What's Become Clear

When we talk about school change there is always a discussion about preparing students for college. There is no doubt that in the 21st century those people who are the most successful tend to be those with the highest level of education. But not all college degrees are highly correlated with being successful in the 21st century.

I’ve been giving this a lot of thought and in fact later this week I’m going to be visiting with my friend Dr. Jackie Vietti, at Butler Community College to help me make sense of the whole question of college ready. You see, I can give you a whole pile of evidence that we are doing poorly when it comes to preparing kids for college, and that even many of those who make it through college, don’t get jobs that are high paying enough to pay off their college loans. So I am suffering from cognitive dissonance on this issue.

So I’ll tell you what I think I believe up to this point. I’m looking at college degrees from two perspectives. One, is the degree in high demand in society today; and two, is it a high skill degree? I’m still compiling a list of college degrees that I believe are high demand and high skill degrees. In this category I would put engineering degrees, many health science related degrees such as nursing, and some IT degrees. But I also put many two year technical degree, and even some industry certification programs. I’m sure there are others, so if you have some examples send them to me.

So that begs the question, are there some high skill low demand degrees? I think that some degrees in the sciences may fit this category; physics, biology, and chemistry. But I’m not completely sure of this.

And as I was thinking further about these categories I started to wonder if there are high demand and low skill degrees. I think there used to be, but I don’t think there are anymore. I think that liberal arts degrees used to be high demand and low skill. I think now liberal arts degrees are low skill and low demand.

when I graduated from college almost 40 years ago a liberal arts degree, like all college degrees, was the ticket to a good job. Today, that just isn’t true. Graduates with liberal arts degrees are perfectly prepared to go on to graduate school, but the jobs available for most of these degrees are for the most part low skill and sadly, low pay.

And therein lies one of our big problems. All of our K-12 core curriculum, and all of our gen ed courses in post secondary institutions are liberal arts courses. Which means we are spending huge amounts of our time, our most precious educational resource, preparing kids in low skill low demand areas, which the students see as boring and irrelevant. Perhaps it’s time as we talk about school change to begin to deal with the sacred cow of education … the liberal arts degree. – Steve Wyckoff

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If we really want school change the first thing we should abandon is the concept of “college ready” for every student. I know, I’ve said it before, and I could feel you rolling your eyes through the internet. I didn’t say we should completely abandon “college ready,” but it shouldn’t be the main focus of our educational system.

So what should it be? Life ready! We should be focusing on helping every child develop a life plan. Not college plan, not a career plan, a life plan. So you want some evidence? Look at this.

And I could provide more. The myth that a college degree is a path to prosperity is just that, a myth! So when we talk about school change let’s NOT start with the premise that we need to prepare every student to attend “college”! – Steve Wyckoff

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I believe it was George Bernard Shaw who said, “all great ideas began as blasphemy.” Well, here’s some blasphemy for you, when it comes to school change our universities are the tail wagging the dog. We spend at the least 80% of our time in K-12 education preparing kids for a four-year liberal arts degree. Well I say enough is enough!

It’s time for those of us in K-12 education to ignore the universities. Even better, tell them to stick it where the sun don’t shine! We need to focus on what’s best for our kids and, in spite of the rhetoric from politicians, going to a four-year college is not best for all kids.

Yet we continue to kowtow to universities as they tell us what we must teach, how we must teach it, and even how we must organize to teach it. Our universities are as out of date as our K-12 schools, and in many ways, the cause of our obsolescence.

Don’t get me wrong a university degree is extremely important for about 25% of our population. And most universities do a wonderful job with some of their students. But it has become nothing more than a sorting process where we prepare every student to go to colleges and then they systematically weed out all but the best performers.

That used to be an appropriate and effective because those students who are simply sloughed off of the system could still go out and find good, high-paying jobs. That’s no longer the case. Which means we can no longer allow our universities the luxury of running a process of survival of the fittest.

Real school change will focus on the needs of our students not the wishes of our universities. – Steve Wyckoff

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There is a growing conversation about the need for national standards. But do we need national standards? And what if they pick the wrong standards? I just finished Howard Gardner’s new book, Five Minds For The Future, and as always Dr. Gardner did a wonderful job. But, everything Dr. Gardner talked about, in terms of preparing high school kids, was aimed at preparing them for college. And the vast majority of our kids will not attend a four-year college and complete a degree.

