the opportunity to take
college-credit bearing courses taught by college-approved high school teachers.
It is a low-cost, scalable model for bringing accelerated courses to students
in urban, suburban, and rural high schools. Students gain exposure to the
academic challenges of college while in their high school environment, earning
transcribed college credit at the time they successfully pass the course.
Concurrent enrollment also facilitates close collaboration between high school
teachers and college faculty that fosters alignment of secondary and
postsecondary curriculum. Sometimes called “dual credit,” “dual enrollment,” or
“college in the high school,” concurrent enrollment partnerships differ from other
models of dual enrollment because high school instructors teach the college
courses.
College in the High School: High
school students can complete University or college level courses and earn
credit while in their own classrooms at their respective high schools with
their own teachers. Students and teachers use the college’s curriculum the
school or program has an articulation agreement with. Students earn a final
grade over time; a grade does not depend on one exam. The credits that students
earn are transferrable to most public and many private colleges and
universities, depending on the course.
Tech Prep/Dual Enrollment : Tech Prep is an industry and education
partnership committed to providing a highly-trained and motivated workforce,
prepared to pursue lifelong learning in a changing technological society. Tech
Prep provides occupational pathways for students by preparing them for
technologically advanced careers and postsecondary education by emphasizing
strong academic, technical, problem solving, and critical thinking skills. Tech
Prep prepares students for the world of work and helps maintain a quality life
in a changing society. Tech Prep is a national educational initiative. It
includes a rigorous and focused course of study that provides students with
essential academic and technical foundations that prepare students with
necessary workplace skills
Running
Start: Running Start is intended to provide students a
program option consisting of attendance at certain institutions of higher
education and the simultaneous earning of high school and college/university
credit. Running Start was initiated by the Legislature as a component of the
1990 parent and student Students in grades 11 and 12 are allowed to take
college courses at Washington’s community and technical colleges, and at
Central Washington University, Eastern Washington University, Washington State
University, and Northwest Indian College. Running Start Students and their
families do not pay tuition, but they do pay college fees and buy their own
books, as well as provide their own transportation. Students receive both high
school and college credit for these classes and therefore accelerate their
progress through the education system. The exercise of that right is subject
only to minimal eligibility and procedural requirements, which are spelled out,
in state administrative rules for more information.
Credit by proficiency exam: Are programs created by the College Board,
which offers college-level curricula and examinations to high school students.
American colleges and universities often grant placement and course
credit to students who obtain high scores on the examinations.
Advanced Placement(AP): Advanced Placement (AP) is a program of college-level
courses offered at many high schools. Courses are available in many
subject areas, including English, history, humanities, languages, math,
psychology and science. The focus is not on memorizing facts and figures. It's
on engaging discussions, approaching and solving problems together and learning
to write well. You'll get to study fascinating topics and ideas. Who knows? One
(or more!) might just become the foundation of your future college major or
career.
International Baccalaureate (IB): What
is the International Baccalaureate? The IB is a high school program that
doubles as a highly respected college prep curriculum. The IB program
encourages students to think broadly, beyond the boundaries of their
communities, and to see themselves as members of a global society. It has
gained recognition and respect from most U.S. colleges.
Cambridge: The Cambridge Advanced International
Certificate of Education (AICE) Diploma is an international curriculum and
examination system that emphasizes the value of broad and balanced study.
Alongside in-depth understanding of a variety of subjects, students also need
to master a broader range of skills critical for success in university study
and employment. The Cambridge AICE Diploma was first awarded in 1997 and
has since become popular with a range of schools in different parts of the
world. It encompasses the ‘gold standard’ Cambridge International AS and A
Level qualifications, and offers students the opportunity to tailor their
studies to their individual interests, abilities and future plans within an
international curriculum framework.
The
bottom line is, Washington State graduation requirements mimic the state
college entrance requirements. Data tells us that not all of our high school
graduates will attend a four year college. Current workforce trends indicate
that our education system does not need to prepare all students for a four year
college for post high school career training. Thus, the need to not do so has
been reflected in current and national workforce data. Again, it is time to
rethink how students are prepared for college and career readiness.
References:
Baum,
S., Ma, J. & Payea, K. (2013). Education Pays 2013; The benefits of higher education
for individuals and society. Washington, DC: College Board. Available at Trends.collegeboard.org/sites/default.files/education-pays-2013 full report.pdf
Howard,
T. C., Tunstall, Flennaugh, T.K.).
Expanding College Access for Urban Youth.
New
York, NY: Teachers College Press(2016).
Rowe,
C. (2016, November 6). Should we prepare all students for four year college entrance requirements only? Seattle Times, pp. A1&A3
Dr. Thomas Mosby
Executive Director for Career
pathways and Partnerships
HIghline School District
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