Colllege and Career Preparation The Same? No Says National Study

 Education Week ran these excerpts on August 19,2013:

“The governing board for the tests known as “the nation’s report card”

has marked its own definition of what makes a student academically prepared for college.

At a meeting here this month, members of the National Assessment Governing Board,

which supervises the National Assessment of Educational Progress, voted 17-2 to

adopt language that will define the new “college prepared” scores in reading and mathematics 

on the assessment…

 In a parallel effort to set career-readiness benchmarks within NAEP, the governing board

also had studied ways to connect NAEP to readiness for work as an automotive master

mechanic, computer-support specialist, heating and air-conditioning technician, licensed practical

nurse, and pharmacy technician, but it was not able to draw conclusions about how performance

on NAEP would relate to such careers.

 For example, among NAEP’s math-framework objectives, 64 percent to 74 percent were “not

evident as prerequisite” in any of the training required for the careers studied, a finding Cornelia Orr,

the board’s executive director, called “quite shocking.”
“This was a very hard task, but it was very revealing,” Ms. Orr said.  “We found no evidence that

someone prepared for job training is academically prepared for college.  That said, someone prepared

for college is certainly prepared for job training.”

 

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