My youngest daughter just graduated high school in June. She has always been an outstanding student and, as her dad, I welcome the chance to recognize that publicly. One of the high points of one of the speeches given at her graduation ceremony caused a huge round of applause from the audience, which was gathered for the outdoor event. Ninety-Five percent of the graduating class of over 300 students had been accepted to institutions of higher learning. Why would the cheers not abound? This is the exact statistic that politicians, business people, parents, and educators are all calling for in every high school across our land. Percentage of college acceptances has become a component in the way we assess successful schools.
My concern is that if our goal is to educate our students to give them a path to college, how are we preparing those who do not go to college? If they failed on the pathway to college program, have we adequately prepared them for a life short of a college education? That applies not only to those who were not accepted to college, but a great number of those who were as well. Many of those students proud of their acceptance to college upon high school graduation will drop out after the first year. If we have only prepared them for college and that doesn’t work out what pathway do they now step to?
Overcoming the impediments to completing college may not even be within the student’s control. The same politicians demanding a higher rate of acceptance to college are placing impossible conditions on the ability to obtain the money to attend those colleges. The economy combined with the rising cost of education place that very goal of every high school that every student is forced to strive for, out of range financially. If acceptance to college is the goal we can do it. If completion of college is a goal, we need to do much more work. Even with completed degrees in America at an all time high, we only have 30% of Americans with Bachelors degrees. That would mean 70% of America was prepared for a path that they never took. What were they prepared for? Did we offer any alternative programs? What will happen to about 200 of my daughter’s classmates?
Educators may not be addressing the needs of the non-college path students not because they don’t care, but because one thing all educators have in common is at least one college degree. Educators were successful in the education system. They realize and understand the advantages of attaining a college degree, but they may not understand the needs and skills required by non-academics to survive and thrive in a culture that holds college in high regard, but only 30% of its population is able to attain it.
With a majority of our kids not completing college, shouldn’t we consider examining our programs and considering options to address this reality? Should we offer more vocational programs, internships, and apprenticeships? Would educators view this as meeting a need, or would they see it as short-selling their students? Are the views and prejudices of educators concerning the importance of advantages in attending college holding us back? Everyone deserves a chance to obtain a college education, but unless we make considerable changes in financing education, college degrees will continue to go to a minority of students. The preparation for college may not be the proper preparation for a majority of our students, who will never complete college. If college is not a realistically attainable goal, why is it such a great part in assessing schools? Can we continue to cater to 30% of our students without addressing the real needs of the majority?
My Island View 
Tom, Great questions. Have you read Blake Boles, Zero Tuition College? If not, you should. It’s the best of several great books profiled here: http://letshomeschoolhighschool.com/blog/2012/05/27/when-high-schoolers-create-their-own-educational-path/#.UeRkg_nOsSQ
Thank you so much for bringing this topic up!!! I think this is an EXTREMELY important message. We know that almost everyone in our classrooms will end up being a citizen in society, most will have a job, many will be homeowners, friends, parents, car owners, voters, etc….. We should teach to everyone.
I actually believe the we do many students a disservice by the strong “college push” that we have with our students. The dropout rates in college are absurd and I think that this comes partly from us not giving a realistic view of what to expect and also because we teach students information to get them into college, but not to survive and succeed in college or the real world.
Hopefully the points you make in this write up are soon recognized and help to drive education reform. I am still confused as to why students are expected to learn (in-depth) the phases of mitosis, the Kreb’s Cycle, the Calvin Cycle, etc…. yet they do not know how to garden, be environmentally friendly, take care of pets, etc…. I vote we make our curriculum more “Life Relevant” for everyone.
Thank you for this post!!! Great stuff!
@schink10
Montessori would say, “Education is for life, not for ‘college'”.
#1 There are many reasons why people do not finnish college. Identifying and solving those sundry problems should be the beginning. #2 As technology increases, is there still a good reason for tracking students. Even the sound of that approaches profiling. I do believe that much of pedagogy should be more closely linked to the world of work, but as sound activity centered pedagogical practice, not secondary educational certifications.
#3 But mostly, economists must solve their own problems. Education can’t dig us out of poor demand, inadequate management, and the many other causes of this unending recession.
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Amazing post. You have framed a really awesome question.
If 30% of students continue to college, how do we ensure that the remaining 70% of students can finish high school and still thrive?
As citizens, we have a lot of work to do.
I have been volunteering with an out-reach called “Macon Promise.” [http://maconpromise.org] They have really helped me appreciate the challenge of poverty on our education system. In MPN, the graduation rates are very challenging. The issues are complex. In many cases, the solutions to helping kids to thrive and graduate in the face of poverty require that we serve the students and their parents. For details, check out their planning grant.
