Engaging the business community is a step in the right direction to infuse vigor in the Education system. But experience time and again reveals that just this may not be sufficient.Often when ‘engagement of the business community’, helps in addressing short term requirements, there need to be a combination of other efforts including implementation of research findings to improve an individual’s capability to effectively convert education to a life long tool of sustenance. It would also be imperative that the community as a whole-government, educators, industry and the local community-get involved in efforts to move education as society’s number one priority- more than even food and housing.

Symonds and Schwartz have identified the concern of mine that has existed for several years working directly with schools in our state. Education tends to tinker around the edges of change. Symonds is correct, in my view, that there needs to be a dramatic redesign in the K-12 system as well as in the postsecondary four year system expectations of secondary. The Pathways to Prosperity position of multiple pathways has merit and needs support. In fact, our statewide K-20 reform was called Pathways to Prospertiy which is centered in state legislation to build a K-20 seamless system with multiple options. Symonds and Schwartz expand the multiple options for students. Business leadership needs to be at the table, and the business community played a mjor role in the education reform in our state. They can be a major supporter for legislative change.

Educators in K-12 have known all along that college is not meant for everyone, and educators have been promoting this philosophy for decades. Unfortunately, the “College for All” mentality has been propagated by politicians more concerned about having a feather in their state’s cap and do not realize the negative impact such an educational system has on students who do not learn well in a lecture style setting, typically found in college. Additionally, parents are reluctant to give up the “dreams” of their children going to college simply for the status symbol, not realizing that sustainable and highly paid jobs are attainable via vocational training and work-study programs. Also, tracking is not a “bad word.” Tracking is a measurable way of moving a child through the educational system to a meaningful goal beyond graduation: college, vocational training, military, low-skill employment, etc. . .As long as there are “test out” or “performance-out” options in place to allow for a student to progress through his planned K-12 educational track with flexibility to allow for the maturity that comes to some students late in the game, such tracking will be more beneficial than not tracking a student at all. Trust me, we are asking too many people who are not in a classroom for help. Let’s put the researchers, business leaders, industry leaders, and classroom teachers TOGETHER in a room without the media, politicians, and utopian idealists, and you will see true educational reform that will benefit this nation. We are not created intellectually equal, but we are created with the potential to contribute with equal importance to our nation’s economy, growth, and presence in the world.

Was it 20 or 30 years ago we ended “tracking” and vocational education programs because it discriminated against lower achieving students?
As a retired teacher I’d love for all the ivory tower and administrative types to let the teachers work with students to determine what’s best for them.
But until we get the parents interested in their student’s success change will be difficult.

I would only like to address one thing, being and educator in inner city NYC, we had “vocational high schools” that gave students who were not college bound and opportunity to learn real world work skills. But, it became a issue with being a dumping ground for low performing students and even had some issues with racial profiling. But, it worked! So a new idea? This what educators in he field have known for decades, not all students are bound for college but, all students should have different roads to travel in oder to succeed as adults.

Thank goodness someone agrees with me and my book College Is Not for Everyone. I now have taken my thinking to another level. We need a serious battery of vocational tests given to students at about the 7th grade. They should be individualized tests not group tests. The same kind of tests they give to potential employees for industry. Those tests would emphasize manual dexterity, physical strength, mechanical aptitude, spacial reasoning, artistic ability, manual coordination, etc. , etc. The tests would only measure basic arithmetic, reading and writing. This would be very expensive but if we really value each student as our most important resource and employment for all this would be a logical place to start in true innovation of schools.
Lou Rosen, Ph.D.
Author College Is Not for Everyone

Those of us who for many, many years have been involved with and advocating a “school to work/career,” and “career academy-career guidance” approach in seconday education are just nodding our heads today saying this report is precisely what we have been saying, despite so often falling on deaf ears. Don’t we recall the remarkably insightful PBS presentation in 1995 by Hedrick Smith called PATHWAYS TO SUCCESS? Perhaps, just perhaps, this new report from prestigious Harvard will receive enough attention and impetus to get accomplished what so many of us educators know is urgent and vital.
Charles N. Johnson, Ph.D.
Tyler Junior College, Texas

