Pages

Friday, October 29, 2021

Moving Toward a K-14 Educational System

 

One important aspect of the initial “infrastructure” debate in Washington was an Administration proposal to support the nation’s ability to fully embrace and lead the Information Revolution:  President Biden’s proposal to extend free public education beyond high school.

The Administration described the initiative as “free community college tuition.” According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, three quarters of new job hires are in occupations that require at least a baccalaureate degree.  However, two-thirds of American adults lack a degree.  The goal of offering free community college tuition was to greatly enhance the ability of young people to better prepare for jobs that require expertise beyond high school and, in the process, help to the economy—and society in general—adjust to rapid technological change.  

The stalemate on this issue is a symptom of the blindness among politicians and their backers to the nature of change that is underway in our society.  Extending access to schooling beyond high school is a critical need in our new society.  Just as the Industrial Revolution led to the creation of new public colleges and universities and the expectation that all citizens would have free access to high school, today’s transformation—whether you call it the Information Revolution or the Third Industrial Revolution—demands new skills of all of us, both in our role as workers and as citizens.

The idea of extending universal access to education beyond high school and into college has a precedent.  In the early 1900s, many adults did not attend high school.  They went through the eighth grade, but high school required them to pay tuition, so they dropped out and went to jobs in the new industrial economy.  As the impact of the Industrial Revolution increased, however, it became apparent that more education was needed to prepare students to compete for jobs—industrial and social—in the new environment.  As a result, communities began to fund access to high school, creating the K-12 model as we know it today.  Today, the majority of K-12 funding comes from States and local communities.  The federal government provides about 8 percent of the total K-12 funding in the form of grants that are then managed by the States.

The language that the Administration used to describe the proposed change was based on recent initiatives in New York and a few other states, where the State government allows in-state high school graduates to attend state-funded community colleges without paying tuition fees.  These experiments are a harbinger of change, but likely not an end in themselves. 

Long term, the solution is not simply free community college, but a fresh consideration of our society’s need for education in the new environment—a move from K-12 public education to a K-14 system.  Given that the proposed free tuition proposal was not accepted, here are some thoughts on how the Administration might act to set the stage for K-14 in the years ahead as part of a long-term vision for public education in the information society. 

A National Commission

President Biden should create a National Commission on K-14 Education to look at the need for universal K-14 schooling.  The Commission could begin by looking at the current experiments in free community college tuition and how a national initiative could build on those, but also consider related practical issues, such as how the innovation should be supported financially, how a K-14 education would relate to the rest of the undergraduate curriculum, and how a mature K-14 system might change both K-12 education and undergraduate collegiate education. 

Here are several implications that this National Commission might consider as it designs a national strategy for educational change:

Curriculum Integration There is a longstanding concern about duplication between high school and the first two years of college.  How many courses on American history are needed?  How many introductory algebra courses?  How many “Introduction to Physics” courses?  If a K-14 approach means that the percentage of high school students who go on to the general education curriculum at their local community college increases significantly, the Commission should look at how best to minimize unnecessary duplication.  At the same time, it should explore how best to fill classrooms that become available due to reducing duplication, perhaps by enhancing the array of career specialization courses. 

Dual Credit  One way that students have already begun to blend high school and college is by enrolling in college courses that allow students to earn college credit while also meeting high school graduation requirements.  It is one tool that schools can use to minimize duplication of instruction while also speeding up students’ progress to the associate degree (https://www.edglossary.org/dual-enrollment/).  What role should this play on the road to a K-14 system?

The Gap Year As we move toward an educational system in which most, if not all, young people spend a minimum of 14 years in education, we should also consider the value of a “gap year” for the long-term health of our youth and their ability to make good career choices.  One way to think about the gap year is to see it as a year of service, in which young people could work as volunteers in social service organizations or governmental agencies (national parks, for instance) or in social agencies that use the skills the students will gain.  A gap year might help students consider their personal and career goals.

Impact on Higher Education  How can K-14 best be structured in states where community colleges currently are not available in every county or regional educational unit?  Should other public institutions—state colleges and universities—be involved?   If high school graduates are encouraged to attend community college for their first two years of postsecondary education, this could have significant impact on four-year colleges and universities, which might conceivably lose significant numbers of students in their freshman and sophomore classes and, by extension, weaken the student pipeline to upper division courses that lead to baccalaureate degrees.

These are just a few of the issues that are sure to arise as a National Commission explores a pathway to a true K-14 educational environment.  This approach may be the more practical, less politically divisive way to explore the territory and build a new social contract to meet the needs of a mature post-industrial society.

            Thoughts?