College and career readiness: broadly accepted, narrowly defined by Kelly Griffith

With the recent adoption of the Common Core Standards (CCS) by the vast majority of states, college and career readiness has become a common discussion topic in education circles.  This discussion often centers around questions about the quality of the standards, the efforts at implementation that are happening in the states, or whether the standards themselves will lead to gains in student achievement.  The definition of “college and career readiness” has not been widely debated or questioned.  College and career readiness is not one definable or testable thing.  The skills that students need in order to be prepared for college and career are not strictly academic, nor are they strictly based upon their achievement in English language arts and math.  Over the past two decades, our focus on these subjects alone, through a system of assessments and high-stakes accountability, has resulted in a narrowed curriculum across the country and in return, developed students who can take tests, but cannot think critically, solve everyday problems, or make everyday decisions.

Without question, language and math skills are integral; these skills provide a foundation that is necessary for learning in other areas.  A person will be hard pressed to succeed as a carpenter or physicist without a grasp of mathematical concepts; whether you are reading an instructional manual or a literature review, comprehension of the material is important.  These skills may be necessary but they alone will not give students the “21^st century skills” coveted in today’s job market or those necessary to successfully transition to college.

The partnership for 21^st Century Skills, a national organization that advocates for 21^st century readiness for every student and one of the many endorsers of the Common Core, believes that “… students must also learn the essential skills for success in today’s world, such as critical thinking, problem solving, communication, and collaboration.”¹  Additional skills listed by the partnership include flexibility and adaptability, initiative and self-direction, and creativity and innovation.  They advocate that these, and other, skills should be developed through the teaching of core academic subjects including English, reading or language arts, and math, but also world languages, arts, economics, science, geography, history, government, and civics.  These skills, and the idea of teaching them within a variety of subject areas makes sense, but they will not be developed if the emphasis of policymakers remains on standards, assessments, and accountability.

Today’s high school graduates, over 70% of whom will enter some form of post-secondary institution, have always been a part of the high-stakes testing movement.  Often referred to as millennial students, they have some key commonalities and one particular commonality can be traced to standardized testing.  These students have been taught skills that help them be good test takers, often placing emphasis on rote learning and passing the test to the detriment of critical thinking skills.  They also rely on parents, teachers, and advisors to give them answers to both academic and life problems without being challenged to solve the problem themselves.  They rely more on technology to communicate with each other then struggle in face-to-face communication. ² While further study may be necessary to show a causal link between high stakes testing and the poor problem solving, critical thinking, and verbal communication skills of today’s youth, it is certainly plausible that they are related.

Whatever one’s definition of the purpose of education, even if it is strictly preparation for future career, it is clear that competency beyond these narrow skills is necessary.

Under the CCS, the emphasis continues to be on reading and math skill development.  There will still be assessments, though it seems the two assessment consortia (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers [PARCC] and Smarter Balanced) will include more formative forms, and there will still be accountability, though it is likely this will be at the state level.  Instead of holding schools responsible for students’ reading and math proficiency, schools will be accountable for students’ level of “college and career readiness,” narrowly defined as the skills students need to enter college without remedial coursework in English and math.

Whatever one’s definition of the purpose of education, even if it is strictly preparation for future career, it is clear that competency beyond these narrow skills is necessary. For example, in order to develop the knowledge necessary to be an informed citizen who participates in the democratic process and a global economy.  I would argue that one might require knowledge of history, government, and economics.  You may believe that history is a subject that schools would not consider cutting, but the combined pressure of shrinking budgets and accountability measures can leave school leaders with difficult decisions to make.

Decisions are particularly difficult when funding is tied to student performance.  In any institution, people will pay the closest attention to the measures they will be evaluated on, often to the detriment of others.  In schools, this leads to a focus on English and math.  In fact, a school district in Allentown, Pennsylvania provides an example.  The district has proposed doing away with history courses in the 6^th grade, a grade where student’s math scores have often tanked, in order to increase instructional time in math.  History texts will instead be used in English courses in order to expose students to historical content.³  A similar proposal, which would have taken history out of all middle-school classrooms, was voted down just last year in the district.  This is just one example of the way pressures to meet accountability measures have led districts to narrow the curriculum across the country.

My prediction, without a complete rethinking of standards-based reform, is that CCS will result in much of the same.  There are some promising developments recently, such as the movement toward more formative assessments and the NCLB waivers, but overall CCS seems to be cut from the same cloth as past standards-based reforms.  If we want true improvement in our schools, particularly for the low-income and underrepresented students who need it the most, we will need to not only challenge them with higher standards, but also provide the support and pedagogy necessary to help them develop not only the skills to pass a test, but also the skills to develop 21^st century skills.

¹ Partnership for 21^st Century Learning, (n.d.). Framework for 21^st Century Learning. Retrieved from www.p21.org/overview on April 23, 2012.

²  Elam, C., Stratton, T. & Gibson, D. (2007). Welcoming a new generation to college: the millennial students.  Journal of College Admission. Spring 2007.  Retrieved from eric.ed.gov/PDFS/EJ783953.pdf on April 23, 2012.

3 Esack, S. (April 13, 2012). Allentown school district could ax 6^th grade social studies classes.  The Morning Call. Lehigh Valley’s Newspaper.  Retrieved from http://articles.mcall.com/2012-04-13/news/mc-allentown-schools-history-20120413_1_social-studies-sixth-grade