In order to prepare our seniors for the experiences they will encounter when they make the tradition from their senior year to post-secondary education and the workforce, we have established collaborative relationships with institutions of higher learning and several businesses. In that we consider these organizations to be our customers, it is important that we understand and meet the needs of those customers.
In order to achieve this, university personnel, local business personnel and alumni serve as members of our local school governing body, the curriculum committee, the scholarship/financial aid committee and the out-of-class learning experience coordinating committee.
The insight these entities bring to the table enable us to better prepare our young people for post-secondary education.
Over the past 25 years, my work has focused on sharpening our collective understanding of youth development and preparation of what the explicit goals are that society, communities, and families have for young people (and that young people have for themselves), of policies, programs, and practices that can and should be in place to ensure that young people have the support and opportunities they need to achieve these goals, and how what we know about young people’s development can be translated into a set of principles and premises that guide our efforts.
Over the past year, my colleagues and I have spent increasing amounts of time with educators and with high school students. Our work with educators has focused on identifying the ways that youth development premises and principles can be, and have been brought to bear in efforts to reform or reinvent high schools. Our work with students has focused on helping them deepen our understanding of how they perceive the relationship between education, their futures, schools, and formal and informal opportunities for learning, work and contribution. The caveat is that they want these applied to the challenge of doing real work in settings that have adequate resources, operate with a deep respect for all participants, and provide opportunities for building relationships and taking on responsibilities.
In the process of addressing the transition of students from their senior year to post-secondary education and the workforce, the complexity of the issues becomes obvious. Some of the issues are: preparing all students for higher education; identifying barriers or penalties for choosing technical vs. academic; making dual enrollment a financial penalty for high schools and financially rewarding for colleges; increasing diversity in this country; and, understanding and valuing contextual learning for all students.
We believe the most important issues focus on partnerships and technology. However, a school defines the “community” around it, the most important factor is to begin the development of partnerships within that community.
Our aim has been to assist high schools to implement an upgraded core for these youth and either requires them to take additional academic courses above that core or to complete a career or technical concentration. We have used the information gathered from more than 15 years of work to inform both state and local policymakers so that they could make changes in state policy. All but four of the participating states now have high school graduation requirements in mathematics that meet our goals.
There are other specific items that we advocate in the network:
– Requiring career-oriented students to take at least three or four chalenging academic courses the senior year with at last one of those courses being higher-level mathematics.
– Recommending four years of language arts taught to the standard of the college-preparatory language arts curriculum.
Urging schools to implement a guidance and advisement system that has as part of its emphasis a “reality check” for students at the end of the junior year. This includes getting the local college to come and give to all juniors their placement exam and working with local employers who use exams to have those exams given as well. The intent is to identify (at the end of the junior year) those youth who would have to take remedial courses if they go on to college and who cannot pass local employers’ exams. Schools are strongly encouraged to have a meeting with the students and their parents to plan a senior-year experience designed to prepare the youth for further study with-out remediation, either in the workplace or postsecondary studies.
Asking schools to develop a guidance and advisements system that results in every student having a teacher-adviser who meets with student and parents individually beginning at the end of grade eight for the purpose of seeing post-high school goals, aligning a program of study to those goals, and meeting annually with parent and child to review both goals and progress being made toward the goal. The intent is to help every student coming into grade nine to set a six-year goal with a program study for the four years of high school, and two years beyond aimed toward that goal.
Advocating that schools establish common end-of-course exams in core academic subjects that they will use for measuring whether students have met common course standards. The intent has been to make sure that all youth get real algebra, real geometry, real Algebra II, real biology, real physical science and real language arts, that the burden be placed on the school to figure out how to teach all youth to the standard, at least of the college-preparatory curriculum. In addition, we advocate that local schools and states work together to develop some way of assessing how much students are learning in the career and technical concentration they are taking. We urge the development of literacy exams designed to measure whether the students can apply mathematics to problems they will find in the workplace in broad fields of study, whether they can interpret and analyze the technical materials of that field, and whether they can have a grasp of the major technical concepts. In essence, the goal is to help students to be able to continue to learn in a broad field of career and technical studies. Urging states to give a high school exit exam designed to assess whether the students have finished the “right” courses, can meet the right performance standards, can pass employers’ exams, and can avoid having to take remedial courses in community and technical colleges.
