Our kids must graduate college and career ready, for their future and ours.

The Texas Commission on Next Generation Assessments and Accountability met for the first time on January 20, 2016 to discuss the content a student should master and the consequence to educators if students don’t master it. The committee’s charge is to develop and make recommendations for a new state system of testing and accountability by September 1, 2016.

In 2006, the Texas Legislature followed the dictum “begin with the end in mind” and passed an omnibus bill to organize the public school system so that students would be exposed to the content they need to graduate college/career ready. Content and assessments from elementary to high school became vertically linked to that outcome.

Texas was the first state to organize its system around college readiness. This was revolutionary, but unfortunately, the system never actualized. In 2013, Texas abandoned ship when the 83rd Legislature significantly dropped course graduation requirements and dropped Algebra II, geometry, English 11, chemistry and physics content from state assessment.

“Is college readiness no longer a requirement,” asked Quinton Vance, member of the Next Generation Commission and Executive Director of KIPP Dallas-Ft. Worth.

No, it is not.

So, if we are not prepping our students for college and the high performance workplace, the Commission’s first order of business is to settle on what we are preparing them for. If we cannot clearly and purposefully answer this question, then we are not doing our jobs.

The most important outcome of our K-12 public education system is that we prepare our kids, our students, our future – without remediation – for college and the high performance workplace. Over 55% of open jobs in Texas in December 2015 currently require at least an associate degree. In Austin, that number is two-thirds of available jobs. If students are not graduating the public school system college ready, we are doing them a great disservice, limiting their income and opportunity and impeding the economic growth of good paying jobs in our state.

This is Part I of a three part series. The second piece will detail the design elements for a system that will prepare our students for college and the high-performance workplace.

Posted by Drew Scheberle, Senior Vice President of the Austin Chamber.