Why the push to make students "Career Ready"?
We often hear that public schools are failing because they do not prepare students for jobs. Employers complain, we are told, that recent graduates are unprepared for the real world of work.
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal explains what is really going on: "Companies complain that they can't find skilled hires, but they aren't doing much to impact these skills , economics and workforce experts say. U.S. companies have been cutting money for training programs for decades, expecting schools and workers to pick up the slack" (p. B1).
" ... one rough measure, the percentage of staffers at U.S. manufactures dedicated to training and development, has falled by about half from 2006 to 2013, according to research group Bersin by Doloitte" (p. B1).
The WSJ quotes MIT labor economist Paul Osterman's study showing that SKrashen: Why the push to make students "Career Ready"?: