A report released last week from The Education Trust found that the vast majority of America’s high-school graduates still leave school unprepared for either postsecondary education or a career, despite increased attention on the “college and career readiness” catch phrase. “Meandering Toward Graduation: Transcript Outcomes of High School Graduates” examined transcript data from the High School Longitudinal Study for students who were in the ninth grade in 2009 and expected to graduate in 2013, and found “a giant gulf between that rhetoric and the reality of today’s high school graduates.”
The study provides answers to the questions:
- How many of our young people are completing a full college- and career-prep curriculum?
- How many also have grades that show evidence of mastery?
- And how do those patterns differ by race and socioeconomic status as well as students’ own aspirations?
Students in the study were classified into four categories based on the courses they completed during high school: college-prep curriculum, career-prep curriculum, college- and career-prep curriculum, and no cohesive curriculum. The career-prep curriculum was defined as three CTE courses in the same field, and the college-prep curriculum was defined as four English courses, three math courses with Algebra II, three science courses including biology and chemistry or physics, three social studies courses including U.S. or world history, and two courses in a foreign language.
The results were staggering, with almost half of all students (47%) in the study falling into the no cohesive curriculum category. Thirteen percent of students achieved a career-ready curriculum, 31 percent achieved a college-ready curriculum, and only 8 percent achieved both. The results were even worse for low-income students.
“Rather than aligning high school coursework with students’ future goals, high schools are prioritizing credit accrual, which treats high school graduation as the end goal,” the study suggests. “College and career readiness is still a new expectation that will require significant change to school structures, culture, and instruction to prepare students for postsecondary study aligned with their interests.”
To help increase the number of students who more carefully plan their high school experience the report makes a number of recommendations, including more career guidance, defined career pathways, secondary-postsecondary alignment, and more CTE and academic integration.
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