By Bill Coplin
01/06/04 -- Public education could do much more to prepare students for the work force. This applies to students who are bound for college and those who are not.
Most school systems fail to deliver on the promise of work force preparation. But it is not for want of trying. History is filled with failed attempts like the "school-to-work" movement of the 1980s. Too many obstacles prevent adequate work force preparation in our K-12 system.
The most pervasive and powerful obstacle is the preoccupation of students, parents, and educators of getting into the "right" college. This focus on college means spending the majority of quality time on college prep courses and SAT preparation.
Yet, many students come out of college poorly prepared for the realities of the working world, and there is little evidence that the ranking of a college has a strong relationship to preparation of its graduates for the world of work.
The current emphasis on standardized testing also hurts. The tests that measure such skills as reading, writing, and arithmetic can be viewed as contributing to skill development, but content tests in academic fields do not. Time required to prepare for content tests is time taken away from developing the professional skills that employers want their employees to have.
Many teachers want to only teach what they were taught. They violate the Hebrew proverb: "Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in a different time." Benjamin Franklin fought against the teaching of Latin as an essential part of college education, and that battle was not won for another 130 years.
Facing these obstacles, school board members who believe that preparing tomorrow's work force is a key goal of K-12 education need to follow the advice of Lao-Tzu who wrote: "A wise man does not contend. Therefore, no one can contend against him. Yield and overcome."
A change in formal curriculum should not be the first line of attack. School board members cannot win that fight. And even if they could, it would take decades -- if not centuries. They need to work around and within the existing curriculum.
The first step is to prepare a list of general professional skills that every student should develop throughout their K-12 and postsecondary education. Examples includes editing, proofreading, and teamwork skills.
These skills can be grouped into 10 broad areas: work ethic, physical performance, speaking, writing, working with people, influencing people, research, number crunching, asking and answering the right questions, and problem solving.
The specific list of skills is not as important as the creation of some list that students, teachers, administrators, and the school board can agree is a set of professional competencies required for the work force.
I use the word "professional" to mean individuals who are experienced, knowledgeable about their field, skillful, hardworking, and, most of all, committed to continuous improvement. The term "pro" resonates with high school youths and should be used as a hook to get them to pay attention to the idea of the list of skills.
Once the list is developed and publicized, the following actions should be taken:
• Incorporate the list into the school system's mission statement.
• Require that "career prep" activities, such as community service, be justified in terms of one or more of the professional skills identified by the board.
• Support ways to evaluate and recognize excellence in professional skills. This could be done by creating a "professional skills transcript" along with the report card or by providing awards to students who excel in specific skill areas.
• Encourage and support programs like DECCA and Junior Achievement, perhaps as credit-earning activities.
• Educate parents to change the way they talk to their children about college. Rather than emphasizing the prestige of a college or the field of study they choose, they should tell their children to focus on the skills required of any profession.
• Encourage teachers in all courses to present a list of the professional skills to their students that their course will help develop. Lab science courses, for example, develop students' ability to keep detailed records.
• Encourage guidance counselors and others to emphasize the importance of professional skills for getting into college and making the most of college once they get in. This message should start in the ninth grade. Where the professional skills fit into the curriculum is not as important as that they are presented somewhere.
• Replace the college-going rate as the most highly publicized way to assess the success of a high school. College admissions should not be viewed as the end goal of high school students but as a step to becoming a "pro" in any field.
These suggestions will not transform the curriculum. However, they will help close the gap between the goal of most school board members and the poor preparation their students now get for the world of work.
Bill Coplin is a professor of public policy at the Maxwell School and the College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University and is the author of Ten Things Employers Want You to Learn in College (Ten Speed Press, 2003).