Welcome to Education Week‘s newest blog, High School & Beyond. We’ve carved out this space to explore what it takes to keep adolescents in school—engaged, supported, and learning well—so they’re ready for good jobs or higher education.
High school is a pivotal time for educators to make sure that students are getting ready in all the right ways for life after graduation. Are students taking courses that are sufficiently rigorous to prepare them well for college? Are they getting the right kinds of support and counseling to help them develop career ideas and college plans, and to navigate the college application process?
These questions unavoidably bring middle school into the conversation. Consider this: Far too many students arrive in high school unprepared for the level of work they need to do in order to be ready for good jobs or college. And 9th grade is where a disproportionate number of students fall out of the system. Those things reflect some serious shortcomings in middle school and in early high school.
That’s why we’ll be bringing you news and policy not only about high school, but about middle school as well. They’re inextricably linked pieces of adolescents’ experiences as they get themselves ready for work and higher education. We’ll also touch on college issues from time to time, because what’s going on there tells us a lot about how our high schools are doing (and it’s usually not cheerful news). Take remediation rates, for instance. Far too many of our students go to college needing to take remedial courses. There you have another indicator of what isn’t going right in high school.
With that, we welcome you to join us here as we explore adolescents’ pathways through school to whatever lies beyond. Please subscribe to our posts so they land in your inbox as soon as they’re published. Share them with friends, and share your reactions and thoughts in the comments box. The middle and high school years are crucial for our students; getting caring adults involved in making those years better is just one of our hopes as we begin our work here.