The Challenge: High School Graduates Are Not Prepared for College and Careers

The new global economy is changing the nature of work and the kinds of careers our young people will enter. Jobs that once required only a high school diploma and paid $50,000 a year plus retirement and health benefits are disappearing. In their place, jobs are being created that require more knowledge and skills than ever before. Jobs that pay well and have opportunity for advancement - or roughly two-thirds of all new jobs - require some postsecondary education or training beyond high school. There is every reason to believe this trend will only increase in coming years.

States have begun to respond to these challenges by adopting new systems of academic standards and assessments to measure regularly student and school performance in the core subject areas of reading and mathematics.

However, the majority of these standards and tests fail to align with the real-world demands of college and work. Today, students in 30 states can graduate from high school without necessarily having learned the skills in math and English that they will need to be successful in careers or in college.

Simply put, the bar has been set too low.

As a result, many high school graduates enter college and the workforce unprepared for the challenges they face. The costs of workplace and college remediation have skyrocketed. One study estimates these costs are as high as $17 billion annually to re-teach material that should have been mastered in high school.

We must upgrade expectations to prepare all students for the rigors of college and careers. As the global economy continues to shape the nature of work and the kinds of jobs our young people will enter, it will take a firm commitment from all sectors of society, including the business community, to restore value to the high school diploma.