As a vocational educator, I can tell you that the answer is not with the community colleges nor any other governmental entity. The answer lies with the current private postseconday career college industry which is doing a great job already. This is the industry that the government educators love to ignore. Just get out of our way and off of our backs. We have plenty of regulatory burden and accreditation entities. We can, and are, creating taxpayers! David Leon Cooper, MS (Ed Adm)

I agree with the idea of college NOT being the path for all students; however, ALL students (no matter the color of their skin or the amount of money in their bank account) should know that college is an option. As educators, it is our primary responsibility to provide students with a quality education–reaching them before teaching them. Because there are some educators who find pleasure in slamming the door to success in the face of certain students, I fear what will happen to students whose college or “un-college” future is based on a teacher’s observations and/or recommendation. It is imperative that we communicate to ALL students that college is possible them. College IS an Option!!

as an educator I have been saying this for years. But someone needs to tell the powers that be in the U.S. education system because my understanding is that a new mandate is coming down that will make our education system even more “one size fits all”. Some kids aren’t going to college and they need to be prepared for the workforce. If truth be told most educators do not know how to teach in this manner we need training. Most of us are trained to prepare students to pursue a 4 year degree. “The No Child Left Behind”(one size fits all) education system is not working for our students or our society, but no one is listening to the class room teachers.

In a way it is disheartening to see the statement “At the heart of the project is discovering new ways for the system to help prepare young adults for the workforce”.
What comes to mind is Tech Prep. Tech Prep has been around since the 80′s.
http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ovae/pi/cte/tpreptopic2.html
I was involved in the Tech Prep 2+2+2 program (two years of secondary, two years of postsecondary, two years advanced postsecondary education) designed to encourage students to go into a specific career field called Biomedical Equipment Technology (installing, repairing, managing and evaluating medical equipment). Each +2 is considered a potential exit point into the workforce. It obviously hasn’t been very effective since it was designed to do exactly what the Pathways to Prosperity conference participants want done yet it wasn’t even mentioned. It has faded away in my area for many reasons, too many to list here. However, the most prominent impediment was that parents, teachers, guidance counselors, administrators, and academically successful students believed that technical education was for low functioning students and would not lead to what would be considered a desirable career, even when presented with evidence to the contrary. I agree that industry should be involved but they don’t always have the best interest of the students in mind, many want worker bees with a very specific skill set. I saw companies come into community colleges and universities and basically cherry pick what courses they wanted students to take out of an established curriculum that would get students through classes faster, only to pull out once they got all the workers they needed. The problem with this model is that once those jobs change, go overseas or disappear for any reason those students aren’t really of any value to the company and few are promoted or chosen to be retrained. I was also involved with the Cisco academies and have gone to their educational conferences and spoken with many of the people involved. There are certainly some good programs out there who supplement Cisco’s curriculum, however there are also faculty who do not have a networking background and are simply there to present Cisco’s material and proctor the tests, which have all been developed by Cisco and feature their equipment.
Another major problem is that many, if not most, of the faculty teaching technical courses in post secondary colleges and universities have no background in education and don’t have a clue about how to teach, do adequate assessment, develop curriculum, run effective internship programs, or counsel students. K-12 education in many areas of the country have similar problems with their faculty in spite of having a formal education background. Kate Walsh, the president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, said that school principals were “deeply dissatisfied with the quality of candidates coming through their doors.” The federal education secretary, Arne Duncan, has said that many, if not most, teacher-training programs are mediocre. “It is time to start holding teacher-preparation programs more accountable for the impact of their graduates on student learning,”. And there is a real reluctance on the part of the schools to being evaluated by outside sources and being held accountable. As a result of the National Council on Teacher Quality investigating educational colleges and giving them grades, officials from 35 leading education colleges and graduate schools — including Harvard — denounced an “implied coercion” if they do not cooperate with the ratings.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/education/09teachers.html
As a result of poor K-12 educational personnel, many students get referred to special education classes, tracked, put on prescription medication (especially the boys), or drop out because the faculty, staff and administrators are too incompetent, overworked, or burnt out to create an effective learning environment for students. This is all in spite of the fact that effective research based learning models, curriculum and guides regarding best practices are free and have been available for years.
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/publications/practiceguides/?pgid=2
I won’t even get into the funding, political and parenting issues. So I wish everyone involved in your “new discovery” process good luck, you’ll need it.