Advocating that low-performing urban and rural schools adapt some form of block scheduling that enables students to complete 32 Carnegie Units. In these high schools we advocate a catch-up system in grade nine to get these youth ready to do real high school-level work, and we advocate that every youth in these high schools take either an academic, career or combined concentration. Graduates of many of these high schools are not prepared for further study or for career-pathway employment. We have advocated that students complete above three years of mathematics and science concentration for four additional credits with at least one of those two courses being at the advanced placement level. The second concentration would be in humanities: above four years of college preparatory English and three years of social studies with at least one or two of the credits in that concentration be at the advanced placement level. Third, we have advocated that youth who are not completing either a mathematics and science or humanities concentration, consider either a mathematics, science and technology concentration, or humanities and business concentration, or complete four additional credits in a planned program of career studies.
One of our basic objectives for more than ten years has been to close down the general strand and have every youth complete a solid academic core and a concentration. The senior year becomes an important element in getting students prepared by having taken the right courses and having met performance goals necessary for further study and finding career pathway employment.
Issues to be addressed:
– Getting high school folks to buy into a functional high school mission that says that one of the basic purposes is to prepare all graduating seniors with the ability to pursue further study without having to take remedial courses or to pass employers’ exams for good path-way employment.
– Having high school leaders who can assist the faculty in designing and implementing a high school based on effort rather than the sorting ability model that is so pervasive.
– Creating a high school that assures that every youth gets a solid academic core and the opportunity to find a niche in pursuing in-depth study in a broad field of academic or career and technical interest.
– Effecting differentiated policies and resources for low-performing urban and rural high schools.
– Making parents effective partners in helping to plan and support their children in completing a challenging high school program of study.
– Crafting a system of state and local policies that make the senior year count.
– Reversing the decline in the percent of youth who are completing a traditional high school program of study.
It is important to offer something for everyone: Helping college bound students transition towards a more self-directed learning approach that includes improving critical reasoning and writing abilities. Providing remedial opportunities for those college bound students whose preparation for college work is weakest. Challenging non-college bound students to make productive use of their time without foreclosing the academic preparation that will give them educational options in combination with work or later in life.
Students should do more college search/career planning thinking in their junior year and engage in more transition-focused efforts in their senior year. Information on other than full-time college attendance should be more comprehensively presented to students. The nation should support apprentice-training programs that combine skills training and education with relevant work experience opportunities.
I worry that we may not have a secure enough evidentiary base to launch a fully persuasive report. I feel we need better data to define the nature and scope of the problems specific to the senior year. We have a lot of evidence that K-12 education cumulatively does not produce enough graduates who are fully ready for college or employment. But that doesn’t answer my question – do students make significant progress during the senior year or is it a time of stagnation or (I fear) regression? There must be some measures of change in reading and mathematical skills for the end of junior to the end of senior year; this would be very important in focusing the readers of the report on this year.
I also think it’s important that we find some way to evaluate student and faculty perceptions of the year. One teacher told me that she felt 60%-80% of the seniors in her high school had a bad case of “senioritis”. Such anecdotal material needs to be reformulated and tested with enough rigor to convince people we’re on to something in focusing on this year. Can such data be found? I would find it immensely important in my own thinking about the issues and I suspect you will need it to write a fully persuasive report. Some other issues to keep in mind include:
– “Dysfunctional.” On the basis of what I’ve seen, the senior year, as currently constituted, is not just a weak contributor to student learning, it’s part of the problem, a waste of time and money. It’s truly dysfunctional if it discourages the habit of continuous learning. Since such learning is the key to personal growth as well as economic advancement, the problem is really serious and calls for strong measures.
– “Senior Year.” I think it would be better in many cases to give high school students at the end of their junior year a rigorous assessment of where they are and what their prospects are, and then provide alternatives for the next year or two: immediate entry to college for some, work or public service experience for others, intensive remediation courses, or small learning communities or other experimental programs when they seem likely to meet a student’s needs. Diplomas should be awarded only when students demonstrate mastery of skills and content in a rigorous achievement test. The high school diploma in that way would mean something to employers and college admissions people, perhaps eventually displacing the SAT.
– This may be too radical for a consensus report, but I am convinced that staking it out as a possible recommendation for the commission would be a wakeup call to the constituencies that otherwise will nod, doze, or at the best decide to make some minor adjustment based on the report.
– “Remedial work in college.” Everyone seems to agree it must go, but how, unless we get high school diplomas based on achievement not hours spent in the salt mines. Do we have a figure for the cost of remediation at the college level? Surely, it’s more than doing it right in the first place. Take the wasted money and use it for programs that respond to the varied needs of students at this stage of their education.
