Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Understanding College
and Career Readiness
1
2 Supporting the Dream
Students who are ready for college and career can qualify for
and succeed in entry-level, credit-bearing college courses
leading to a baccalaureate degree, a certificate, or career path-
way-oriented training programs, without the need for reme-
dial or developmental course work. They can complete such
entry-level, credit-bearing courses at a level that enables them
to continue in the major or program of study they have chosen.
(Conley, 2013, p. 51)
the students who need help the most and provide them with the
educational, motivational, psychological, and behavioral supports to
lay the groundwork for successful adulthood. Each system has its own
ways of helping students, but there is little that spans systems, and
for students who attend more than one postsecondary institution—
the vast majority of students in college—they are usually on their
own to navigate, often by reaching out to extremely understaffed
student services offices.
Fast forward to today and “college and career readiness” are
mantras in states across the country and in the nation’s capital. The
Common Core State Standards (Common Core) were adopted in most
states. The rhetoric of today often risks masking the core reasons for
the efforts and the difficulties in making success after high school a
reality for traditionally underserved students. Backlashes against the
Common Core are growing, and the original hope of the “K–16 reform
movement” could be lost if educational
reform efforts shift focus to another issue.
The rhetoric of today often risks
In response to research about dis-
masking the core reasons for
connected systems and to political pres-
the efforts and the difficulties
sure and many grant opportunities that
in making success after high
require the development of cross-system
school a reality for traditionally
governance entities, regional and local
underserved students.
P–16 councils have sprouted up across
the country. P–16 councils are collabora-
tive teams that are formed to create a unified educational system from
preschool through postsecondary education or to focus on a key issue
or issues related to high school-to-college transitions. These councils
usually focus on issues related to college and career readiness, such
as counseling and supports, curricular alignment, and workforce
preparation” (Moore, Venezia, & Lewis, 2015).
Ensuring that the local partnerships spur reforms that affect
students’ lives and are not just forums for people to update each other
about their respective systems’ efforts is the focus of this book. A key
issue here is that the experiences and expectations in K–12 must educa-
tion be directly connected—or scaffolded,
to use the language of educators—to
Ensuring that the local
expectations in postsecondary education
partnerships spur reforms that
and in the workforce.
affect students’ lives and are not
Connecting to workforce needs is not
just forums for people to update
meant to imply that students should get
each other about their respective
educated just to become workers or that
systems’ efforts is the focus of
students should be in different curricu-
this book.
lar tracks that relegate some students to
Understanding College and Career Readiness 5
lucrative and flexible careers and others to minimum wage for life.
We are strong supporters of (and have each benefitted from) excel-
lent liberal arts education in high school and college. If liberal arts
training—the abilities to think critically, analyze information, ques-
tion assumptions, synthesize ideas, and so forth—is lost in a race to
provide technical training too early, we believe that we will be left
intellectually poorer, and the risks regarding tracking traditionally
underserved students into old forms of vocational education are
large. At the same time, it is clear that many students are not engaged
by traditional approaches and that promising hybrids that infuse
technical knowledge and experiences with strong abilities to think,
analyze, synthesize, and so forth are being developed to create high-
level, applied, learning opportunities for all students. Those experi-
ences must be personalized; they are dependent on students’ interests
and educational strengths and weaknesses. Such efforts can be seen in
California’s Linked Learning and Career Pathways Trust initiatives,
in Chicago’s and New York’s P-TECH schools, in Jobs for the Future’s
Pathways to Prosperity initiative, and many others across the country.
So what does this all mean in the context of this book? This book
sits squarely in the center of these tough conversations that focus on
some of the hardest educational issues in our country—issues around
the meaning of public education, about access and equity, and about
relationships between K–12 and postsecondary education.
If readers take nothing else from this book, we hope that educators at all
levels understand that working together across systems is not merely a
technical issue that can be completed successfully by using specific tools
and strategies or by meeting around a table together once or twice a month.
This is also not simply about aligning policies at the state level or all getting
on the same page about expectations at the national level.
While those efforts can help send clear signals and create coherent
policy environments, this is about doing good work collaboratively
and collectively across systems locally and regionally. This book is for
the individuals that work directly with students on a daily basis—the
people who have the power to transform individual students’ lives.
The work to connect systems is often more challenging than it seems
like it should be, with different terminology, incentive structures, fund-
ing streams, politics, and so forth. Few people are paid to wake up in
the morning and think about how to connect educational systems, and
most of us are not explicitly rewarded, professionally, for doing so.
6 Supporting the Dream
Rationale
During a college readiness workshop sponsored by the California
Community College Chancellor’s Office in 2011, a group of commu-
nity college admissions counselors gathered to discuss college and
career readiness issues. One counselor from a Northern California
community college shared a story that resonated with the partici-
pants. She described a recent meeting she had with a new student and
the student’s parents. The parents started the meeting by describing
how proud they were of their daughter. She was the first person in
their family to attend college. They had requested the meeting with
the college admissions counselor because they were confused by the
placement test score information the daughter had received. They
had many questions, such as the following: What are placement tests?
