Are you ready?
Posted by Stephen Smith on August 12, 2010 at 10:22 am
After nearly a decade of focusing on Adequate Yearly Progress as defined in No Child Left Behind, it seems likely that U.S. schools will soon be judged by a new metric — college and career readiness for all students.
This shift is driven in part by some compelling data about the importance of post-secondary education for economic competitiveness as well as the gaps in our current preparation:
- The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce found that 62% of new and replacement jobs in the U.S. will require at least some college by 2018
- The U.S. Census Bureau reported in 2009 that college graduates earn 83% more per year on average than high school graduates
- According to ACT, only 23% of 2009 high school graduates met college readiness benchmarks in English, math, reading, and science
Following the release of the hallmark A Nation at Risk report (1983), there has been widespread and sustained public support for the U.S. education system to produce more globally competitive students — our nation was falling behind, the report indicated. The resulting state standards movement in the 1990s (e.g., Goals 2000) and the assessment and accountability movement in the first decade of the twenty-first century (e.g., No Child Left Behind) created the conditions for national alignment and increased rigor of academic standards and assessments for all students regardless of the state in which they live.
The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) has begun to drive this alignment and increased rigor both with the recent issuance of the Common Core Standards, which 48 states now support, and the $350 million allocation of Race to the Top funding to support national student assessments aligned with the Common Core Standards. Significant to this alignment is the definition of the ultimate outcome: college and career ready graduates.
The Common Core Standards are, as the DOE states, to introduce increased rigor and relevancy so that all high school graduates are college and career ready.
The Department of Education may define desired student outcomes and the criteria by which these outcomes are measured, but states and local school districts must devise and implement strategies for achieving these outcomes. States and school districts must prepare for significant realignment of their education systems and processes. This alignment will reach into all core educational processes. Curriculum, assessment, instruction, professional development, and teacher evaluation, to name a few, will require a re-examination and potential calibration to produce college and career ready students.
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