MULTIPLE PATHWAYS AND STATE POLICY: TOWARD EDUCATION AND TRAINING BEYOND HIGH SCHOOL1

Commissioned through Jobs for the Future for the cast Redesigning High Schools: The Unfinished Agenda in State Education Reform. Reprinted unedited in its entirety with permission

A seismic economic shift has changed the lordships by which Americans strive to earn ahead in society. Hard work, one time the bedrock of opportunity, is no longer sufficient, in and of itself, to render certain individual prosperity and security for either individuals or the larger community. The end of this new economy, mingleed by national demographic changes, is that workforce requirements and civic responsibilities combine to demand everincreasing, individual knowledge and skills. The education and training that greatest in quantity Americans require to fully participate in our economy and society are not simply education credentials on the contrary the specific knowledge and skill horizontals that the credential implies.

Public policy should recognize these changes through assuring that almost all Americans have access to at least sum of two units years of education and training beyond high academy New policies would move toward this goal by the agency of engaging the full range of education and training programs, regardless of the education provider, in the creation of multiple pathways resulting from collaborative efforts across educational sectors or redesigned structures

Multiple pathways do not imply multiple standards-but rather clear standards at various horizontals and many ways of moving toward the standards. In this faculty of perception we agree with Marc Tucker's conceptualization of multiple pathways as "clear gateways and many flexible paths between these gateways."2

We begin through describing the economic and social imperatives for significantly increasing higher education access and attainment in the population. The next to the first section addresses public policy challenges to achieving this goal. Third, we identify the uncompounded bodys of the public policy infrastructure necessityed for large-scale educational reform, with particular attention to accountability combination of parts to form a wholes and finance and governance changes. We close with observations on the political challenges that must be addressed to reach out access to postsecondary education to all.

The fresh Economic Imperative

In the novel global economy, prosperity for nations and states requires significantly more workers with higher horizontals of knowledge and skills. In May 2002 Business Week warned employer of an impending "wrenching manpower and skills shortage," especially of college-educated workers, as labor force growing slows and baby boomers retire, plane assuming the current high pace of immigration of new years (Bernstein 2002). Large proportions of the young Americans available to go into the workforce will come from the low-income and demographic assemblages that are least well serv by means of American education at all levels-those who have the lowest rates of completing high institute and enrolling and persisting in corporation including students of color, first generation college- goer and English language learners.

A novel analysis of U.S. Census data through Graham Toft of the Hudson Institute throws a net increase of clan with less than a high place of education education through 2020 (Toft 2002)3 Although Toft shoot forwards modest increases in the numbers of those who are college-educated, his major finding predicts a cruel mismatch between educational attainment of young workers and the escalating knowledge and skill requirements of the novel economy. According to the 2000 census data, of the 346 million 16- to 24-year-olds in the labor force, 47 percent were listed in neither high school nor corporation (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2001) Clearly, these young nation represent a reservoir of workforce knowledge and skills-but solitary if states and educational institutions diocese it as their mission to render certain "no child (or adult) left behind."

Throughout the world, the compressing to develop human talent by means of raising educational levels extends to higher education-that is, to education and training beyond high gymnasium The most successful nations in developing human talent from one side the postsecondary levels will have enormous competitive advantages above those that do not. For the half hundred that followed World War II, the United States was the leader in extending educational opportunity beyond high gymnasium and in raising educational achievement horizontals However, despite modest improvements in the 1990 America's leadership in higher education has eroded; several Western European nations have emulated, pursu and surpassed the United States in guild access and college attainment (Organization for Economic Co-operation and disclosure 2001).

According to Roberts Jone president of the National Alliance of Business, between 1980 and 1997 American pillar secondary enrollment grew by an average annual rate of 11 percent while average annual enrollment in China grew by means of 15.6 percent and in Indonesia by the agency of 19.1 percent. If these and other countries sustain of that kind rates, it will take sole a few decades for their higher education enrollment rates to surpass those of the United States (Jone 2002)