In fact, only about 25% of our population ever finishes a bachelors degree. And, as I’ve stated before, more than 75% of our population will engage in work as adults that does not require a college degree. Less than a third of recent graduates at the University of Kansas obtained employment that required the degree they earned while at the University of Kansas.

So when we talk about national standards I can guarantee you that they will be designed to prepare every student to be admitted to a four-year liberal arts college. That’s problem number one. Problem number two is our students, in the 21st century, see those standards as boring and irrelevant.

Ask anyone, “If you ask high school kids to describe school in one word, what word would they choose?” The answer is almost universal, boring.

But we continue down this path as if establishing national standards that everyone has to follow will magically transform our students into highly engaged, well-educated, productive 21st-century citizens. It’s not going to happen.

We should be running 50 different experiments, one in each state, to see how best to prepare our students for the 21st century. How much evidence do we have to compile that centrally controlled bureaucracies are inefficient and ineffective before we unshackle schools to do its best for kids? -  Steve Wyckoff

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I received an interesting phone call the other day from a consultant who is working with one of the largest cities in Kansas in  determining their workforce needs and attempting to determine why there is a lack of skilled labor available. I had been referred to her by an area superintendent that was aware of my involvement with  career and technical education, career planning, and the Kansas Career Pipeline.

She asked if I would share my opinions with her regarding the shortage of skilled workers. And, as you know if you’ve read my blog before, I have no shortage of opinions. And besides I was in the middle of a three-hour drive and I welcomed the distraction. So we had a very interesting and engaging conversation.

We talked about the fact that our schools, regardless of their mission statement, really don’t intend to prepare kids to be productive members of society in the 21st century. Their focus is much more on college preparation than real-world preparation.

She did remind me of a piece of data I found last week. Four out of 10 college students major in Social Sciences (ex. History and Political Science) Psychology, Communication, or English. Popular careers of these majors include retail store manager, customer service representative, and administrative assistant. These individuals are an example of being overeducated but not underemployed. They simply don’t have the skills necessary to compete for other jobs in the 21st century. they lack the technical skills necessary for high wage jobs, and instead opt for low-wage, low skill, service jobs.

They are highly educated but lack the necessary skills. In our society today that seems to be preferable to individuals who have the necessary skills but lack a liberal education. Perhaps it’s time that we started analyzed this gap to decide what’s most important to us as a society. Then maybe our schools will work to help eliminate the skills gap that we are currently experiencing. –  Steve Wyckoff

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For the 34th and 35th time I had the opportunity this week to speak to students in the College of Education at the University Kansas. Twice each semester for the last nine years I’ve had the opportunity to speak to students in Dr. Mike Neill’s class. These are students who hope to become teachers. Usually there are 80 to 100 students in each class. That means that over the last nine years I’ve had the pleasure to interact with between 2,800 and  3,500 students. Okay, so if you do the math it should have had the 35th and 36th time right? Well they missed one day a couple of years ago because school was dismissed because they won some basketball game. You may remember

Anyway, these are always some of my favorite days. I have the opportunity to interact with students who are pretty much fresh out of high school, but also are committed to becoming educators. In many ways it’s refreshing and uplifting. In other ways it’s depressing.

Let me explain. I always love their enthusiasm and their commitment. They possess a passion for what they think they’re going to face. They are bright, engaged, and ready to take on the world.

The depressing part, I always visit with them about authentic engagement. The flow that learners are in when they are so engaged they lose track of time. I tell them it is my opinion that the most important thing they can do is to create learning experiences that are so engaging that their students are regularly authentically engaged. But then I ask them how many of them were authentically engaged on a regular basis in high school.

Yesterday was most one of the most depressing days when I asked this question. Not one hand was raised. Think about it, these are young adults who want to spend the rest of their life in school, and yet none of them were regularly authentically engaged in high school.  Normally, there are only five or six students in the entire class who were regularly authentically engaged in high school, but still to have no students raise their hand was a little bit shocking.

Through our dialogue it was clear that they understand what being authentically engaged is. They even talked about their school experiences that were authentically engaging. They listed them, year book, drama, athletics, and other experiences that were almost all outside of the core curriculum.

When we talk about the core curriculum students in this class through the years have rarely, if ever, identified them as authentically engaging. Interestingly enough  when students did find a class in the core curriculum that was authentically engaging to them, that is typically the subject they are preparing to teach. I hope they don’t model their teaching after the teachers they had simply because it was authentically engaging to them.