As a small businessman i can not agree more.People like me has been saying for years that it has become more fashionable than purposeful of going to college and getting 4 year degree.Education should be on going as part of job training changing with time and job and perpetual.

As a high school teacher for 19 years and parent of 3 who’ve all taken different career/college pathways, I’m personally tired of the constant complaining & talking, talking and more talking on the subject of college and career readiness. While that is all important, it is not happening at pace the country can live with and we are losing millions of kids. They are lost and we are just talking about it. We’ve created kids with short attention spans with technology and little communication skills because no one has the time to foster conversation and thinking skills with them.
We have plenty of research report and vague recommendations yet nothing HAPPENS or significantly changes.
Tired of looking out into the eyes of apathetic, overwhelmed yet underinspired teenagers, I started DOING something about it.
While not a magic bullet by any means, I created a self-discovery, life planning project infused with foundational literacy skills that builds independent learners, called Get Real! a reality project for teenagers.
Over my 12 years working and refining this, I’ve voraciously read, follwed, gathered and studied the endless amount of information and research pointing to this widening black hole in our education system and therefore society at large.
We are NOT inspiring our youth nor challenging their thinking enough so we’re getting very little out of them.
My project Get Real! does exactly what everyone is screaming for…gets kids thinking early about themselves and what they hope for their futures. It creates understanding of the relevance for high school while building REAL critical thinking/learning skills, while they begin making those major life decisions around college/careers with real world, up to date information about cost of living, what it takes to be an employee and how to find who they are and what their life passions early enough to help them want to go out and build great futures. http://www.getreallearning.com
The problem is I’m just one teacher, at one high school with no real way to reach the policy makers who ultimately don’t seem to want concrete, do-able solutions. Education is the ONLY business that exists where the customer has no real say and the people who make the decisions are so far removed from the reality that…the
talking and researching and talking just continues.
If nothing else, parents need to TALK to their children about the realities of life.
We ALL need to start DOING things. Be it creating partnerships with businesses or doing projects like mine, if we all wait for the talking to end and the research to provide the “answer”, we’ll be gone.

Beth,it so good to see a doer and not just a talker. Thanks. Great web site. Will pass it along.

The report is nothing new to career and technology teachers, but all funding for Tech Prep was cut from the current budget, along with a ten percent reduction in Carl Perkins funding, and all Carl Perkins funding for the next fiscal budget is on the chopping block. I don’t want to hear how our Education Secretary is supporting vocational education. Empty words.

I like Beth’s can do attitude, and feel her frustration at the hirearchy that is mired in their love of “process” and not “product”. I am what is considered a healthcare field expert that teaches in a tech school environment. I’ve had over 35 years in business and 20 yrs of this in my specific health related field. I’ve loved teaching the students…I laugh my a$$ off at the academia. The world of those that like to hear themselves talk and have found a way to spend their lives talking and having someone else pay for it…mind, you not someone else that gets to shop for the product. Because there is no market in the world that would pay for the junk that goes for theory and policy in education..none, they would all starve.

No, this product is delivered by these elite educator professionals who believe their personal reserach into the minutia of some obscure area puts them in a position to tell the rest of us poor unintelligent fools what and how to live. Yet, look around you…how has that been working over the past 40 to 50 years? It’s not working. But, change means that holding up in your ivory tower writing and talking to your own amusement while the taxpayer pays the bill would be over. The progressives in higher education love to preach revolution and democracy. Give the American Taxpayer and student their democracy and let them have choice and free markets in education…good by ivory tower acedemia…hello learning!!!!!!!!!!!

