High Schools Have Got it Bad for Higher Ed — And That Ain't Good

Will every child entering kindergarten eventually become a college professor? Of course not. Then why, Ms. Wilensky asks, is our entire education system geared toward preparing the few who will pursue academic careers? She finds the answer in the inordinate influence of college entrance requirements on K-12 schooling, an influence sustained by the values of our society's dominant culture. IN THE last few years, education reformers have been proposing that high school graduation requirements align with the requirements for college entrance and that high schools organize themselves to ensure that all of their graduates are successful in college, without remediation, if they choose to attend. This strategy takes today's colleges and universities as the given of our education system and implies that the educational problems in need of major reform are to be found in the K-12 sector. But recent research shows there is reason to be highly skeptical of this view. Colleges fail to graduate large numbers of the students they enroll,(1) and recent data on the literacy of college students in their last year of school indicate that only 31% of them are proficient, compared to 15% of all adults. (2) In the face of such data, we should not assume that the structures, practices, and expectations of colleges and universities are sacred. I want to put forward here the view that colleges and universities are a major part of the educational problem we need to solve and, more specifically, that they exercise a detrimental effect on other elements of the system through the powerful influence exerted by traditional college entrance requirements. This is by no means the only problem facing our education system, but I suggest that, if we fail to deal with it, we cannot hope to truly prepare all our students for the 21st century. If, as I will argue below, it is the hyper-academic focus of college entrance requirements that leads to the success of only a few, the outright failure of others, and the low achievement of many in our K-12 system, then further tightening the alignment between colleges and public schooling can only make things worse. And by keeping our attention focused on what has seemed to work in the past rather than on what is needed for the future, we run the further risk of missing a current political opportunity to actually remake the landscape of education in a way that will prepare students for the new demands of the globalized economy and interdependent world. I begin by looking at the way that the entire K-12 system is skewed toward meeting the needs of those students headed for selective colleges and universities and the way less successful students are funneled into watered-down versions of a college-preparatory curriculum. Next I explore the origin of the college entrance requirements that have been driving this system and examine how the K-12 focus on skills that lead to success in college, coupled with the political influence of powerful parents, contributes significantly to the very failures that we want to remedy. Finally, I conclude by offering some suggestions for a way forward, though not a prescriptive plan. My goal is to widen the lens of reform to bring attention to the ways in which higher education is a part of the problem of the K-12 system and so needs to be a part of the solution. Only when we have identified all the elements of the system that produces our current reality, and only when all the players in that system own their responsibility and begin to look at ways to change, will it be possible to educate all our children for the complex, challenging, and dynamic future we know they are facing. THE TAIL IS WAGGING THE DOG Much of K-12 education is structured to pursue one goal that is rarely mentioned: the preparation of some students for admission to selective colleges. If you doubt this, visit any community in the United States when the local school board is asked to consider changes in scheduling, curriculum, school calendar, class rank, selection of valedictorian, or graduation requirements that might affect the curriculum vitae of that community's highest-performing students. …