The other thing that I’m always aware of when speaking to the students is how pervasive the thinking is that the way our system operates is the only possible way the system can operate. I wish that we had more time to talk about how the system could be modified in order to engage students and yet still learn the things that we want students to learn, that usual in education time limited how much we can accomplish.

Other interesting topics we cover: standardized tests, which always realize a conversation; the need for individualizing instruction; innovation; and our system is pervasively focused on preparing kids to go to four years college rather than preparing them for their life. – Steve Wyckoff

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This post is cross posted with Kansas Career website.

Regardless of how old you are you’ve heard for most of your life that you need to go to college. You’ve heard it from your mom and dad, grandmother and grandfather, and even the President of the United States. In fact, from many presidents of the United States. And when you go to school you are constantly reminded that what you’re learning is preparing you to go to college.

You need to understand, however that going to college today can have different meanings. In the past it meant that you were going to go to a four-year college. Plain and simple. And in the past that was good advice. For decades and decades having a college degree was the ticket to a good job. That is simply no longer true. A college degree in the wrong area isn’t much better than no college degree. While many employers still see the college degree as a sorting mechanism, what you learn in college, and more importantly what you learn to do in college, is more important

Today there are important factors to consider before you decide what “college education” means to you. Today more than ever you need to consider the path that you’re going to take to a four year degree. The first level of education in post secondary education that may be the best way for you to proceed is to obtain an industry accepted certificate in a community or technical college. Many certificates can be obtained in less than two years and yet open many doors to high-paying careers.

The second level that you may consider it a two-year, or associate degree. Often times after completing your certification program the completion of required gen ed courses will complete your associate degree. Both the certification program and the associate degree will enable you to acquire a well-paying job and a career.

The third level of education would be the pursuit of a bachelors degree. By pursuing these three levels in order, your bachelor’s degree will be much more meaningful and engaging. Typically students pursue their bachelors degree, associate degree, and industry certification in the same field. This enables the individual to learn not only in the classroom, but in their field of their choosing as they pursue more advanced degrees.

By pursuing the ultimate goal of a four-year college degree following this path, the students will have a better education and typically can leave school without any accumulated debt. It isn’t at all uncommon for a student to graduate from college today with debt exceeding $40,000. While students who follow the industry certification, associate degree, bachelors degree path leave with little or no debt, and in many cases have had employers pay for their education beyond the industry certification.

So while you contemplate your options, and everybody is telling you you have to go to college, remember there is a path other than going directly to a four-year institution a better suit your needs.

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I have many opportunities to speak to school groups, policymakers, educational leaders, and educators at all levels. On many occasions after speaking to these groups or individuals, I am sought out to have conversations about improving education. So I have given a great deal of thought to the issues surrounding school improvement.

In many cases I believe we are and asking, or answering, the wrong questions. One of those issues is the idea of school improvement. It is my opinion that we are not trying to improve schools but rather we are trying to improve schooling.

Let me explain what I mean. I think that we are working very, very hard to get better at what we’ve always done in schools. The question, I think, we should be asking and answering is, what should we be doing in schools instead of what we’re doing, to better prepare kids for their future.

I would estimate that we spend at least 80% of a child’s K-12 educational experience preparing them to be successful in a liberal arts college. Our entire core curriculum is built around the expectations of liberal arts universities. This is a holdover from the days, even decades, when K-12 schools thought it appropriate to prepare kids who were going to attend college, and all other kids would enter the workplace and be successful simply by working hard.

But those days are over. Kids simply can’t leave high school expecting never to have post secondary training, and being successful in life. Furthermore, kids who do go to universities and obtain a liberal arts degree, are no better prepared to be successful in their life than students with no post secondary education.

If you analyze the data, about 23% of all Americans hold a baccalaureate degree. And about the same percentage of jobs require a bachelors degree. On the other hand, more than 65% of all jobs require skills typically obtained in certification programs, and or associate degree programs at community and technical colleges.

I recently had a Dean of a prestigious four-year college tell me that as  they analyze their data, about one in five, or 2%, of their graduates actually enter a career requiring the degree that they obtained.

So when we talk about school improvement  we need to consider that it is no longer appropriate to prepare 100% of our kids to enter four-year institutions knowing that over 75% of them will not be successful. Improving K-12 schools means changing our practices so that we prepare all of the kids for their postsecondary education experience, and the life they are going to lead.

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