Tag Archives: college and career ready

Which Outcomes Should Minnesota Hold Its High Schools Responsible For?

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Long before the pandemic, schools and communities recognized that a high school diploma is no longer enough. Today, eight in 10 Minnesota students graduate high school, but as more graduates look to a future amid the COVID-19 pandemic, they may question whether their high school has adequately prepared them to succeed in college or career.

Minnesota has taken steps to create programs to prepare students for life beyond high school, as well as collect critical information and data about those efforts. Yet the state has failed to incorporate postsecondary outcomes into the way it evaluates high school performance. It’s time to fix this mismatch.

Minnesota’s Post Secondary Enrollment Options (PSEO) program, which dates back to 1985, was the first-of-its-kind to help students complete high school and college coursework at the same time. Nearly 250,000 Minnesota students have benefited from this program since its inception, and that number doubles once you include Minnesota’s other dual enrollment programming.

In addition to information on the PSEO program, the state tracks student performance in Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses, as well as SAT and ACT results. Minnesota also tracks a variety of additional measures on high school graduates, such as postsecondary enrollment and employment outcomes like the number of hours worked, in what industry, and the hourly wages earned. 

Unfortunately, Minnesota’s efforts at data collection result in nice graphs on a website with little effect on student success. What is the point of data collection unless it informs programming, benefits students, and helps ensure all students are given equal opportunities?

High school leaders may think it’s unfair to hold them accountable for what happens outside their walls. But students need to be prepared for the world that awaits them, whether that is a pandemic-ravaged economy or remote college learning, and schools bear significant responsibility to provide that preparation. Continue reading →

College and Career Readiness, or a New Form of Tracking?

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In a new paper, Lynne Graziano and I look at what data states are collecting around college and career pathways.

On one hand, there’s a positive story to be told. States have changed their formal high school rating systems beyond graduation rates and test scores to include a host of college- and career- readiness measures. By our count, 34 states plus DC have some form of indicator along these lines. Another 12 states are tracking one of these measures but do not yet hold schools accountable for them.

While we find this trend promising, many of these states are lumping all “college and career” measures together, even though those pathways may not be equally rigorous or helpful for students. Worse, only 16 states are disaggregating these measures by subgroups of students, so we have no way of knowing whether certain groups of students, such as Black or Hispanic students, are being tracked into, or away from, certain pathways. We argue states need to do more to ensure the latest push toward college and career pathways yields equitable results for all students.

Read the full paper here.

Typing in the 1980’s — and the Decline of Women Choosing Career and Technical Education

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Before personal computers, IBM Selectric typewriters represented the cutting edge of desktop technology for modern offices. In the early 1980s, my high school had an entire room filled with shiny Selectrics atop sturdy desks. Many of my peers, mostly females, entered this room to take typing, which was a Career and Technical Education (CTE) course (though we called it a business elective at the time).

photo courtesy the author

Because my guidance office and family believed I was “college material,” I was steered away from typing class. But because I am stubborn and like a challenge, I took it anyway. When I entered Drew University in 1984 (my matriculation was delayed by two years), it was the first liberal arts college to issue a computer to students, the bulky Epson QX-10. Unlike most of my classmates, I knew how to type (or “keyboard,” as it would become known).

What does all this have to do with International Women’s Day, whose 2020 theme is “Each for Equal?” In the United States, women have arguably reached equality in college enrollment and degree attainment. In fact, women today enroll and complete college at higher rates than men. But in studying College- and Career-Readiness (CCR) policies for a forthcoming report, I’ve learned that CTE participation is one area where women are still less than equal. Not only is women’s CTE participation less than half the amount of participants since its peak in the early 1980s, but those females who do enroll are often steered away from the higher-paying career tracks.

In 1982, the year I graduated high school, female graduates earned more CTE credits than male graduates in the United States. While CTE participation has declined for all students since the 1980s, the drop for women is sharper. By 2013, average CTE credits earned by females had dropped by a third over three decades, while CTE credits earned by males dropped by a fifth. In part, this can be explained by a decline in courses such as typing and data entry, as well as the structural changes of the modern business environment with fewer secretarial roles, but it also reflects an increased emphasis on “four-year college for all.”

The gender breakdown of students who do pursue CTE coursework is roughly equal, however differences in the type of coursework reflect gender inequality. Courses known as “New Era CTE” tend to divide along gender lines, with females predominately concentrating in health care and communication while males concentrate in computer science and engineering, fields which generally pay higher salaries. A study conducted in Texas suggested “tracking” exists within CTE, aligning students with “historically gendered occupational roles.”

While CTE popularity is declining overall, its importance — for women and men — shouldn’t be overlooked. In the 1980s and 1990s, CTE was viewed as a pathway to postsecondary employment, apprenticeships, or trade school. Recent studies suggest today’s CTE vocational concentrators “are more likely than their peers to enroll in college […] and may also be more likely to persist in college.” Furthermore, a strong CTE curriculum prepares students with key competencies such as critical thinking, communication, and teamwork. These are many of the cross-cutting skills rated by employers as “most important” for long-term career success.

If female students desire careers in health care or communication, they should not be steered away, but they should also be given information on the long-term economic prospects of various fields. As women continue to outpace men in college enrollment, persistence, and degree attainment, they also need to receive equal information on career choices and compensation by field. And they should be given equal opportunity to pursue any postsecondary pathway they choose, just like I was given. Every day when I sit down to write and research, my “rash” decision to take typing pays off!