High schools are failing to educate our students for college and careers
The debate around the mission of our nation’s high schools runs hot. Should all students take a core curriculum that prepares them to go to college if they choose? Or should some students take a lighter academic load and be trained in workforce readiness skills that will lead directly to jobs or some further post-secondary workforce training?
At The Education Trust-West, we have long argued that all students should take the minimum coursework necessary for application to our state university systems – commonly called the A-G requirements. While not every student will go to college, the choice should be theirs. Students should not be limited in their job potential because they do not have the academic skills needed for both college and good careers. In our view, the A-G requirements benefit all high school graduates no matter what post-secondary path they choose.
As part of our advocacy for “A-G for All,” we developed a set of audit tools through a series of close partnerships with school districts over the course of six years. These qualitative and quantitative tools include stakeholder focus groups, master schedule and district policy analysis, and large-scale analysis of transcripts from recent graduates — over 15,000 so far. We use the findings from our work to help local educators gain an understanding of student journeys through high school and critically examine the sources of systemwide inequities in access to and success in college-ready coursework. Our recommendations guide the development and implementation of districtwide plans for improvement. We have used these tools in nine California districts that range broadly in terms of geography, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, reaching over 1 million students.
In our latest report, Unlocking Doors and Expanding Opportunity: Moving Beyond the Limiting Reality of College and Career Readiness in California High Schools, we present the remarkably consistent and troubling set of findings from this audit work. Huge numbers of graduates, particularly low-income students and students of color, leave high school unprepared for both college and career. Many students have done little more than dabble in a smattering of poorly connected academic and career-technical courses that are not sufficiently sequenced to foster real academic or workplace skill development. For these students, a high school diploma holds little more than an empty promise of a good future. So what stands in their way?
Curricular Barriers: Many students fail to complete A-G because they are simply not enrolling in A-G courses. Most commonly, we see that students don’t have access to the necessary math, laboratory science, and world language courses. Access often varies by the socioeconomic composition of their school, with far less access to higher-level coursework such as Algebra II offered in high-poverty schools.
Tracking: We find two common tracks: college preparatory and general. In most cases, if students start high school in a non-college preparatory track, they rarely move up, even when they do very well. If they start in a college preparatory track and struggle, they tend to be dropped down into a regular track and never reappear. In all cases, low-income, African American and Latino students are disproportionally represented in the lower track while white and Asian students are disproportionally represented in college preparatory, AP (Advanced Placement), and honors classes.
Grading Practices: School-level grading practices have a major impact on students’ ability to achieve UC/CSU eligibility. One D or F grade in a single course can prevent a student from completing the A-G sequence. Our partner districts displayed a broad variation in grading practices, with few consistent standards in place for assigning grades. Further, we consistently found insufficient opportunities to remediate D grades in order to maintain A-G eligibility. In one district, over 1,500 students failed to complete the A-G sequence because of one D or F grade during their high school career.
Few Systematic Interventions: In order to prevent students from falling behind or failing, schools and districts must offer targeted, structured intervention opportunities. Unfortunately, most schools we audited offered few interventions or embedded streamlined credit recovery in the master schedule. For example, students who fail a course required for graduation will often simply repeat the same class two or three times before passing instead of being placed in an accelerated program that would better meet their individualized needs. These serial repeaters are often found in Algebra I. When these students finally pass the Algebra coursework, they are often dropped into less rigorous math classes to complete the credits required for graduation. Even when credit recovery is available, students are often not placed into these streamlined courses until their senior year.
Lack of Senior-Year Rigor: We found a consistent lack of senior-year rigor for many students. For example, college-bound students who have passed the core requirements often fail to enroll in a challenging course load, even though research indicates that students are more likely to excel and persist in college when they take rigorous capstone classes as seniors. The same holds true for non-college-bound students. Often their requirements for graduation are so minimal that students have almost nothing left to take, resulting in schedules primarily composed of “filler” classes.
