Back to the future for American high schools

Editor’s note: This essay is an entry in Fordham’s 2022 Wonkathon, which asked contributors to address a fundamental and challenging question: “How can states remove policies barriers that are keeping educators from reinventing high schools?” Learn more.

Let’s begin with now. A high proportion of American high schools are challenged by students without a sense of purpose, facing economic and mental health challenges, whom we expect to take their places in our colleges and our workplaces. And data from the National Student Clearinghouse show a trend downward in college-going outcomes, the reason for high schools to exist in the twenty-first century. On the employment side, employers are critical of the American student…high school and college, for not knowing how to “do the work.” While the K–12 system is still operating, so few are satisfied. Can we move ourselves forward together?

High schools are a business and they have expanded their efforts to encompass learning and employment. Illinois has integrated college and career into the “College and Career Pathway Endorsement Framework.” Codified in state policy, each student is encouraged by high school graduation to have “completed an individualized plan, which includes college planning linked to early understanding of career goals, financial aid, resume, and personal statement.” Many other states have completed policy and regulatory guidance on college and career. In Texas, a leader in career and policy implementation of Industry-Recognized Credentials (IRCs), a report^[1] shows that between 2017 and 2019, more than one million students graduated and 60,727 (5.9 percent) of Texas students earned IRCs. Colorado is another success story having implemented career pathways and apprenticeship, through CareerWise. Since 2017, CareerWise has onboarded 1,400 apprentices hired by more than 120 employers. Illinois, Texas, and Colorado have established outcome and accountability systems to measure career preparation, and still adoption is low.

Across the U.S., we have implemented numerous varieties of model policy for both college and career. High schools have expanded their scope with new policies. Is better or new policy an answer?

Better policy won’t be the answer until we address our failure to execute. In Texas, “the school that students attend is by far the best predictor of whether they will earn an IRC. In 41.8 percent of Texas public schools, not one student earned an IRC, but the top 1 percent of schools (roughly twenty of them) had an IRC rate greater than 30 percent.”^[2] Is it equitable when the state’s requirement for IRCs means that no Texas student in nearly 42 percent of schools completed a high quality certificate? Texas data on the supply and demand for IRCs show us the scope of the problem, schools and students: schools that offer IRCs but do not produce completers, or students who do not move on to college or start employment that will lead to a living wage.

Schools and students are the linchpins for moving to better outcomes. The first-level barriers are time and student agency—the allocation of time in schools and the lack of agency on the part of students. The how and the why is not in the right relationship.

How: Industry standard career exploration that leads to a student completing a 40-hour occupational learning sequence, followed by a 40-hour internship at work that matches student aptitudes and occupational learning.

What: It’s a trade: 40-for-40—schools offer juniors and seniors a week that is used to complete a 40-hour learning sequence of professional learning, and in return, these students are allowed to start a one-week internship with an employer that relies on what they’ve learned. These internships can be in person or virtual, depending on geography and professional restrictions like licensing.

Who: Schools, students, and employers…not credits, certificates, and jobs. Something small that builds student agency and responsibility.

The question is how to open up 40-hours in schools that “schedule” students for a living and in fact, have filled up the semesters with credits that do not lead to internships. And ask employers to help who do not offer internships for a multitude of reasons but who are asking for students who know “something” about how work is done.

And what to do about the school and student who do not want to offer or complete 40-hours of employer-aligned learning? Well, we’ll continue to overwhelm schools and students with credits, certificates, and hourly jobs—as we do now.

Why: We must now define practical ways to help students motivate themselves to enter the world of learning and earning in ways that build confidence and career. We have to step up to a small earning intervention that operates like a flywheel, starts working and accelerates forward. Once we have students who know they have an employable skill, they can find entry-level work they are good at. We can then channel employed students back into higher ed for learning and degrees that are relevant for competency. Agency is the internal motivator that will sustain persistence beyond the school doors and institutional accountabilities. We should encourage a swap of school compliance for student responsibility.

Moving Forward: Does everyone want high schools “reinvented?” Not the high school athletes and their parents. Sports is a core reason that high school reinvention is off the table as a general subject. And high school sports are a success story for the students. The high school supports the hiring of coaches and the scheduling of athletes. The average high school football player spends twenty-one hours a week^[3] voluntarily improving his craft. It’s a good example where states and schools have aligned hiring and school credits to permit athletic agency.

The tremendous advantage of sports, for active participants, is that they are more “connected” to schools. And the mental health challenges being seen everywhere after COVID confirm the reality that students are suffering. “There are no directly comparable pre-pandemic studies, but Kathleen Ethier, the CDC’s director of the division of adolescent and school health, said student well-being is significantly better for teens who report feeling connected to their schools—a problem for a population that, nationwide, was kept out of them for so long.”[4]

What career and college onramp can schools implement for students that fills the gap between vo-tech and the bachelor’s degree? First, we must establish and market programs that are twenty-first century version of older vo-tech programs. To accomplish this, business and industry must expand their investment in high-quality design and training programs that will teach and onboard students as “performance ready.” One way to bring performance knowledge to the student is to hire industry professionals as teachers of record.

A number of states make this move a non-starter by requiring more education and alternative teacher certification for industry experts. Arkansas removed this barrier by passing a law in 2011 that created a path for second career professionals to immediately become teachers of record. Arkansas schools have expanded the teacher pool in a number of critical shortage areas such as math and science because the number of industry teachers recruited after the 2011 law has outpaced supply from traditional teacher preparation programs in the state.

Students, industry experts, and employers are the critical network for recruiting more students to the workplace and post-secondary learning. It’s the network that inspires students to aim for more opportunity—at work.

Bibliography

Matt Giani. How Industry-Recognized Credentials in High School Shape Students’ Education and Employment Outcomes. Washington D.C.: Thomas B. Fordham Institute (August 2022). https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/research/industry-recognized-cred….