Is College for Everybody?
America's Race to the Top
Is College for Everybody?…One of the top items on the Obama/Duncan educational reform agenda is College and Career Readiness. What exactly does that mean? According to the Education Trust, in the information age, it is no longer tenable for large numbers of our students to graduate from high school without the knowledge and skills they need to be ready for college, work, and the responsibilities of citizenship. Making readiness for college, careers, and citizenship is their core goal for all students across America.
Well, if that is the case, then what in the world have they been learning in the last 20 years or so, or have they been learning anything at all?
A few years ago, internationally, we ranked #1 in terms of college graduation rates…today, 2010, we rank #12.
Sadly, the annual barrage of “professional” educational assessment reports about our declining high school and college graduation rates, the growing achievement gap, controversies around teacher professionalism, and the very marginal success of “No Child Left Behind” reflect our inability, as a nation, to transition our educational infrastructure from a 20th century factory model of rote education into a dynamic 21st century information literacy teaching and learning interactive environment.
Information literacy is an instructional process that melds “intellectual” acumen within a digital literacy skills framework that allows learners to maneuver learning environments effectively and become highly productive within an information and communication technologies universe…which also happens to be the backbone of our world economy. The good old days of dependency on paper, pen, and secretaries only are gone, plain and simple.
Then back to the question - is college for everybody?
Absolutely not! Workplaces across America, however, need to integrate this critical instructional process throughout all of their training and re-training programs and very few are doing so.
Then I ask the question again – Is College for Everybody? Only if you are interested in lifelong learning and being the master of your economic universe, then perhaps going to college, either a 2 year or a 4 year, may be one of your best options.
Being educationally ready, in both formal and informal educational settings, to navigate effectively the challenges of a dynamically evolving 21st century information and communication infrastructure – whether in school, business, health care, military, and/or government – requires that you become competent in utilizing information and digital literacy skills.
How else are we going to beat our international competitors in the Administration’s vision of Race to the Top.
Related External Links
- » Mothers: Aim for Junior College and More
- 21st CENTURY LIFE – Chromeo – Don't Turn The Lights On
- Temp and Full-time Jobs Ready To Hire (877) 496-7592: Senior …
- ACT scores dip, but more students college-ready (AP) « Buy Quality …