– “Common core” for all seniors. That’s fine as a goal for 2050 but at the moment, face it, the variety of student preparations, backgrounds, aspirations, needs, etc. is so great that a “common core” would be meaningless.
I believe we should address the following items:
– Training life-long earners
– Communication skills
– Authentic assessments: Helping students make connections between school and career plans
– Articulation agreements with colleges and local businesses and industries
– Designing educational programs that reflect current and projected needs of higher education, businesses and industries.
The future of our democratic society depends on the ability of public schools to train critical thinking, and able communicators and to adapt quickly to the changing demands of society and the workplace in a global economy.
It would be very helpful if employers required students to present a small portfolio showing their attendance report, discipline record, courses taken, grades, and a sample of their writing. Colleges/universities would do well to get out of the business of remediation, it just gives students another crutch.
Nationally, it is important for the country to realize that while society in general has lofty ideas about what seniors would know and be able to do if the schools were just held accountable, such idealism is naively based. Along with schools, seniors themselves, employers, admissions officers, parents, etc. should bear the burden of accountability.
Important issues for this report include:
– Improve the quality/quantity of career and transition counseling that students receive throughout High School.
– Every student needs to prepare a life goal plan for graduation through 25 years in conjunction with above.
– Students in their senior years need to apply their learning to outside the school. Application of their classroom experience develops critical thinking along with the realities that change is constant.
– Quality of teachers. This includes both the new teachers and retention.
As a society, we will only prosper and improve our quality of life if we are willing to address that a large percentage of students are not prepared for the challenges they face upon graduation. These challenges continue to change at an increasing rate.
Even with all the information and support, some of our seniors still struggle with decision making throughout the year. Even students with strong academic backgrounds fall victims to severe senioritis. Many seniors procrastinate on their planning activities. Meeting deadlines is a constant problem. Students may verbalize a plan but don’t seem to be able to put it into action. It may be a fear of the unknown and/or a belief that it is not possible to obtain their dreams. Pressure from peers and adults in the academic world leads some students to believe that the only right plan is to attend a 4-year college. However, their lack of action and confusion in choices end up leaving them ill-prepared for any post high school options.
Once students reach their senior year, they need experiences both in school and in the community that will help them make their decisions, follow through on the necessary steps and aid them in the transition from K-12 education. This requires a paradigm shift and collaboration with community and business resources. Throughout the K-12 process, students need to learn about careers, the world of work and how to plan for the role that they may eventually have in the work environment. It is important that we impress on students that all options have value and that a 4-year college is just one option. At times it seems that there is a fine line between enabling and providing guidance.
We must strive to help our students be self-directed without feeling disconnected. The K-12 experience is meant to prepare students for their future life roles, how those roles interconnect, and how we transition through life stages. The senior year is the culmination of this formal process and needs to be structured in a way that makes the students crave every last ounce of this education and feel confident to move on to their future endeavors.
High schools need to provide real work experience for their students, especially seniors, before they matriculate to post-secondary education or enter the workforce. When schools establish internships within the business, medical or legal community, they equip young people with experience and knowledge for their possible future careers. Internships also provide much needed mentoring to improve student achievement and self-confidence. Schools should also investigate partnering with local colleges and universities so that seniors could complete their high school courses while at the same time earning college credits. Also, a daily mixture of high school academics with vocational courses would benefit those students who are not college bound. Most schools need to provide a better and expanded program of career counseling. There are many vocations and professions that the average high school student is unaware of with today’s busy and over-worked counselors. With the appropriate counseling, a student’s choice of college or technical training could hopefully be better matched. The subject of remediation at the college level should be addressed by implementing national curriculum standards so that all students would be exposed to similar material and would be expected to have the same competency levels at graduation.
Today’s high school students are deprived of quality high school counseling due to a system of overworked counselors who fail to meet the needs of our changing complex society. Students do not receive adequate assistance in searching for careers, choosing the correct college or technical program, completing applications for schools and scholarships to name a few. Many counselors are provincial in their outlook on colleges, and lack the resources to search nationally for the best fit for the student. We should focus on increasing the importance and responsibilities of the school counselors.
