Last week I gave a speech to the Washington State Association of Career and Technical Education Administrators that touched on Senate Bill 212 (CAP4K) concerning Alignment of Preschool to Postsecondary Education,as an example of public policy infatuation with higher education.
A member of the audience, Wes Pruitt, policy analyst for the Washington Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board, shared with me two short critiques of the reports which underlie SB 212’s claim that “to be successful in the workforce and earn a living wage immediately upon graduation from high school, a student needs nearly the same level of academic achievement and preparation that he or she would need to continue into career and technical or higher education”.
These critiques were written by Bryan Wilson, Deputy Director of that same agency. They address the research studies from Achieve, Inc. and ACT which are used to justify college readiness for all. They are quite short and you can read them here and here.
Wes also alerted me to work done by Willard Daggett’s organization, the
The conclusion reached by ICLE that the technical reading tasks of many workplaces outpace the reading demands of college courses have been widely shared. What has not been shared are their emerging findings that the math demands of the workplace are not only far lower than those of college math courses, but are as well far lower than those of high school math courses. I am in the process of tracking down an authoritative version of this study and will share it as soon as I can.
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