Thanks for the thoughtful piece. You note that the federal law is "unconcerned with higher education [and transitions generally]," but that wasn't (isn't) the case. Policymakers (and others) tried this. They tried to get the workforce and higher education data systems to work together to tell that story, but the barriers and politics of the organizations killed the ideas. High Ed had its agenda, and so too did workforce systems. Employers didn't want to get pulled in at cost. Political opportunism twisted intent. The idea and the intent aren't new. What's needed is a new way to incentivize the collaboration without it quickly going sideways. What does that look like? That is not clear yet. Without that organizing thesis, each funding source (K12, HEA, Workforce) and entity puts its head down to control the small part of the issue they can control. Local initiatives set off to do it themselves (which is good). It's a work in progress, but don't overlook prior (failed) attempts. Those lessons are important.
I'm not sure if I understand your argument: are you saying that high-school will become better if we hold high-school accountable for longterm education outcomes? I think it might be a whole lot easier if we would start paying teachers a competitive wage, and require real education for teachers. The content knowledge of many teachers in the US is quite terrible. Next, we expect schools to actually teach with proven methods, instead of having teachers buy their materials on Teacherspayteachers.com, which is made by teachers who also have no clue, or instead of using the stuff developed by publishers who don't care about learning but about selling apps and pages. I have more ideas if you are interested.
Inject this into my veins. Been harping on the issue that so many school systems seem to think that correlation is causation. That is that having a high school diploma automatically means you’re qualified to do stuff when in fact it is what is behind the high school diploma that should be significant.
I'm going to play along. Let's imagine a system where Age 25 results are the coin of the realm, and where we start from scratch with a fixed amount.
I think it'd be fun to get your tribe to describe how they'd spend it. To do that, how much gets dropped into each kid's "Lifetime ESA" at birth?
In Boston, we'd take the current chunk (let's say $75k pre-K or HeadStart; $390k for k-12; complicated for typical grad who starts college and drops out but let's call it $30k). All in $500k?
And: with such a seemingly large amount, would you allow ESA to be used for important but non-education things? Like buying first home? Or a $40k addiction treatment program?
One thing about living away from one's parents; how many Boomers and (my fellow) X-ers had their rent subsidized by their parents?
Thanks for the thoughtful piece. You note that the federal law is "unconcerned with higher education [and transitions generally]," but that wasn't (isn't) the case. Policymakers (and others) tried this. They tried to get the workforce and higher education data systems to work together to tell that story, but the barriers and politics of the organizations killed the ideas. High Ed had its agenda, and so too did workforce systems. Employers didn't want to get pulled in at cost. Political opportunism twisted intent. The idea and the intent aren't new. What's needed is a new way to incentivize the collaboration without it quickly going sideways. What does that look like? That is not clear yet. Without that organizing thesis, each funding source (K12, HEA, Workforce) and entity puts its head down to control the small part of the issue they can control. Local initiatives set off to do it themselves (which is good). It's a work in progress, but don't overlook prior (failed) attempts. Those lessons are important.
I'm not sure if I understand your argument: are you saying that high-school will become better if we hold high-school accountable for longterm education outcomes? I think it might be a whole lot easier if we would start paying teachers a competitive wage, and require real education for teachers. The content knowledge of many teachers in the US is quite terrible. Next, we expect schools to actually teach with proven methods, instead of having teachers buy their materials on Teacherspayteachers.com, which is made by teachers who also have no clue, or instead of using the stuff developed by publishers who don't care about learning but about selling apps and pages. I have more ideas if you are interested.
Inject this into my veins. Been harping on the issue that so many school systems seem to think that correlation is causation. That is that having a high school diploma automatically means you’re qualified to do stuff when in fact it is what is behind the high school diploma that should be significant.
I'm going to play along. Let's imagine a system where Age 25 results are the coin of the realm, and where we start from scratch with a fixed amount.
I think it'd be fun to get your tribe to describe how they'd spend it. To do that, how much gets dropped into each kid's "Lifetime ESA" at birth?
In Boston, we'd take the current chunk (let's say $75k pre-K or HeadStart; $390k for k-12; complicated for typical grad who starts college and drops out but let's call it $30k). All in $500k?
And: with such a seemingly large amount, would you allow ESA to be used for important but non-education things? Like buying first home? Or a $40k addiction treatment program?