Inadequate Articulation Between School Levels: In most cases, districts fail to provide a clear articulation between elementary, middle, and high school levels. They rarely invest resources in areas such as curriculum mapping and standards alignment. Districts consistently fail to share high school data – such as student achievement, attendance, and attainment information – with middle and elementary school leaders. Without this information it is impossible for principals to collectively identify and target student areas of need in core academic areas such as English and math that are the key to accessing the higher-level coursework necessary for college and career readiness. Few provide Latino, African American, and low-income students who are academically ready with the advanced coursework in middle school necessary to pursue high-level coursework in high school, including Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) courses and dual enrollment opportunities.
Master Schedule Barriers: Master schedules drive the instructional opportunities available to students. In the districts we studied, master schedules are often constructed in ways that limit rather than expand opportunities. For example, students can be scheduled into courses that prevent them from accessing an AP class that may only be offered once during the day. Struggling students are typically placed in the largest classes with novice teachers.
Poorly Defined Career-Technical Preparation: Rather than completing a sequential series of courses within one industry sector (e.g., Media and Design) that results in a certificate or acknowledgement of pathway completion, students tend to enroll in a series of disconnected CTE classes. Students of color and low-income students are more likely than other students to take career-technical education classes.
After working with these nine districts, I have been shocked by the consistency of these findings. Is it any wonder that our graduates are largely underprepared for post-secondary success?
Fortunately, there is hope for change. Recently, I have been encouraged by the momentum of reform initiatives such as the Linked Learning model and the Common Core. These initiatives provoke critical conversations at both the state and local levels about how to systemically remove the barriers that prevent so many of our students from fulfilling their college and career dreams.
I am also encouraged by the commitment of the district and school leaders we have worked with who addressed our findings and used our recommendations to transform their high schools so that all of their students have the opportunity and choice to attend college. The power of this work is the reason why I’ve written a book, Diploma Matters, to be released Aug. 2. This book is a tool for educators working to ensure that students of all backgrounds have access to a rigorous course of study that prepares them for college and career.
In the end, the need for change is compelling and clear. Our high schools must produce graduates who can meet the demands of the global economy. This means ensuring that all students are graduating with the college-level academic preparation and the real-world skills demanded by our colleges, universities, and employers.
Linda Murray is Superintendent-in-Residence for The Education Trust-West (ETW) and has led ETW’s work to ensure that all California graduates are college and career ready. Prior to joining ETW, Linda served as Superintendent for the San Jose Unified School District for 11 years. In 1998, under her leadership, the district raised its graduation requirements to meet the UC/CSU entrance requirements. Since then, the district has demonstrated successes, particularly for poor students and students of color.
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SVEF is the education foundation advocating for the needs of school districts across Silicon Valley. SVEF seeks to improve public education through establishing partnerships with the private sector and the education community ..
Ah, Linda … where to begin? There are so many incorrect assertions in this piece, it would take me as much space as her blog-article to refute them. So just a couple of points:
1. “While not every student will go to college, the choice should be theirs” — So how does forcing every high school student to take-and-pass (with a grade of “C” or better to qualify for CSU/UC admissions) Algebra I, Geometry, and Trig/Alg II provide students who struggle with decontextualized, theoritical math a “choice”? The surest way of predicting whether a student will fail Algebra is whether they failed it the first time they took it (in San Diego, where they mandated all freshmen to take Alg I, 98% of those retaking it failed the second time around, so they discontinued that brain-dead mandate). Why not provide students real choice with relevant, alternative math courses, including Business Math, Drafting, Computer Technology (Microsoft Excel), etc? Answer: because the dominant culture have decided such contextualized courses are not as valuable as theoritical math classes, simply because they do not qualify for A-G admissions. So let’s turn our high school curriculum over to the Ivory Tower elites … that should help reduce our dropout crisis.
2. “Students of color and low-income students are more likely than other students to take career-technical education classes” — I am so tired of this Racial Tracking of CTE argument; the facts flatly contradict this assertion. In Dr. Gary Hoachlander’s 1991 nation-wide study of Voc Ed enrollment from 1969-1987, he found that the only two racial groups that had a slight (almost negligble) disproportionate representation in Voc Ed were Whites and Native Americans. So stop playing the race card against CTE … it’s tired, untrue and cynical.
