Minding the Gap: Why Integrating High School with College Makes Sense and How to Do It (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Minding the Gap: Why Integrating High School with College Makes Sense and How to Do It
The American education "system" rarely thinks systemically. Policymakers, practitioners, and researchers working in the traditional silos of primary, secondary, and postsecondary education seldom consider how the entire continuum of schooling in an era of "college-for-all" can best educate students. Numerous educational failures—from high dropout rates to substantial achievement gaps—are the result, according to the editors and authors of Minding the Gap: Why Integrating High School with College Makes Sense and How to Do It. The solution, they argue, is an integrated grade P–16 system emphasizing a post-high school credential.
Minding the Gap is an edited compilation of research reports, policy briefs, and statements corralled into a volume under the aegis of Jobs for the Future, a Boston-based advocacy organization interested in raising awareness of P–16 among policymakers and business leaders. The 30 chapters are therefore quite concise and include few tables, figures, or detailed discussions of research theory or methodology.
The authors are drawn from an array of education policy organizations including the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, the American Youth Policy Forum, and the National Center for Higher Education Management. They also include a few professors and practitioners. But the book is most clearly intended to serve as a primer on the subject for an audience of nonacademics.
Sequentially in six parts the authors: (a) lay out an argument for the integration of grades 9 through 14; (b) assess the state of the states; (3) discuss ways to align standards, assessment, and curricula across grades; examine (d) practices, and (e) policies designed to created new pathways; and (f) delve into important details regarding accountability, data systems, and financing. Overall the authors make the strongest case for why integrating high school with college makes sense, based on their myriad areas of expertise and research. The arguments will be familiar (and in some cases repetitive) to those engaged in higher education research but are certainly worth reviewing.
The requirements of a post-industrial economy, the limitation of a contemporary high school education, high rates of remediation in the postsecondary sector, the increasingly ambitious expectations of all youth—all point toward a need for reform. There is a clear economic imperative to graduate more students with college degrees and plenty of evidence of socioeconomic and racial disparities in outcomes occurring at secondary/postsecondary transition points. The historical chasm between K–12 and postsecondary education—eloquently described in a chapter by Michael Kirst and Michael Usdan—must be healed if change is to occur.
The second half of the book highlights current practices and emerging policies in an attempt to provide insights into how such change might take place. The greatest strength of a P-20 system, highlighted by nearly all advocates, is its seamlessness, meaning that it eliminates traditional transition points between sectors where the most disadvantaged students tend to struggle. Therefore a central concern among policymakers and practitioners seeking to create P–20 systems is how to essentially rip out existing seams and replace them with fabrics which span secondary and higher education. [End Page 362]
But where and how to begin? The book provides a few specific suggestions, among them a proposal by Nancy Hoffman to begin by using dual enrollment policy as a building block, and another by Joel Vargas on the creation of early college high schools. But since the collection of essays includes only authors who seem to agree that a P–16 system is the next logical step in the education standards reform movement, there is little discussion of alternatives to or potential downsides of the proposals. This weakens the book's usefulness as a teaching tool.
In many ways Minding the Gap is a collection of the "greatest hits" of work in this burgeoning area of research, including...
