EdSource Today (4/18) reports on California’s Public Schools Accountability Act Advisory Committee, which is working on including both career and college readiness in the Academic Performance Index, “the primary measure of school effectiveness.” While the index has generally been based on standardized test scores, a state law passed in 2012 requires that 40% of the API score cover “measures of career and college readiness – an amorphous and poorly defined term that the committee is struggling to quantify.” The education group Linked Learning Alliance advocated before the committee for “programs that integrate academics with career experience,” arguing that students in these programs are better prepared for college and develop an array of “soft skills.” Committee co-chair Kenn Young, superintendent of the Riverside County Office of Education, said the newly reformed API “is not going to be a perfect vehicle.” David Conley, a University of Oregon professor who also presented before the committee, said reforming API would be “an evolutionary journey.”
Krugman Argues That There Is No Serious “Skills Gap”
In his column for the New York Times (3/31, Subscription Publication), Paul Krugman that the belief that the nation “suffers from a severe ‘skills gap’ is one of those things that everyone important knows must be true, because everyone they know says it’s true,” but really is a “zombie idea — an idea that should have been killed by evidence, but refuses to die.” Unfortunately, Krugman writes, the “skills myth” is “having dire effects on real-world policy,” as there is little focus on “disastrously wrongheaded fiscal policy and inadequate action” by the Fed. Krugman says that by “blaming workers for their own plight, the skills myth shifts attention away from the spectacle of soaring profits and bonuses even as employment and wages stagnate.”
Petrilli: CTE Offers Alternative Track To Self-Sufficiency
Michael J. Petrilli, executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, research fellow at the Hoover Institution, and executive editor of Education Next, writes at Slate Magazine (3/19) that schools should be recognizing that not all students are fitted for college and that pushing as many as possible into college may harm them as so few actually graduate with a degree. He urges the development of “another pathway” for students who simply are not prepared for college, but who still need a means of preparing for employment that will allow them to support themselves. That pathway, he says, is “high-quality career and technical education, ideally the kind that combines rigorous coursework with a real-world apprenticeship, and maybe even a paycheck.”
Competitors Make Gains As Overhauled GED Debuts
The Los Angeles Times (1/6, Ceasar) reports that GED Testing Service has released “a revamped computer-only” version of its General Educational Development test, noting that the move “has spurred competition from two other test providers letting students decide which format they prefer.” Noting that the new GED is “meant to be more rigorous and places a greater focus on job readiness than high school equivalency,” the Times reports that some states are moving to the competitors’ exams, citing “cost and accessibility concerns with the elimination of the pencil-to-paper test.”