High school graduation requirements must be developed at the school level by faculty and approved by parents and supervisory boards, accepted by the students coming to the school (who, hopefully, have some choice in the school they attend), and the knowledge a young person needs to be considered an effective adult. These requirements will not consist solely of long-earned Carnegie units and/or test scores, but will be based on a performance and portfolio promotion system throughout the middle and high school years. Although most students will complete the college expectations by the time they are around eighteen years of age, others will progress through the program more or less quickly. The “fixes” will be the basic standards of competition; the “variables” will be the time it takes to achieve them, and the ways in which these skills are deployed. The breadth of the curriculum will also vary by student. Senior year will be dominated by a rigorous senior seminar, including a major senior project, possibly including an internship, and leading to a Graduation Exhibition that can be described and explained to all interested parties.
A new type of transcript will need to be developed to describe a student’s progress through high school, especially during the senior year. If we’re going to ask potential employers and college admissions officers to take high school transcripts seriously, we’ll need to make sure we’re writing in a language we both understand.
University and job entry requirements need to be clearer. In the case of the university, they must be elaborated by the professors of the university and accepted by the supervisory boards and the clients of the institution (students, their parents and other people who help pay the costs of the university) that expose the knowledge that a young person needs to be able to do entry level work at that institution.
A second transcript (or a second part of the transcript) will need to be developed collaboratively by college and high school teachers, so that it is possible for some high school graduates to go directly to college. Admission to the university will not be “automatic admission” for those who have completed high school. Those who do not consider themselves prepared to do entry-level work at the university they wish to attend should be told relatively in advance exactly what their gaps are and be given help, including new kinds of teaching, to that can achieve the desired results. If this aid is offered and taken advantage of during the senior year of high school, it will surely eliminate the “coast permit” that so many seniors have assumed.
When a student is told that they cannot do entry-level work at the university or in a specific part of the workplace for the time being, there need to be various forms of “remediation” available. When low ability is the problem, extensive work with counselors should help the student decide which areas in which she has the most competence and promise, and what type of training would be most appropriate to pursue that future. When poor pre-training is the problem, it can be compensated for, but adequate time must be set aside to do so. You have to give up other plans for the student’s time -other courses, work, sports-, at least if the student plans to stick to a specific schedule. This is not a trivial problem and cannot be handled by a short course.
When the problem is motivation, it needs to be identified, accepted, and addressed by a combination of counselors and teachers. (It’s not necessarily a teacher’s “fault” that a student doesn’t function in her class. At the same time, the teacher must appreciate the reasons a student may not be motivated if a real connection is to be made.) When the problem is maturity, it should be dealt with by keeping college prep programs open for older ages, perhaps in high school at night.
For many people, these four factors are what cause the need for remediation. This is the reason why there is no single, efficient and, of course, economical solution. The best job of helping these students will be done by a continuous policy of promotion for performance that has led to at least some self-awareness all the time, and by self-respecting teachers in schools that have kept up the burden of Their teachers work low enough that they can really get to know their students. These teachers are more likely to be able to work with students to analyze the problem and determine the best course of action.
College graduation requirements must be posted to demonstrate the additional knowledge a person needs to achieve beyond entry level. These should emphasize preparation to do sustained, complex, and difficult work, so that the student considering college knows what attitudes and knowledge they will need to acquire and then expand upon in college. It should be emphasized that choosing college is fundamentally choosing a different type of present and future job. Too often, college is seen as some kind of moratorium, clearly affecting both college and the senior year of high school.
It may be naive to insist that every eighteen-year-old is prepared, emotionally or intellectually, for sustained, complex, and difficult work. Some can; some can’t – yet. However, high school seniors need to see beyond the minimum college entrance requirements to envision the hurdles that lie ahead, both at the higher levels of college and in the workplace. These obstacles are largely one of integrity, persistence, and a sense of personal responsibility. Ways to measure these qualities with any kind of scientific precision have not been developed, and perhaps that is a good thing, since many students improve in these aspects during their early adulthood.
Even so, high school teachers who have been able to meet their students have hunches about these qualities. Progress reports written by teachers and counselors throughout high school may increasingly refer to these qualities as they develop, so students and parents are reminded of their importance. Over the past year, those who write college and workplace recommendations have been frequently asked about their impression of students as potential workers and citizens; They may also be encouraged to cite the evidence behind these impressions, to draw a more convincing portrait of the candidate. These recommendations are already part of our communication process, but both parties need to take them more seriously.