What is developmental education? Why do they have to pay for the
developmental education courses since their daughter would not
receive credit toward her two-year degree? The parents left the meet-
ing upset. Their daughter had worked very hard in high school,
passed all of her classes, and met all of her graduation requirements.
The family kept asking, “What did we do wrong?”
Lack of academic preparedness for college is a stark reality nation-
wide. About 60 percent of students entering two-year colleges and
nearly 20 percent of those entering four-year universities are placed
in remedial courses (Bailey & Cho 2010), but it is hard to get accurate
8 Supporting the Dream
Table 1.1 S
kill Deficiencies of New Workforce Entrants for High
School Graduates
Percentage of Employer
Skill Deficiencies Respondents
Written Communications 81
Professionalism/Work Ethic 70
Critical Thinking/Problem Solving 70
Oral Communications 53
Ethics/Social Responsibility 44
Reading Comprehension 38
Teamwork/Collaboration 35
Diversity 28
Information Technology Application 22
English Language 21
For African American candidates, 39 percent did not qualify, and for
Latino candidates, the rate of ineligibility was 29 percent (Offenstein,
Moore, & Shulock, 2010).
success after high school are consistent with the experiences of many
tech whizzes—to support individualized and high levels of inquiry,
innovation, creativity, motivation, and resiliency.
For most students graduating from high school now, a diploma
simply does not afford the same opportunities it did up until the end
of the 20th century. Most professions, particularly those offering clear
advancement opportunities, require some formal training beyond
high school. Workers can no longer learn a single skill set and expect to
secure lifetime employment relying solely on that same skill set at a life-
sustaining wage. Research predicts that by 2018, 63 percent of all jobs
in the United States will require some postsecondary education, and 90
percent of new jobs in growing industries with high wages will require
some postsecondary education (Carnevale, Smith, & Strohl, 2010). This
reality does not mean that every high school graduate should complete
four years of college. What it does indi-
cate is that stopping at high school is not
Workers can no longer learn
sufficient to ensure access to a career with
a single skill set and expect to
a family-sustaining wage.
secure lifetime employment
Not only are future job prospects tied
relying solely on that same skill
to a higher skilled workforce, current job
set at a life-sustaining wage.
opportunities are also linked to levels of
training. For example, one study found
that from 2006 to 2011, only 3 in 10 recent high school graduates were
employed full time, compared to college graduates who are employed
at nearly twice that rate (Van Horn, Zukin, Szeltner, & Stone, 2012).
From the start of the Great Recession in 2007 through 2012, people
with bachelor’s degrees gained over two million jobs. Those with an
associate degree or some college emerged from the recession with
almost the same number of jobs available as at the beginning. The
group experiencing the most devastating job losses were those for
workers with a high school diploma or less, losing almost six mil-
lion jobs during that time period with no sign of recovery (Carnevale,
Jayasundera, & Cheah, 2012). Over the past three decades, all of
the net job growth in America has been generated by positions that
require at least some postsecondary education (Symonds et al., 2011).
In addition to increased opportunities, increased education, on
average, translates to higher earnings. The Georgetown University
Center on Education and the Workforce, in the report entitled “The
College Payoff” (Carnevale, Rose, & Cheah, 2011), examined lifetime
earnings for all education levels and earnings by occupation, age,
race/ethnicity, and gender. The results were clear: a college degree is
key to economic opportunity, conferring substantially higher earnings
Understanding College and Career Readiness 11
Figure 1.1 M
edian Lifetime Earnings by Highest Educational Attainment,
2009 Dollars
$3,648,000.00
3,252,000.00
$2,671,000.00
$2,268,000.00
$1,727,000.00
$1,547,000.00
$1,304,000.00
$973,000.00
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exist on the first day of the same year. To succeed in that kind of mar-
ketplace, U.S. firms need employees who are flexible, knowledgeable,
and scientifically and mathematically literate (National Leadership
Council for Liberal Education and America’s Promise, 2007). The chal-
lenge for U.S. education, at all levels, is to prepare students to be able
to keep up with this frenetic and unpredictable world and economy,
in addition to sustaining the education of students who receive solid
training in liberal arts fields. In the words of Andreas Schleicher, the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
Education Directorate, “Schools have to prepare students for jobs that
have not yet been created, technologies that have not yet been invented
and problems that we don’t know will arise” (2010). This is often a
critical challenge for localities and regions—to utilize notoriously
unreliable labor market forecasting data to inform the development of
curricular pathways and school/postsecondary-based applied learn-
ing opportunities (see Chapter 4 for additional discussion).
No Child Left Behind went into effect for the 2002–03 academic
year, which means that America’s public schools have been
operating under the pressures and constrictions imposed by that
law for a decade. . . . Please do not blame those of us in public
schools for how unprepared for higher education the students
arriving at your institutions are. We have very little say in what
is happening to public education. Even the most distinguished
and honored among us have trouble getting our voices heard in
the discussion about educational policy. (Bernstein, 2013)
SUMMARY
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS