Preparing Students for Success: The Role of Academic Preparation

• In Event: Convergence: U.S. Education Policy 50 Years After the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Higher Education Act of 1965

Abstract

The vast majority of students expect to go to college, and most transition into higher education at some point. However, many of them leave college without a degree in hand. While there are myriad reasons why students are not completing credentials, one that has drawn substantial academic and policy attention is academic preparation. Indeed, since the Nation At Risk, many institutional, state, and federal policies have aimed to improve academic preparation in K-12 education. Despite these efforts, a substantial proportion of high school graduates entering college are placed in developmental education, which is at least one indicator that they are not academically prepared for college.
This paper is an endeavor to outline some of the key challenges preventing better alignment between K-12 and higher education with regard to academic preparation. While it is easy to blame the K-12 system for not preparing students for college, I consider how incentives and priorities in higher education contribute to these patterns. I use credentialism as a theoretical frame to organize the paper. Credentialism implies a focus on credentials as opposed to what is learned (e.g., skills, knowledge, and competencies). This theoretical lens allows me to consider both the challenges and promises of recent endeavors to improve academic preparation.
Higher education is governed in large part by the credentialism logic. Although much recent discussion has focused on higher education accountability, it is still mostly tied to persistence and credentials, not to what students learn. Moreover, incentives and funding structures in higher education often encourage institutions to enroll as many students as possible. This enrollment-driven consumer model incentivizes postsecondary institutions to work hard at enticing high school students to enroll. Students may be persuaded to enroll but soon enough realize that they are not prepared. As one frustrated student in a recent qualitative study noted: “Get rid of the nice, beautiful pictures, and give us the actual details.”
Even when there is a focus on skills, as has increasingly been the case in the K-12 system, the endeavors are often haphazard and not well coordinated. I consider several cases aimed at improving students’ academic preparation, which have proceeded without either substantial involvement of or alignment with higher education, from state high school exit exams to NCLB and the Common Core. In addition to issues of alignment, these endeavors raise questions about equity and how one can set high standards and prepare all students to reach them.
In the conclusion, I consider ways in which the federal government could incentivize higher education institutions as well as state systems to prepare high school students for college. We cannot afford to continue the status quo, which fails many students by not preparing them for postsecondary transitions. Insuring student success will require endeavors on many fronts, one of which necessitates a coordinated K-16 approach to academic preparation.

Author

• Josipa Roksa, University of Virginia