What Does College and Career Readiness Mean Now in the Shift to Digital Learning?

Back in the 20th century–you know, just yesterday and also a lifetime ago?–“college readiness” and “career readiness” were two fairly distinct things. They defined secondary school life by sending some kids down one path and some down another, and those paths rarely crossed.
If students on the college track needed skills to help them have successful careers they would get those on the job, long after they’d left K-12 and finished the standard four years of college. If career-track (often just a prettier way of saying “vocational”) students aspired to post-secondary education, they might be encouraged to check out the local community college.
And nobody gave a serious thought to any of this much before ninth grade; parents might come talk about their jobs to elementary classrooms, and good middle schools tried to get a jump on Algebra so their graduates could hit the college prep track running, but college and career readiness was pretty much a high school thing.
Take all of that and throw it in a blender. Toss in a few hard chunks of economic reality, sprinkle in some global truths, add a triple-shot of technology and hit 16–that’s right, the highest blender speed of all. What have you got? College and career readiness as it must be for our students today.

It’s a Brand New World

We know that in this new world of ours, it’s damned hard to find family-supporting work with just a high school diploma, so every single one of our students needs post-secondary education. But we also know that the cost of conventional college can make pursuing that education a life-thwarting burden for too many kids. That’s why new options for getting to paid work sooner are gaining in appeal.
We also know that even the most highly skilled and tightly focused of our young people will need to retool, adapt and restart many times over the span of their lives; adaptability is key. And frankly, students sense this. What we holdovers from the 20th century see as digitally induced shortness of attention–“My girl power Vine is trending right now, there’s a fresh Fetty Wap remix on my phone, and you want me to read a chapter on the Civil War, in a book?”–might actually be savvy preparation for the road ahead.
As educators, we can embrace the new imperatives of college and career readiness by:

• Empowering our students to begin envisioning their futures long before high school. By leveraging digital learning and technology in the classroom for K-8, we open up a world of exploration that not only inspires smart self-advocacy but adds urgency and relevance to the core skills we want our kids to master. We will be discussing this topic further during an upcoming webinar, The Future Starts Now: How Digital Learning Can Help Your K-8 School Address College & Career Readiness, April 19, 4 p.m. ET. Join us.
• Remixing “college readiness” and “career readiness” to give every one of our students real options for success after high school. That might mean finding new ways to combine digital leap-frogging (from online dual enrollment to coding certifications) with real-world experiences (like in-person apprenticeships and Makerspaces) for a pragmatically future-focused take on blended learning. On April 26 at Noon ET, we will host another webinar, Accelerating College & Career Readiness in Your High School: Five Ways to Use Digital Learning to Prime Your Students’ Futures. Join in the conversation.
• Expanding our vision of “school” to imagine personalized learning pathways that rebundle the best of the community and the classroom, the physically present and the digitally accessed. For some students around the country, that future vision is a reality today. Hear about their experiences in our student voices webinar, My Learning Is “Rebundled” and My Future Is Bright: Students Talk About How They’re Blazing Their Own New Routes to College & Career Readiness on May 3 at 4:15 p.m. ET.

Exhilarating? Terrifying? A spicy mix of both? Welcome to the “Shift to Digital–College and Career Readiness” edition.
Mickey Revenaugh is a co-founder of Connections Education, the director of New School Models for Pearson Global Schools and board chair of International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL). Follower her on Twitter: @mickeyrevenaugh.

Stay in-the-know with all things EdTech and innovations in learning by signing up to receive the weekly Smart Update. This post includes mentions of a Getting Smart partner. For a full list of partners, affiliate organizations and all other disclosures please see our Partner page.