A schism on college readiness
Multiple paths or college focus for all?
Robert Schwartz, academic dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Kati Haycock, president of the Education Trust, are allies on most aspects of school reform, but fundamentally disagree on whether the mission of high school ought to be to prepare all students for college. Haycock says that’s an absolute; Schwartz says it’s too narrow.
“The mantra of ‘college for all’ needs to be much broader; kids need more chances for learning that are tied to careers,” said Schwartz during a debate with Haycock at the National Education Writers Association conference in “The Big Easy.” Schwartz and his colleagues at Harvard touched a nerve with some civil rights groups like Haycock’s with a report last February that questioned the wisdom of putting so much emphasis on trying to get every student into college when at most a third of U.S. jobs will require a bachelor’s degree over the next decade.
Robert Schwartz, Academic Dean of Harvard Graduate School of Education
“Four-year colleges have undue influence over what is required for all kids,” said Schwartz. “Institutions that serve less than a third should not be calling the shots for all students.” Schwartz agrees with President Obama that the emphasis for high school graduates should include boosting the number of students who earn occupational certificates and two-year community college degrees and raising completion rates for four-year colleges.
He says the way to do this is to offer more career–focused courses and programs in high schools, as many California schools already do. For students who don’t see themselves sitting through four more years of classes, these programs provide training for well-paying skilled jobs like commercial construction, nursing, and manufacturing.
Kati Haycock, President of Education Trust
Haycock says to do so would be to give up before the nation has even committed the resources, including quality teachers and preschool, that low-income and minority kids need to succeed in school. “The wonderful examples of programs in California serving poor kids are the exception, not the rule,” said Haycock. She chastised Schwartz for a double standard: “There’s always a reason to worry when prescriptions for other peoples’ children differ from prescriptions for our own children.”
They did find some common ground, agreeing that the new Common Core standards that California and 42 other states adopted will raise expectations of what students are supposed to learn. They disagree, however, on the definition of career and college readiness. Schwartz says that college readiness should be defined as preparing students for post-secondary education without the need for remediation. Expectations for all students should be the same through 10th grade – “a critical checkpoint” – after which students can pursue individualized career and college goals. He disagrees that there should be one set of classes that every student has to take, and specifically mentioned California’s A-G courses required for admission to the University of California and California State University.
Haycock insists that the core curriculum should be the same for all students for all four years of high school. “To do anything short of that is fundamentally destructive,” she said. “The goal should be to articulate a set of common standards for what all kids need to do so that they can make the choice after high school instead of us making the choice for them.”
John Fensterwald stepped away from the French Quarter to co-author this blog.
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Haycock’s organization’s goal is to promote corporate education “reform” and set public schools up for failure, and no one with common sense should be listening to her.
And regarding this quote, it’s not what she says when her reformy friends promote “no excuses” military-style charter schools that they would never in a million years inflict on their own cherished offspring:
“There’s always a reason to worry when prescriptions for other peoples’ children differ from prescriptions for our own children.”
The silliness and hypocrisy need to be called out loudly.
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I’m truly getting bored with Ed Trust, Kati Haycock, and their ilk who gave us NCLB, pushing a “one-size-fits-all” approach for not only elementary school curriculum, but high schools, as well (which, in California, translates into the UC dictated A-G coursework). Their “college for all” mantra is so utterly unconnected to our economy and students’ needs, it has become quite tired.
While admittedly elementary school students should have a common core instruction — including ELA, math, science, American and world history, civic responsibilities, geography, basic economics, art, etc. — we have to provide adolescents with broader curricular choices to keep them engaged in their educational pursuits and help foster their budding career considerations. Certainly, all high school students should be engaged in some form of career preparation, which connnects what they are learning to their life aspirations (like ever-evolving, industry-relevant, technology-rich, CTE programs).
But the “one way to win” crowd advocates for policies that squeeze-out instructional time in the day for such career preparation coursework (along with other disciplines and programs). As a direct result of their policy reform initiatives at the national level, our schools — particularly middle/secondary schools — are seeing a dangerous narrowing of curricular options provided to our adolescent students.
Why can’t we adults in the policy setting arena acknowledge the fact that there are many ways for our students to become successful, contributing citizens? And that a “one-size-for-all” approach doesn’t serve their (nor our economy’s) interests? Let’s get real about education policy.
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Fred, be careful and don’t forget that those who disagree with Haycock and her “One Way to Win” crowd are often condemned as a foe of civil rights and racial equity in the U.S. They will argue with “McCarthy-istic” righteousness and play upon social fears to marginalize opposition in order to get their way. Sad but true. Perhaps the entry of Robert Schwartz into this important debate will alter the paradigm of fear that Haycock has relied upon for so long.
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It’s an important equity issue that all students have the OPPORTUNITY to attend college, and support and encouragement — though that’s a little complicated given the staggering cost of college in the U.S., and the ongoing cuts to public higher education.
It’s either hopelessly confused or deliberately misleading to twist that into the notion that all students MUST attend college, or they and their K-12 schools and teachers are condemned as failures. And that leads to a situation where vocational/career/technical education is simply unavailable in our K-12 schools — students who want training for rewarding careers are simply on their own, outta luck.
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Well stated, Caroline. Kati and the Ed Trust regime believe in their own supreme right to dictate one universal pathway to enlightenment for all students – regardless of those students’ interests, ambitions, and goals. When does this insanity end? We currently experience a dropout rate on a nationwide basis of approximately 40% . Students are voting with their feet in reaction to a narrow, irrelevant curriculum aimed more at preserving the interests of university faculty than at meeting the needs of students enrolled in our high schools.
At what point does the Ed Trust machine quit grinding kids into the ground – when the rate is 50%? 60%? 70%? Thank you, Dr. Schwartz for having the integrity and courage to engage in this discussion.
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Isn’t it fascinating that, through multiple drafts of the National, uh, excuse me, Common Core Standards, none of us was able to get the College and Career Readiness Standards title reversed? That alone says volumes about the two entities’s, not to mention their private organizational aid’s (as in $), inputs–and values. Somehow, somewhere, in all (future fantasy) U.S. school districts, EVERY student is headed to college (probably in a place where all children are “above average” to begin with).
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Boil this down to reality based statistics & facts = WHAT PERCENTAGE OF KIDS, EVEN THOSE CAPABLE OF IT, ACTUALLY GO TO AND GRADUATE FROM COLLEGE?
Less than a third. So we design a system that abandons over 2/3 of the population to satify an unrealistic & impratical elitist goal.
MOST people dont go to college and still need a job.
Society needs far more employees in non-college based jobs.
Employers cannot fill the jobs they have with qualified applicants.
Let CTE with a base academic component be the norm and for those that can afford it and want to go, have an accessible college bound track available.
The majority should be who we cater to and the majority are not EVER going to work at a job that requires 4 year college curriculim. They need reality-based job skills along with a basic K-12 Reading, Writing, Math, Civics foundation in order to be a legitimate citizen.
Design schools to meet students/employees and employers needs in the REAL world.
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It’s striking how everyone here appears to be siding with Schwartz (I am too). This is so different from the universal agreement with Haycock’s position that I discovered when I was working at Locke High School and later with Green Dot Public Schools, and that I believed was such an effective mantra for driving up the dropout rate. After all, as Adam Smith long ago noted, when schools are perceived in their surrounding communities as providing a service of unquestioned value, they never have a shortage of students; if, on the other hand, the students believe that their school offers them nothing of value, they start skipping classes, fall behind, and are soon out. Pierre Bourdieu’s term (in translation) for dropping out, “self-exclusion”, is striking: these individual students, in their millions, decide to exclude themselves from our educational system and, thereby, from mainstream society. If the position of Schwartz emerges triumphant, I believe we will continue to have the world’s best higher education, lower unemployment, less crime, and a happier society.
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These tables from the Occupational Outlook Handbook (2010-11 Edition) published by the Department of Labor Statistics might help.
http://www.bls.gov/oco/oco2003.htm
The Occupations with the fastest growth (Table 1) and the Occupations with the largest numerical growth (Table 2) definitely demonstrate that a college degree is not going to be necessary for a huge segment of our future workforce.
I suppose kids could go to college, get their degree, and then end up working as home health aides earning minimum wage spoon-feeding and changing diapers of us aging baby boomers, but that seems like an expensive, and depressing, way to go.
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