What does college and career readiness actually mean

On the surface, everyones favorite buzzword certainly seems unobjectionable enough.  In addition to being  short, snappy, and alliterative (all good qualities in a buzzword), who could possibly argue that high school students  shouldnt be prepared for college and careers?  When you consider the slogan a bit more closely, however, it starts to make a little less sense. First and most obviously, the American higher education  system is staggeringly diverse, encompassing everything from for-profit trade schools to community colleges to state flagship institutions to the Ivy League. While it seems reasonable to assume that there is a baseline  skills that all (or most) students should be expected to graduate from high school, a one-size-fits-all approach makes absolutely no sense when it comes to college admissions. Does anyone seriously  think that a student who wants to study accounting at a local community college and one who wants to study physics at MIT should come out of high school knowing the same things? Or that a student who wants to study communications through an online, for-profit college  and a student who wants to study philosophy at Princeton  should be expected to read at the same level? A student receiving straight As at one  institution could easily need substantial  remediation to even earn a passing grade at the other. Viewed  this way, the definition of  college readiness as knowledge and skills in English and  mathematics  necessary to qualify for and succeed in entry-level, credit-bearing  post-secondary  coursework without the need for remediation is effectively meaningless. Second,  lets consider the career readiness part.  Perhaps this was less true when the slogan was originally coined (by the ACT†¦I think), but today it is  more or less  impossible to obtain even the lowest-level white collar  position without a college diploma. Virtually anyone entering the job market immediately after high school will almost certainly be considered only for service jobs (flipping burgers, stocking shelves at Walmart) or manual labor. While these jobs do require basic literacy and numeracy skills, they are light years away from those required by even a relatively un-challenging  college program. It makes no sense to group them  with  post-secondary education. Third, the pairing of  college and career is more than a little problematic. While there are obviously some skills that translate well in both the classroom and in the boardroom (writing clearly and grammatically, organizing ones thoughts in a logical manner, considering multiple viewpoints), there are other ways in which the skills valued in the classroom (searching for complexity, problematizing seemingly straightforward ideas) are exactly the opposite of those usually prized in the working world. They are  enormously valuable skills, but on their own merits. It really only makes sense to lump college and work together in this way if you are attempting to redefine  college as quasi-trade school for the tech industry. Like most people, though, I assumed that the college part was intended refer  to  traditional, four-year institutions. Then,  while reading one of the white papers released by Zeev Wurman and Sandra Stotsky (one of the writers of the 1998 Massachusetts ELA standards, considered  the most rigorous in the country, and  one of only two members of the Common Core validation committee to refuse to sign off on the standards), I came across this edifying tidbit: The clearest statement of the meaning of [college and career readiness] that we have found appears in the minutes of the March 23 meeting of the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. Jason Zimba, a member of the mathematics draft-writing team who had been invited to speak to the Board, stated, in response to a query, that â€Å"the concept of college readiness is minimal and focuses on non- selective colleges.† Earlier, Cynthia Schmeiser, president and CEO of ACT’s Education Division, one of Common Core’s key partners, testified to a U.S. Senate Committee that college readiness was aimed at such post-secondary institutions as â€Å"two- or four-year colleges, trade schools, or technical schools.† These candid comments raise professional and ethical issues. The concept is apparently little more than a euphemism for â€Å"minimum competencies,† the concept that guided standards and tests in the 1980s, with little success in increa sing the academic achievement of low-performing students Moreover, it seems that this meaning for college readiness was intended only for low-achieving high school students who are to be encouraged to seek enrollment in non-selective post-secondary  institutions. Despite its low academic goals and limited target, this meaning for college readiness was generalized as the academic goal for all students and offered to the public without explanation.  (Stotsky and Wurman, The Emperors New Clothes:  National Assessments Based on Weak â€Å"College and Career Readiness Standards, 2010.)   Stotsky goes on to point out that not a single detail from the very explicit standards laid out in the 2003 report Understanding University Success   a report that included  input from 400 faculty members from 20 institutions, including Harvard, MIT, and the University of Virginia was included in the Common Core Standards. In contrast, Common Core standards were primarily written by 24 people, many of whom were affiliated with the testing industry, and some of whom had no teaching experience whatsoever. As Mercedes Schneider points out, Jason Zimba, the lead writer of the math standards:   †¦acknowledge[d] that ending with the Common Core in high school could preclude students from attending elite colleges. In many cases, the Core is not aligned with the expectations at the collegiate level.  Ã¢â‚¬Å"If you want to take calculus your freshman year in college,  you will need to take more mathematics than is in the Common Core. Likewise, I would add that analytical skills a tad more sophisticated than simply comparing and contrasting, or  using evidence to support ones arguments, are a prerequisite for doing any sort of serious university-level work in the humanities or social sciences. As is vocabulary beyond the level of synthesize and hypothesis. Food for thought, the next time you hear/see Common Core described as a set of more rigorous (hah!) standards designed to prepare students for colleges and the workforce.   Cynthia Schmeiser, incidentally, now works for the College Board. Its amazing how, when you do a little prodding (or, should I say, delve deep, to invoke another preferred euphemism), the same names keep cropping up over and over again