My major interest is in achieving a science literate citizenry. Future scientists and engineers are not my current concern, but the explosive growth of science-based technology represents great potential but also considerable risk. Science seeks understanding, but democratic society must determine how to use this understanding. This is of course a K-16 problem, but I have selected high schools as the lynchpin of what will someday be a seamless science education. A crucial part of this is the connections between the sciences and the connections of science to the humanities and the social sciences. The objective is that science becomes a way of thinking for all high school graduates. It is my belief that with a serious and sustained ethic of professional development, the last years of high school can be the most fruitful of all as new insights and modified curricula introduce illuminating connections between all areas of learning.
I should also comment on the poor preparation that high school graduates have for college work, especially in science and engineering. Minority students who too often attend inner city schools are desperately motivated, but are fatally deficient in reading and mathematics.
For the under-prepared who hope to be college bound, there is no senior slump – there is the need for strong remediation in fundamentals. For the better prepared, it may be that the realities of high school teacher quality dictates replacing the last year of high school with a pre-college year, in the college of choice or in a local community college. So, the issue is: Can we blend the senior year of high school with the freshman year of college to avoid the “senior slump” and “freshman malaise”?
As citizens and as a work-force, the demands imposed upon our schools are unprecedented. There is no quick fix. To achieve an adequate corps of teachers, we must raise the social (as well as economic) status of teachers; a long-term program not yet begun. Industry is “the least satisfied customer of the public school system,” and the important functions of government in transportation, in communication, in regulation of drugs and medicines, in the public policy that must oversee research and technological revolution – all point to the crucial role of education which must be available to all citizens at the high level indicated by national standards.
At one time in our society, I think it was possible for students not to aspire to a college education and still imagine that they would have a good chance for success in life. I think all of the evidence today would suggest just the opposite. Whether students wish immediately to go to college or into the work force, I believe that they need a quality of high school education that would prepare them for either choice. Many of the highest paying jobs in society that do not require a college education still require fundamental skills in communication, writing, computer work and other such matters.
In my experience I have found that the students who come to us from American high schools are generally quite well prepared. This suggests that there are a number of schools, public and private, that are doing an excellent job. But I am aware that many other institutions, particularly public ones and community colleges, are finding that they have to devote a lot of their resources to remediation. This would suggest that an unfortunately large percentage of high school students are not being well prepared for secondary education. I am sure that employers are finding the same difficulty. I think it is desirable to put a greater pressure on secondary schools to pay attention to fundamental things.
I do not know whether starting school earlier would be an advantage in terms of the outcome at the end of senior year, but I think there is a body of evidence to suggest that well-organized pre-school programs have a very positive influence. I also think that comparative statistics show that American primary and secondary education takes place over a shorter span of a calendar year than is true in most other developed countries. So, whether proposals need to be examined to begin schooling earlier or to extend the school year or some combinations, I would be open to the possibility that these steps could be advantageous.
A plan for school improvement and higher student achievement includes:
– implementation of a formal mentoring program for new teachers;
– an extensive student substance abuse prevention program;
– intervention strategies to ensure that students meet the required academic standards;
– student mentoring programs:
– comprehensive career counseling to assure students and their parents have current information and a variety of options to make informed decisions;
– increase student understanding of the relevance of classroom learning to life outside of the classroom; and
– business/industry partnerships since workplace skills are more than academic learning.
America’s schools are changing. Secondary schools are a reflection of America itself, with its constant shifting population, changing technological advances, and people struggling for equality. Educators and counselors are left to scramble to meet these changes, often without a clear idea of what exactly is going on. Education policies should give educators new clues about what the challenges are, where they lie, and how to address them.
Educators and policy makers should recognize factors such as economic background and the educational experience of students’ parents in creating curriculum. High schools should be encouraged to include an expanded world view in their course selections and course materials. Restructure high schools so that the general track is eliminated and students receive the academic preparation which provides enough basic skills needed to succeed or compete in the knowledge-based economy of the 21st Century – world class academic and technological skills.
There are a number of important issues related to senior year. The first is the re-conceptualization of the year as a true transition. In addition to the options listed above, participation in a community-based service project would allow students to discover their strengths with a view of life beyond high school that can guide their decisions and future actions. The second issue is the quality of the coursework available to students. In some schools, it is difficult to attract and retain highly qualified teachers with the content knowledge required to teach advanced level courses. In some cases, students are asked to do far less than what they are capable of. This may be the result of low teacher expectations, low student expectations, or competition with jobs that may support family needs, but more often create discretionary funds for the students.
