RE: Question 2: Single curriculum

This is one of THE most complex issues in the draft, and one that requires lots of serious deliberation.  For me the question is less about a single curriculum, but about not limiting students' choices or chances after high school.  Currently completing the A-G courses is the only way that allows students to graduate from high school able to choose among 4-year college, 2-year college, or work.  And, currently, only those students who have taken these courses are adequately prepared to do very well which ever choice they make.  That being said, however, we should not take the current A-G requirements as the ideal way to provide all students with knowledge, skills, and experiences necessary for successful college-going, productive work, and active citizenship.  The Master Plan's mandate for A-G should be accompanied by incentives for creative curriculum work in the high school, in collaboration with public postsecondary institutions, that will result in multiple ways to complete the A-G course pattern.  The alternatives should build on the strengths of both "collge prep" and "vocational" sides of the curriculum.  For, if California schools hold their career preparation programs to both the A-G requirements and the highest workforce standards, students will graduate ready for rapid career advancement through on-the-job experience, workplace apprenticeships, and postsecondary opportunities.  As the business community keeps reminding us, the knowledge and skills for college preparation and for the workplace overlap considerably in their content and in their intellectual rigor.