Accelerating Advancement in School and Work

Current efforts to reform the American high school face a number of complex realities. Among the most significant are the far-reaching economic and demographic changes in the United States over the past several decades. The restructuring of the economy has made some education beyond high school the new prerequisite for middle-class jobs, raising the bar for what levels of skill all students must acquire. At the same time, demographic changes mean that the most rapidly growing segments of the student population—now and into the future—are those whom the education system serves least well.

High schools today must meet the dual challenge of preparing all students to function at higher levels and performing better for those least well served. Their task is not simply to help most students graduate with a minimal level of competence, but also to ensure that all students leave high school college-ready (that is, able to enter college without needing remediation). This is true both for students who will enter college immediately after high school and for those who will enter the work force but need ongoing education over time to advance economically.

The standards-based reform movement provides a strong foundation for meeting these challenges, especially because of its emphasis on setting higher and clearer expectations for what students need to know and be able to do. Although standards-based reforms have steadily raised achievement at the elementary and middle school levels, they have not yet succeeded in significantly improving outcomes for the increasingly heterogeneous students who stay in high school, let alone for the many who drop out before earning a diploma.

The problem is not just a failing of high schools but also of the secondary education system in general, whose large, one-size-fits-all high schools and underfinanced second-chance programs are ill equipped to deal with the diverse circumstances of high school youth. The secondary education system has to serve, among others, ninth graders reading below the sixth-grade level and needing accelerated literacy acquisition, low-performing youth taking general track courses that do not prepare them for college or work, students whose primary language is not English, out-of-school youth needing a way to get into college and onto career paths, students who desire advanced technical education, students of all income groups ready for more advanced academic challenges, and average students trying simply to get by. Too many young people drift anonymously through this system—bored, alienated, and unsure of their future direction.

A one-size-fits-all institution designed for the twentieth century cannot serve the different needs of all young people well in a new era. Meeting the twenty-first century's challenges will require more than tinkering around the edges of high schools as they currently are configured. It will require a fundamental restructuring of the secondary school system, both within schools and between schools and the world around them.

Yet most current high school reform efforts remain narrow, working backward from high school graduation and focusing on the experience of students within the four walls of the school. State accountability measures encourage this narrow focus, stressing student performance on high school exit exams, while ignoring the equally important question of how well young people fare in their lives and in the labor market several years out from high school.

In Transforming the American High School, a 2001 report from Jobs for the Future and the Aspen Institute, former assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education Michael Cohen arguesfor a more radical approach.

The current education system, including high schools, provides students with a constant amount of time and a single approach for learning—and produces unacceptably large variations in student performance. The only way to get all students up to common, high performance standards is to flip this formulation on its head. We must provide students with multiple learning options and...