WASHINGTON — Education reformers have made “career and college ready” the latest buzzwords in an overhaul of the U.S. education system.
The only problem: They’ve yet to agree on exactly what the phrase means, a fact on display recently at a Senate hearing on student assessment.
“I think the theory is firm,” Mary Ann Blankenship, executive director of the Kentucky Education Association (a state teachers union), told the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee . “I think the specifics are going to get much more specific once the standards are set.”
Most experts said students are career and college ready if they can avoid remedial coursework in their first year of college or can begin technical training immediately after high school. That’s at least the working definition for a national set of graduation standards — called the Common Core State Standards — due later this month from a consortium of education officials and experts from around the country. The movement is backed by 48 states and the District of Columbia.
But educators and lawmakers have yet to agree how to reach the goal or, more importantly, how to know when they’ve reached it.
It’s a problem, critics say, because the undefined phrase is now the backbone of reform. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has proposed linking funds for disadvantaged schools to the readiness standard, and President Obama said he wants all students to be career and college ready by 2020.
“It’s easy for the college part,” said Grover Whitehurst, an education expert at the Brookings Institution, a left-leaning think tank in Washington. “I don’t know what you do about career ready.”
In Kentucky, the two are the same, said Lisa Gross, spokeswoman for the Kentucky Department of Education. State officials already agreed to adopt the Common Core standards once they’re released, and supporters maintain a basic education in algebra, reading and grammar is the basis for being a successful member of society.
“It’s hard to separate college readiness and career readiness now,” said Gross. “You use the same kinds of skills” like teamwork and critical thinking. But as for assessing “soft sills,” Kentucky educators are still figuring that out, she said.
Pennsylvania officials have halted all rewrites of state curriculum standards until the Common Core’s release. They plan to assess readiness through a series of tests all students would take during high school.
It’s not a proposition with which all lawmakers agree. Several members of the Senate committee expressed skepticism or confusion during Wednesday’s hearing, often asking if it made sense to set the same standard for all students.
“College and career ready?” asked Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn. “Or do you mean college or career ready? Do you mean every student goes to college?”
The issue goes back to a U.S. reluctance to “track” students, as European countries do, said Whitehurst, former director of the Institute of Education Sciences at the Education Department. German students, for instance, can decide at a relatively early age whether they’re headed for academia or a trade school. That gives them an advantage, he said.
“I think we want to leave a lot of flexibility. That’s part of the history in America,” he said. “But a general, high school education prepares students not particularly well for anything in particular.”