3. “Our high schools must produce graduates who can meet the demands of the global economy. This means ensuring that all students are graduating with the college-level academic preparation …” — Sorry, but A-G course completion is not synonomous with “college-level academic preparation,” as evidenced by the nearly 50% remedial rates of incoming CSU freshmen in ELA/Math (all of whom successfully completed the A-G coursework with, on average, B+ averages). So A-G is far from the academic Holy Grail that so many elites in California blindly pay their allegiance to … and how many students forced into such coursework will be disallusioned and spurn high school altogether? The adults leading the education reform dialogue need to get real about their ideas and policy recommendations, else we risk witnessing even more secondary students vote with their feet by simply dropping out.
Doing more of the same and expecting different results is a prescription for madness.
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The biggest omission I see in this piece is an acknowledgement that students have a role. You cannot stuff an unwilling teenager through the A-G requirements; they have to have some personal motivation to succeed as well.
‘Interventions’ is vague and may be addressing that, but also kids benefit from role models and a sense of importance of academic success for and from their community. Somehow, it has to be important to the student; the rest is far easier.
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Fred,
Thank you, thank you, thank you…for reporting the rarely explained truths behind Linda Murray’s overview. It is one thing to help make A-G coursework available to those students (and their parents/guardians) who want to enroll in such a sequence. It is another thing to attempt to mandate A-G for all, as some very well-meaning individuals and groups have been doing for a number of years now. More insidious are those districts who force A-G, with a parental/guardian opt out provision, too often misunderstood, or little utilized. Most damagingly, perhaps, is the fact that so many in education have not looked closely at current brain research and what we already know about age readiness to learn in various curricular areas. The asserti0n that “all students can learn” has somehow morphed into “therefore all students can perform well in A-G coursework.” Unfortunately, as Fred pointed out, the “race card” is often being played, making the (seeming) ”right” to an A-G curriculum a civil rights issue, which it is not.
Whether it be high school or college curricula, wouldn’t it make the most sense to help students and their parents/guardians determine 1) the students’ vocational aptitudes/interests at given times, 2) job needs/earnings/opportunities, based upon future projections of the labor market, and 3), an “untracked” (i.e., flexibility within) sequence of courses that students could take to complete high school AND/OR access one of the three California institutions of higher learning? The goal, long-range or short, should be upon students arriving at “career employment,” as indicated by California’s Constitution (and not, by the way, the Common Core State Standards’ backwards, “College-And Career-ready Standards”).
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Try operating in reality, not elitist academic theory land. Most kids dont even graduate from HS much less go to college and most of those who do go to college dont graduate. I have a Phd, so I’d be biased towards college but the REALITY is that most kids cant and wont even try college. At the same time we do not have enough qualified workers for CTE based jobs, while worthy candidates for those jobs go unemployed ending up in prison or welfare because polyanna-esqe academicians (and stingy short-sighted politicians) wont provide CTE for the vast majority of students who want it and need it. Wake up!
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What’s even worse is that our high schools are failing to prepare drop-outs for unemployment!
(A nod to The Onion there and, of course, the ever present “crisis in the schools!” narrative that drives the “reforminess” -think Colbert’s truthiness-cottage industry.)
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Great post, Fred.
I’ve been the parent of high schoolers since 2005. Kids need flexibility to succeed — the most challenged kids need the most flexibility — not more rigid rules.
Education Trust-West is engaging in extreme magical thinking.
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As a former business math teacher, my students learned about the real world and were able to apply algebraic principles which they understood. Most of my students recommended business math to their peers as a great math class that prepared them very well for not only business, but personal survival.
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@Gary… lol!
I suspect our high schools are failing to prepare their graduates for unemployment, too, sadly.
For all the talk about college: most jobs requiring college can be outsourced ,but plumbers and mechanics will always be needed locally.
