Last week I was part of Kentucky’s delegation to the Education Commission of the States National Forum on Education Policy. In a previous post I shared some reflections from the first part of the conference, including notes I made about open district enrollment policies and the discussion on whether states can be trusted to pay attention to achievement gaps under the Every Student Succeeds Act. In this follow up I want to share some addition thoughts from the meeting focusing on career readiness.
The second day of the conference featured a panel discussion between Montana Governor Steve Bullock and Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant, the outgoing and incoming chairs of ECS, respectively. The governors shared their own state-level efforts to improve career readiness.
This is a hot topic right now in education policy for several reasons. There is now a consensus that our generation-old focus on expanding access to and preparedness for four-year colleges and universities was overkill. Many students who attended college were not, in fact, academically prepared. As the cost of college has skyrocketed, the return on investment for a college degree, while still significant, has considerably waned. Together these factors have contributed to huge college retention issues and underemployment and massive debt for college graduates. Meanwhile, many industries have need for highly-skilled employees with technical expertise, but not necessarily a college degree, and those positions go unfilled.
In response many states have shifted to a greater focus on career and technical education, hoping to prepare more high school graduates for these in-demand careers. Kentucky is like Mississippi and Montana in that Governor Matt Bevin’s administration has placed an emphasis on workforce readiness, creating by executive order a Work Ready Kentucky Scholarship program that covers tuition for students attending two-year programs in five high-demand fields such as health care and advanced manufacturing. As the Kentucky Board of Education has worked on our new ESSA accountability plan, we are exploring ways to incentivize local school districts to expand their programs for non-university post-secondary preparation (what we are currently calling “technical” readiness), including apprenticeship programs and other job-embedded training.
This is all well and good. We did, in fact, oversell the idea of college for all, not because some students aren’t “college material” (none of them will be college material if we don’t prepare them accordingly), but because the economy simply doesn’t require that many university degrees, and a university degree isn’t the only credential that can convey a person’s status as an educated, job-ready individual. But now I’m concerned about the risk of overselling technical readiness and what K-12 education policy can (and should) actually do in service to the demands of business and industry.
Here are my basic concerns, which I may flesh out in future posts:
1) Students’ K-12 experiences should give them flexibility to learn about a variety of career pathways based on their own self-perceived aptitudes and interests, but we should avoid pushing students toward specific careers goals that would deny them the opportunity for a broad, rich, multi-disciplinary education. Unlike many other countries that track students into vocational or pre-college programs based on test scores or the judgment of educators, in the United States we have prioritized giving students choices in their education and career pathways. Most people now pass through several careers in their lifetime. Furthermore, adolescents can’t accurately predict what their future goals are going to be. Therefore we should avoid pressing students into specific learning paths that might deny them access to the broadest and deepest curriculum possible. Yes, that should include technical training for students who want that option, but it should always be the student’s choice and should not come at the cost of overly narrowing the student’s learning experiences.
2) Such a rich, multi-disciplinary (yes – liberal arts) education is the best preparation for life, which certainly should include academic preparation for post-secondary education and careers. Unintentionally hollowing out the high school curriculum with an overemphasis on career preparation may actually undermine students’ long-term career preparation.
3) The purpose of education isn’t merely to prepare students for careers. It is also to make them knowledgeable citizens well-equipped to participate in our democratic, republican form of government, and above all to train them for a life of virtue. On over-emphasis on any one of these purposes of education places the other purposes at risk.
4) When business leaders say they need employees with good communication, team-work and problem-solving skills and creativity, those are exactly the kinds of skills that a strong, well-rounded education delivers. As Daisy Christodoulou has pointed out, there are no such thing as uniquely “21st century” skills (as if people prior to 2000 didn’t need to be able to solve problems or work in groups). While he was talking about the mismatch between college degree production and perceived industry needs, Governor Bryant joked that there wasn’t a high demand in Mississippi for students with degrees in early Greek literature. With all due respect, I don’t think that’s true. Granted – there probably aren’t a lot of places in Mississippi such a graduate can continue to study early Greek literature as a job. But a successful student in that field will have learned an awful lot about critical thinking, communication, and the rich cultural fabric of our society from such a degree pathway, not to mention important lessons about virtue and human nature. If she’s willing to apply those skills in business and industry, I believe that student of early Greek literature can make a great contribution in that realm. Similarly, high school graduates who master a rich body of cultural and scientific knowledge will be well-positioned for a wide variety of post-secondary pursuits and careers.
5) Finally, I am skeptical about the capacity of the K-12 system to accurately predict the specific job needs of future employers. It is not like the health care industry can simply order up 1,000 new nursing assistants and the K-12 system can spit them out the other side. First, what if there simply aren’t students who want to pursue that career pathway – or at least not during their high school years? Secondly, if high schools can produce those CNA’s, will they be willing to move to the communities where those job openings actually are? Finally, by the time the K-12 system has produced those nursing assistants, the industry’s needs may well have changed. A new Brookings Institute report documents these problems for vocational education programs in Europe. Students who pursue these very industry-specific training programs in high school do indeed have higher employment rates after graduation. But as they grow older, their training is often too narrowly focused and job placement actually declines as market demands perpetually shift and change. And as AEI's Andy Smarick has pointed out, technocratic, top-down solutions rarely work, and there's a tendency within the career-tech movement to think we can engineer an education system that is more responsive to business demands than we can ever reasonably provide.
I am not trying to dismiss the importance of high school technical programs. Preparing high school students for a successful transition into adulthood is – and always has been – a key goal of the education system, and that should definitely include providing students with opportunities for technical skills training when they desire that option. Such programs should be well funded and should prepare students for seamless transitions into additional post-secondary and on-the-job technical education. I applaud Governor Bevin’s efforts to encourage and support students who want to pursue careers in our high-demand areas. And all students should be encouraged to work during high school and make intentional connections between their academic studies and real-world, relevant applications of their new knowledge and skill.
But let’s be careful about overselling what the K-12 education system can do in service of business and industry. Let’s be mindful of the multiple purposes of the education system itself. And let’s be especially vigilant to ensure every student has a deep knowledge of all the subject areas that make for successful careers – and a successful life.
Usual disclaimer: Views expressed on this website do not represent the opinions of Western Kentucky University (where I am associate professor of educational administration, leadership, and research) or the Kentucky Board of Education (where I serve as a member).
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