Click to access u215p110187narrative.pdf
I did some informal research during a hackforchange.org event. I found a great list of ways to reduce high school drop out rate here: http://bit.ly/13MqASE
I asked my PLN to vote on the top policies that would have the most impact. Here are the results from my small survey.
— “Support students’ resiliency…The presence of at least one supportive, caring adult can make a huge difference for a high school student.”
— “Expand access to high-quality early education programs.”
— “Improving the effectiveness of the home as a learning environment is critical to promoting long-term school success (Druian & Butler, 2001).”
— “Expand access to parent education and family support programs geared to the challenges of raising adolescents.”
I hope that this data can help other social innovators, education leaders, and teachers.
Best wishes to you and your daughter on her graduation. Very cool! Thanks for asking amazing questions. You’ve given me much to think about.
Well this is a sore subject for me because our colleges are selling our kids a bad bill of goods…30% of the jobs require a 4 year degree so indeed we are not giving our students all the info…post secondary is what we should be saying not college which is only part of post-secondary. There are trade schools and other post secondary programs that will assist many of our students in getting the other 70% of jobs that need to be filled and all but 10% of these are high skills jobs requiring a high degree of prep from our high school in terms of technical reading, writing and math.
Then there is the whole issue of the kids going to college or even other post secondary programs including community colleges where students are ill prepared for the rigor of these programs. The numbers keep inching up but we are closing in on 80% who will need remediation in ELA and almost 75% in math. That means it is an out of the pocket expense and more time so many students don’t complete in 2 years or 4 yrs because they do not want to keep going for 1-2 yrs more or they don’t have the money.
The numbers are staggering and we never talk about these issues….just that a high percent of HS grads are going to college…when they get out, if they do, an equally high number will not have a job. These are the problems we need to fix.
Tom, I feel that vocational/career tech Ed is one of the solutions. Two years ago I took over video production electives at my school. I have been working to transform this into a career oriented program. It has been inspiring to work with many teachers at my school who are doing similar things for aviation, criminal justice, engineering and graphic design!
Tom, I applaud your open-mindedness. As you’ve pointed out, people in the field of education generally do not question whether college is needed – they are products of the very same system!
I often question myself why our culture is obsessed over a college degree. If the point here is about skill development, (which people love to point out), I very much question if this is the case. Do employers feels that fresh grads are competent for entry-level work? According to this article (http://goo.gl/Wj49e), only 42%. Do fresh grads feel they are competent at their particular fields? Again ,quoting the same study from McKinsey, only 45%. Those are low numbers for a four-year commitment and potentially debilitating debt.
Even I myself do not feel that I have a particularly honed or useful set of skills gained from college. I knew then as I know now, that most of what I learned would not be particularly relevant to what I would do in the future nor would I very much remember it. Did I consider much of my college education formative? No. What I consider formative for me were the relationships that I developed during college, and living in the “real world” in my years after college. That was the real eye-opener for me. I recognized that what is most important to myself is my capacity for being skilled at what I do, and maintaining a personal culture of constant self-education. Most of the things that I consider important and useful were never things that I learned in a classroom or textbook.
I actually now work for a company whose main focus is skill development and education outside of the traditional manner – we try to address this educational disconnect.
My best wishes to you and your daughter. I hope her future is just as bright, if not brighter than her present.
Dear Tom,
I applaud and thank you, both as an educator and a parent for your candor and clarity on this essential topic. Although I am typically enthusiastic about school and all it can offer, I had to let go of some of my strongly held beliefs and assumptions about the glories of education when it became questionable whether or not my oldest son would complete his secondary education.
He’s a bright young man of many talents and with several fields of serious interest. And while he enjoyed some aspects of school, he struggled mightily with others and in the end took what was of value to him and “chucked” much of the rest. Like most of us, he was and is a “selective achiever.” The formal completion of his secondary education here in Austria awaits closure with a final series of exams which I hope he will complete this winter. It will be his choice.
The conversations about his future, however, have not revolved around college as I imagined they would. Rather, we talk about his interests and where they may lead, what skills he will need to get closer to his destination and where to get them. In this way I have become far more alert to the very lopsided messaging we are sending our young people. My son has been a very patient teacher in helping me to recognize and confront not just my own educational biases but also the systemic biases which keep us from telling our children the whole truth: namely that there are many paths, many solutions, several options and that college is not the magic portal to success.
I certainly will be on the lookout for more discussion and debate on this front. Your contribution is a welcome entry. In the meantime, I will study (and also wrestle with) the unfolding of my son’s path with the understanding that school needn’t get in the way of his education.