The absence of anything readable about the Red Sox left a summer
news vacuum that was filled by … education studies. Or, more precisely, studies on the connection
between education and employment.
No fewer than 5 —count ‘em, five —studies appeared between Memorial
Day and Labor Day. They came from the
National Bureau of Economic Research,
Georgetown University, Rutgers University, the Brookings Institution and
the National Employment Law Project. They all said that getting a job depends
on having post-secondary education. Read
that sentence closely: it doesn’t say “getting a good job, or a decent
job, or a high-paying job. It says
getting a job. Any job.
What the studies say is that the structure of the labor
market has changed. The key change is the hollowing-out of mid-level jobs in
construction, finance/insurance/real estate, manufacturing, information, and
government. “Growth has been concentrated in lower-wage occupations… and
higher-wage occupations… leaving a significant mid-wage gap…(NELP, August 2012).”
Lacking mid-range opportunities, workers
without high-end resumes are forced down to low-end jobs, competing with even
less-credentialed candidates. This shift is pushing the least-educated totally
out of the job market.
“Americans with no more than a high school education have
continued to lose jobs during the recovery, while better-educated people have
gained millions of jobs (NYT 8/16/12).” The Rutgers study quantifies the scope
of the crisis: 70% of high school graduates 18 to 24 years old can’t find full
time work. That’s 14 million young people without a foothold in the new labor
market. That’s a massive disconnect.
But the good news, out of NBER, is that an associates’
degree is enough to get into the market. So all we have to do is send these 14
million young people to community college.
And here’s the next disconnect. Even if community colleges
had the capacity to absorb millions of new students (which they do not), most
of these 14 million and their younger colleagues coming up behind do not have
the academic skills for associate
degree-level work. More than 60% of
entering community college students have to take remedial courses—called
“developmental courses”—because their math and English skills do not meet
community college standards. “Developmental” courses cover topics like whole
numbers, fractions, decimals, percents; grammar, punctuation, spelling and
vocabulary. The courses do not count toward a degree. In Massachusetts last
year, one-third of all community college enrollments—a total of 74,000 --were
in “developmental” courses.
A long pause is in order. Why do 60% of community college applicants, most of them
recent high school graduates who passed their state graduation tests, fall
short of community college standards? This
question plunges us into the maelstrom of the education reform debate. And
here’s an even wider disconnect.
Ten years after No Child Left Behind, 20 years after the Massachusetts
education reform law of 1993, have we
reformed K-12 education? Have we restored the United States to world
leadership? Have we made enough progress to satisfy—anyone?
You don’t have to be Tom Friedman to know that the US
doesn’t rank in the global top 10 in any category of educational achievement:
not in math, not in science, not in language arts, not in college graduation
rate, not even in high school graduation rate. You don’t have to be an
education researcher or a labor market economist to know that if 60% of
entering community college students can’t do the work, we’re in deep, deep
disconnect.
As the torrid season wound down, Condoleezza Rice strode across the podium on
the hurricane-drenched coast of Florida and
articulated the challenge in ringing terms. “The crisis in K-12 education is a threat to the very fabric of who we are,”
said the former secretary of state. “We need great teachers… we have to have
high standards for our kids… and we need to give parents greater choice… This
is the civil rights issue of our day.”
The secretary’s call to arms did not specify how any of
these goals can be met. Articulating
lofty goals without addressing the means to reach those goals is the biggest disconnect of all, favored by both Parties. We
can hope that the other Party, when they convene next week in hurricane-free Charlotte,
will re-connect goals and means and tell us how we will prepare the next
generation of American workers for the high-skill job market that awaits them
after Labor Day.
Gary Kaplan is the executive director of JFYNetWorks, a non-profit education innovation enterprise that develops and manages blended learning programs in schools.
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