Strengthening Transitions by Encouraging Career Pathways (continued)

South Carolina mandates that high schools provide careerfocused advising to all students, and all middle and high schools are required to employ a career specialist certified in career development by 2007.

Graduation Requirements. In speaking with college faculty and staff, we often heard that high school graduation requirements can pose a barrier to creating career pathways. Possible barriers include uneven student preparation for college; an emphasis on academics, to the exclusion of applied coursework; the need for CTE students to take courses above and beyond regular graduation requirements to earn a diploma; and the lack of room in students’ programs for CTE electives. Increasingly, states have been setting statewide graduation requirements. Still, while almost all states now specify the number of courses that must be taken in the subject-matter areas, fewer specify the content of the courses (Somerville & Yi, 2002). This variation can make it difficult to develop pathways from high school to college, as students will enter college with very different academic backgrounds. Thus, imposing some consistency of requirements, at least across a particular state, likely has a positive effect on the high-school-to-college transition. However, imposing statewide requirements often goes hand-in-hand with raising the level of graduation standards, which may discourage CTE course taking. Increased academic requirements and emphasis on standardized tests may squeeze electives such as CTE courses out of the curriculum. A number of states are finding ways to include CTE courses in their new high school graduation requirements, however. They do so by creating diploma endorsements that reward CTE students for their extra work. States may also create multiple pathways to a high school diploma. For example: The Delaware Department of Education has integrated career pathways into the state’s high school graduation requirements, establishing pathways as a central part of a high school education and requiring three credits in a career pathway. Oklahoma’s high school graduation requirements allow students to meet math and science requirements with State Board of Education and school district approved contextual courses that are technology oriented and may be taught at technology center schools.

Connecting High School and College

Curricular Alignment, Articulation, and Dual Enrollment. Aligning high school and college curricula across educational sectors and career requirements is a hallmark of a career pathway. Pathways should allow students to take high school courses that connect to their future postsecondary coursework and also prepare them for entry into the job market, preferably by offering students the opportunity to earn an industry credential soon after high school graduation. One common way to align high school and college coursework in technical areas is to create articulation agreements through which high school electives serve as the first step toward a college major. Students who successfully complete articulated courses are awarded college credits that can be applied toward a degree if the student completes additional coursework at the college. Unfortunately, these arrangements have not been as uniformly successful as intended (Bragg, 2001). Hence, dual enrollment is emerging as a popular alternative to articulated courses. Dual enrollment students take actual college courses, with credit recorded on a college transcript. Forty states have policies addressing dual enrollment (Karp, Bailey, Hughes, & Fermin, 2005). Sometimes, these policies encourage dual enrollment, such as when they ensure that both high schools and colleges receive funding for dually-enrolled students. In other cases, policies can inadvertently inhibit the growth of technically oriented dual enrollment. States may set target populations or admissions requirements for dual enrollment that exclude students who learn more effectively in applied situations. A number of individuals we spoke with expressed a preference for only limited state policies in this area, to allow for more institutional flexibility. In some cases, dual enrollment students earn high school as well as college credit, and remain on track for graduation. For CTE students, who often take additional coursework already, earning dual credit can make it easier for them to take a college course while still meeting all of their requirements for high school graduation. However, many state policies do not specify whether students may earn dual credit. Some states have made efforts to link high school and postsecondary curricula in both technical and academic areas, trying to strengthen articulation agreements, increase students’ and parents’ knowledge about these agreements, and open access to dual enrollment programs. For example: Iowa’s Grow Iowa Values legislation supports career academy programs, in which students participate in a sequential course of study in an applied field beginning in high school and culminating in a postsecondary credential. The state does not set admissions standards; institutions may create their own eligibility requirements. Missouri is developing statewide articulation agreements for career and technical courses of study.

College Readiness. A chief goal of career pathways is to help all students become ready for college. Including rigorous high school academics in pathways is an important way to encourage this goal. Students also need to understand what will be expected of them in college, yet they often receive unclear messages about what it means to be college ready. In most states, the secondary and postsecondary education systems function separately from each other, so that high school graduation requirements, including exit exams, are not aligned with the assessments colleges use to determine students’ readiness for college-level work. High school teachers may not be familiar with the college placement exams and may not realize that their students lack appropriate preparation. Hence, students may be awarded a high school diploma but not be prepared for college. Moreover, in many states, postsecondary institutions themselves decide which placement test to administer and what score signifies college readiness, so a student may qualify for college-credit coursework at one institution but may need remedial courses at another. This inconsistency may cause confusion and frustration for students and teachers. A number of states have adopted common testing procedures and cutoff scores. For example: Illinois’s eleventh grade achievement test, the Prairie State Achievement Examination (PSAE), includes the ACT Assessment, a widely used college entrance examination, and two ACT WorkKeys tests. Therefore, the PSAE simultaneously assesses students’ progress toward state standards and readiness for college admissions. The City University of New York has aligned its entry standards with New York State’s high school exit examinations.