The third issue is the lack of personal relationships between students and responsible adults at school or in the community. Seniors are expected to make decisions that will have a major impact on their life options, yet many do not have a relationship with a responsible adult who can advise them. Teachers are often too busy or are unwilling to develop the close relationships that characterized high schools of the past. Such relationships are sometimes available through extracurricular activities, but those activities involve a small percentage of students.
The high schools of America must develop meaningful senior-year transition programs that enable seniors to develop a better understanding of their strengths, weaknesses and interests, and the options available to them. The programs must also complete the students’ education with the knowledge and skills required for their next steps in post-secondary education or the workforce.
The standards movement has brought enormous risks and opportunities in the country’s ongoing efforts to reform schools. Perhaps most important, it has forced a focus on high schools, it has made clear that schools, districts, and states will be held publicly accountable for preparing students for the 21st century. The pressure this raises causes us to focus on the issue of student remediation – what does it take to get low-performing students up to par? It should also cause us to focus on student motivation. It is equally important that high schools generate not just a motivation to pass exit exams, but a real motivation for lifelong learning. The economic reality for today’s students is clear: Earning above poverty wages now requires education beyond 12th grade. High schools have to do more than graduate good test takers, they have to graduate good learners.
If the purpose of the senior year is to help students transition from secondary education to post-secondary education, employment, or some combination of the two, the terms of the agreement have to be changed drastically. The senior year may, for some, need to become the senior years; the lines between K-12, work/service apprenticeship, and college may need to blur, and the criterion for exiting this transition period may need to be less about Carnegie Credits and test scores, and more about readiness, resources, and real links to the next learning platform. If every student is entitled to this type of transitional support, the senior year may need to be made attractive and assessable to students who left school, without realizing what they were giving up.
The most important issues are ensuring that all high school students are academically prepared for post-secondary education and the new economy. Rigorous academic standards for all students will ensure that students are prepared to choose post-secondary education or work and will be prepared for the changing world. Fewer and fewer occupational options will be available for individuals who do not have strong communication, quantitative and critical thinking skills. A related issue is that of access to education. We need to close the gap in education between rich and poor students and majority and minority students.
That the senior year of high school in America is an intellectually wasted year. Even high achieving students “coast.” In Europe, by stark contrast, the senior year is the most intense as students prepare for national exams. (And then many take a “gap” year, traveling abroad. The University degree is then usually three years in length.) The senior year in high school must have more academic challenge. It’s not sufficient for students to have simply met their academic requirements.
It is perhaps time to think of a new construct that would enable students to transition to work or post-secondary education a soon as they are ready (rather than by age.) Or even to create a new type of institution, perhaps by reinventing two-year colleges or utilizing distance education possibilities.
Ultimately, all levels of education need to be on a skills and knowledge base (rather than age, seat time, standardized tests, grade point averages) that align from Pre-K to Ph.D. What is now taught in the senior year could easily be covered earlier with the senior year being totally different (transition to work or college) year than any other.
On a national scale, we need to use this same collaborative strategy to reach consensus on tangible goals for our country’s high schools that align more closely with university and workforce expectations. We need to define and develop a statement of what every high school graduate ought to know and be able to do. In coming years, as high schools and universities move more toward virtual learning, the need for this kind of statement will become even more critical. It is my hope that we will make a significant step in this direction.
The most important issues, in my opinion, are:
– Student Support: what services are we providing for students so that they feel supported throughout their entire school career?
– Teacher Support and Professional Development: how are teachers being trained and supported in assisting students to have a successful transition?
The level of academic achievement necessary to work in today’s world has increased for all students. College bound or heading into the workforce is not the factor it once was in determining the type of preparation undertaken in high school. The change works both ways because many college-bound students are finding vocational courses to be very beneficial, and those heading into jobs are finding the application requirements involve more math, science and language arts skills. I believe we do our students a disservice if we do not prepare them to be successful in all areas.
The disconnect between K-12 and post-secondary has many facets. Not demanding the mastery of skills prior to graduation, no real sense of the application of things learned in school to work, not understanding what is actually required or done in daily work, and the lack of challenges for many students, all play a part. Many of the same issues arise for students entering the workplace. Role models can play a significant part in bridging both of these gaps.
Megan Wilson is a teacher, life strategist, successful entrepreneur, inspirational keynote speaker and founder of https://Ebookscheaper.com. Megan champions a radical rethink of our school systems; she calls on educators to teach both intuition and logic to cultivate creativity and create bold thinkers.