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My perspective is as both an IB Philosophy and Business Math teacher, so I think I am working with both ends of the A-G spectrum. My eternal mantra is that A-G success is in the main determined before High School even begins, as academic deficits and lack of social and cultural capital assure that tracking occurs in the name of efficiency. Add to this the three decade long defunding of CA public education (shop classes taught my masters have gone largely dark,and funds for remediation increasingly scarce, etc) and you have a simple, enduring calculus that ” them that has, gets”. I have no easy solution for this defunding trend absent the ” burn it all down and start over” approach, which denies reality.
I compliment Superintendent Murray for her hard headed analysis and its long term view, and also Fred Jones for a clear-eyed rejoinder. I would bet that Jones has spent many a year in the trenches and Murray has been an active witness of these kinds of struggles. I would challenge both, however, to construct hypotheses exactly as to what we might mean when we speak of ” African American and Hispanic” and ” Asian and White ” since these descriptors are always invoked as if they were indirectly causative. We have spent these defunded decades almost always using them as if them were somehow determinative of outcomes in a society that was once but is not longer institutionally racist. What exactly is these role of these ethnographic categories in learning outcomes? If we cannot build a concrete hypothesis we should desist from their use, an instead, perhaps, turn our attention instead to psychographic descriptors…
Anyway to all; keep up the fight since everything is at stake.
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Thanks Linda for trying to improve the school standards and open higher ed to more students who have been excluded because counselors think they know what the student will be doing in 20 years. Your’s is a worthy effort with some success in sight. I’m all for training kids for non-college occupations but that is not incompatible with preparing them for higher education. A few years in the work world often is the best motivator to get more training. Many fields with decent pay are now technical enough that some number of years of post-HS training is necessary.
I think the comments earlier show how little faith many educators have in the ability of students. The Japanese academic standards are quite high, they regularly eat our lunch in international tests and their poverty rate is 15% vs our 12% but they still graduate 95% of their students while we graduate 77%. There are doubtless those who can not deal with higher math but they are far fewer than the current education establishment believes. A math and English class that emphasized practical applications could still cover the A-G curriculum while keeping the interest of those who need to see the relevance. One teacher brought in the test to become a carpenter to show her students how much math is required in ordinary occupations. More of that might help keep kids in school.
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Ed Trust-West continues to do an outstanding job of focusing our attention on gaps in average achievement among different subgroups of students. The future well-being of all Californians depends crucially on closing these gaps.
There is a high correlation between parental education levels and positive student outcomes, and parents of African American and Latino children tend to have completed fewer years of education, on average, than parents of children in other subgroups. The Ed Trust-West report does not provide evidence that African American, Latino students are less likely to complete A-G courses conditional on their middle-school test scores, grades, and attendance. The gaps in A-G course-taking and course-completion may have less to do with explicit or implicit racial discrimination on the part of high schools, and more to do with average differences in achievement among students at the time they begin high school.
Average achievement gaps among student subgroups are evident in 2nd grade, the first year students are tested in California, and these gaps persist. California must do more much to invest in high-quality programs to better prepare “at-risk” children before they enter kindergarten and to close achievement gaps in the early grades. Pushing students into courses for which they are not prepared—for example, enrolling a student who has not completed algebra in a chemistry course that requires mastery of algebra—could be counterproductive. Students who are not prepared for such a class could become frustrated and drop out, a far worse outcome than graduating from high school not prepared for college.
If the state is to meet its future workforce needs, sustain economic growth over the long term, and maintain—if not improve—the quality of life Californians have grown to expect, it must do much more to close the achievement gap. The best way to accomplish this goal is to invest more in the early years of a child’s life.
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It’s either dishonest or uninformed to compare the Japanese high school grad rate with the U.S. high school grad rate. Japanese students are tracked at an early age onto vocational and college prep, and vocational students may graduate after the equivalent of — yes — EIGHTH GRADE. The two systems are utterly non-comparable – not just apples and oranges, but different universes. You can’t compare them — it simply can’t be done.
If you didn’t know that you prior to this that you were giving false information, now you know it, so stop it now, Michael G., and in the future, triple-check your facts before you pontificate.
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