While we’re at it, find out what schools of business taught the ethics courses that were taken by the decision makers in government and the corporate world…look at their behavior and contribution to the current economic debacle and hold those educators accountable for failing to actually teach ethical decision making practices.

Some young people forego college after finishing high school. But people who finish college are likely to be offered better job opportunities. It would be good to reconstruct the educational system to benefit those who want to go through college, but struggle to find the resources to do so.

I like Beth’s can do attitude, and also SunnyJS’s comment on Beth’s.! ☆☆☆

It is time for capitulation on the “college for all” mantra and a standardized secondary education path which has its sole base in standardized testing. The graduation assessments measure a narrow range of student potential and often limit the consideration of other dreams for students (think art, drama or other interesting work or pursuits that provide personal agency). Several things come to mind after reading the comments here. First, ability matters and those with high intellectual ability are between three and five times more successful (think earn a doctorate, secure a patent, publish an article in a scientific journal or publish a literary work), Lubinski and Benbow. These are important and necessary contributions in a high imagination economy but hardly within the grasp of many students. Second, for those concerned with “tracking” we do that now in a de facto manner by failing 25% of the students out of the system and 35% of community college enrollees who never see the second semmester. Is a student with a practical skill and earning potential better able to pursue additional education than the dropout or even a graduate with low academic skills who manages to graduate? Work skills matter and high school graduates with them have higher initial earnings. Third the college for all system has levied a trillion dollars of student debt on to the backs of our postsecondary graduates and non graduates. This is a pretty steep personal and societal cost to pay for a system that yields 30% with BAs and 42% with any degree or credential. In fact, one of the stunning findings in the Pathways report is that 27% of those with a credential earn more than the average individual with a BA. Finally, we have an engagement crisis that results in the performance crisis. High School academic life with rare exceptions is boring and fails to provide relevance to the student’s daily or future life (Beth is on to something). If the current system was designed for an industrial system and provided the workers we needed to be successful for 65 years isn’t it time to create a system that mirrors how work is done in a high imagination economy to get the workers we need today.
Here are a few difficult steps to consider.

Create multiple paths to graduation including career programs with rigorous convergence of academic, technical and employability skills.

Incorporate national technical skills assessments into the package of school graduation assessments and allow for substitution with those technical assessments that meet psychometric standards.

Require all students to take a minimum of three career courses or a program equivalent.

Insist on rigorous and relevant instructional practices. Rigor isn’t about making it hard or even requiring seat time it is about making difficult and important skills and information accessible to students. This means providing relevant experiences that are real world, interdisciplinary, complex and practical. It is about getting students to think and work.

Develop a merit based/guidance system that guides students to interesting pathways and allow students to move over to a new path upon demonstration of ability and interest. Our global competitors in Asia and Western Europe do this now.

Finally, stress the importance of apprenticeships, corporate training, credentials (at less than the AA) and the military as legitimate forms of post secondary education. These often provide entry into middle class earnings and life. These choices often create less debt and the earning power to gain additional education.

As a high school teacher for 19 years and parent of 3 who’ve all taken different career/college pathways, I’m personally tired of the constant complaining & talking, talking and more talking on the subject of college and career readiness. While that is all important, it is not happening at pace the country can live with and we are losing millions of kids. They are lost and we are just talking about it. We’ve created kids with short attention spans with technology and little communication skills because no one has the time to foster conversation and thinking skills with them.
We have plenty of research report and vague recommendations yet nothing HAPPENS or significantly changes.
Tired of looking out into the eyes of apathetic, overwhelmed yet underinspired teenagers, I started DOING something about it.
While not a magic bullet by any means, I created a self-discovery, life planning project infused with foundational literacy skills that builds independent learners, called Get Real! a reality project for teenagers.
Over my 12 years working and refining this, I’ve voraciously read, follwed, gathered and studied the endless amount of information and research pointing to this widening black hole in our education system and therefore society at large.