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Career and College Readiness and Success for All Students

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A volume in
Research on High School and Beyond
Becky Smerdon, Series Editor

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Career and College Readiness and Success for All Students

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edited by

Becky Smerdon

Quill Research Associates, LLC

Kellie Kim

WestEd

Corinne Alfeld

Institute of Education Sciences

INFORMATION AGE PUBLISHING, INC.
Charlotte, NC • www.infoagepub.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

   A CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

       http://www.loc.gov

ISBN: 978-1-64113-152-0 (Paperback)

           978-1-64113-153-7 (Hardcover)

           978-1-64113-154-4 (ebook)

Copyright © 2018 Information Age Publishing Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
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from the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

1     Introduction

Corinne Alfeld and Becky Smerdon

2     Clearing Clogs in the Pipeline: College Readiness for All in Chicago and Milwaukee

Raquel Farmer-Hinton and Kelly K. Rifelj

3     Do CCR Initiatives Lead to College and Career Readiness? One State’s Efforts to Meet the Challenge

Jacqueline R. Stillisano, Kim B. Wright, Kayla B. Rollins, and Hersh C. Waxman

4     Legal Issues Regarding Students With Learning Disabilities’ Transition to Post-Secondary Education

Wanda Hadley and Brett Geier

5     Practice-Based Learning: A Proposed Method To Develop and Assess High School Students’ Career Readiness

Svetlana Darche and David Stern

6     Alternative Predictors of First-Year College Success

Jean P. Kirnan and Nina E. Ventresco

7     Timing and Factors of College Dropout

Stacey S. Merola and Allan Porowski

8     Conclusion

Corinne Alfeld

About the Editors

About the Contributors

Chapter 1

Introduction

Corinne Alfeld and Becky Smerdon

Most Americans no longer question whether and which students should be prepared for college. Rather, it is now widely accepted that all students should be prepared for postsecondary education in some form (e.g., certificate, 2- or 4-year degree), as these credentials are not only required for many jobs but are also the surest path to upward mobility (Carnevale, Rose, & Cheah, 2011). There is also greater recognition that in addition to a more traditional approach to preparation for postsecondary education (e.g., taking college preparatory classes), students should also graduate high school with technical knowledge and employability skills to secure, retain, and advance their employment when they leave school, at whatever level that may be. Simply put, today’s high school graduates need a broad-based education that combines an array of knowledge, skills, and experiences to prepare them for life after high school. And indeed, state’s definitions of college and career readiness have broadened in recent years to include a variety of skills and dispositions, such as critical thinking skills, social emotional skills such as collaboration, and interpersonal skills such as resilience and perseverance (English, Rasmussen, Cushing, & Therriault, 2016).

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015, the key federal K–12 legislation, explicitly supports the notion of a “well-rounded” student, emphasizing readiness in areas beyond its predecessor’s (the No Child Left Behind Act [2001], or NCLB) focus on core academic content. ESSA (2015) mandates that states ensure that students are provided an enriched, accelerated curriculum beyond courses and content areas in which state assessments are given (e.g., mathematics, reading) and that is aligned with the postsecondary experiences students are likely to encounter. ESSA (2015) also supports an expansion of readiness goals through provisions for the improvement of conditions for student learning that support social-emotional learning, intrapersonal skills, and other employability skills. And ESSA (2015) includes provisions in states’ accountability systems that support emphasis on broader definitions of readiness. Additionally, ESSA’s (2015) accountability framework includes important principles for supporting a broader definition of what students need to know and be able to do once they graduate high school. Accountability systems under ESSA (2015) may include multiple measures of college and career readiness. Indeed, several states had already added a career-focused indicator prior to ESSA (2015) passing (such as pathway completion or technical assessment achievement) to their accountability systems, and the number of states publicly reporting such indicators continues to increase (Achieve & Advance CTE, 2016).

As definitions and measures of college and career readiness continue to evolve, we know one thing for sure: We need to better prepare all students for success after high school. This book explores the ways in which some education researchers are approaching this task.

In Chapter 2, Farmer-Hinton and Rifelj describe the efforts of two urban districts (Chicago and Milwaukee) to “unclog the pipeline” to college. Both cities battle racial segregation, poverty, and achievement gaps, and have similar leadership structures and demographics. The authors first examine the historical timelines of each city and then describe the change in policies and practices to attempt to move them from helping some students get to college to helping all students do so. While neither was a complete success story, valuable lessons can be learned from the comparison and contrast between them.

Next, Stillisano and colleagues (Chapter 3) discuss the need for college and career readiness among all students and examine the efforts in one state to measure it. Specifically, Texas implemented “college readiness assignments” (CRAs), which are open-ended, non-routine problems designed for students to demonstrate their mastery of curricula at the end of high school. The authors describe the implementation and evaluation of this initiative and conclude with recommendations for similar efforts in other states, based on the findings of the study.

Geier and Hadley (Chapter 4) delve into the preparation of students with disabilities for the transition to college and careers, beginning with an overview of relevant legislation (IDEA [2004] and ADA [2008]). The authors summarize the literature on how these laws have played out for students at both the preK–12 and postsecondary levels with different types of disabilities, and they document the research-based best practices for successful transitions.

Darche and Stern (Chapter 5) tackle the problem of how to measure high school students’ employability, or 21st century, skills and how states might include such a measure in their accountability systems. The authors first summarize prior research and practice around measurement of college and career readiness, focusing on the field of career technical education which has made the most progress in assessing contextual, work-based learning and performance. They include an examination of predictors of long-term success, including social emotional skills. Finally, they discuss a proposal to develop a valid and reliable measure of “practice-based learning” and what the strengths and limitations would be for widespread use of such a measure, particularly for accountability purposes.

At the college level, Kirnan and Ventresco (Chapter 6) propose alternative ways to predict first year college success. They review the current predictive models and discuss their limitations, particularly for minority students, against whom existing measures may be biased. The authors propose additional predictors, in particular noncognitive measures, which can also be used for identifying students at risk and providing supplemental services to ensure a successful first year. However, such factors also have limitations, and more research is needed to validate them.

Finally, Merola and Porowski (Chapter 7) tackle the problem of large numbers of college dropouts in the United States, beginning with a description of national statistics on college enrollment, completion, and employment. The authors then use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY-97) to investigate the timing of dropout to determine optimal points for intervention. They also identify high school level predictors that could be used in an early warning system to get students back on track for college enrollment and completion.

In the final chapter of this book, the editors provide a summary of what this research, as a whole, can tell us about how to ensure that all students are ready to enter, and succeed in, college and careers.

References

Achieve and Advance CTE. (2016). How states are making career readiness count: A 2016 Update. Washington, DC: Achieve.

Carnevale, A. P., Rose, S. J., & Cheah, B. (2011). The college payoff: Education, occupations, lifetime earnings. Georgetown Center for Education and the Workforces. Retrieved from https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/the-college-payoff/

English, D., Rasmussen, J., Cushing, E., & Therriault, S. (2016). Leveraging the Every Student Succeeds Act to support state visions for college and career readiness. Washington, DC: American Institutes for Research.

ESSA (2015). Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, Pub. L. No. 114-95 § 114 Stat. 1177 (2015-2016).

National Longitudinal Survey of Youth/1997. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.nlsinfo.org/content/cohorts/nlsy97