RE: Question 2: Integrating Career Preparation

Nancy:
This is nuts: Whoever said that preparing students for careers and further education turns the system into "career factories"?

This kind of rhetoric is inflammatory and takes us away from the real issues here.  You may have read an article by 

Of course all students need to learn to reason, do mathematics, and communicate verbally and in writing.  As a college educator my experience is clear: we are not yet succeeding.

By the same token, all students need to develop technological literacy and a REAL understanding of careers available to them.  Are you aware that, typically, the attrition rate of students who enter college engineering programs is 60 to 70%?  Deans and Professors of Engineering believe that it is becuase they enter college with no real idea of what Engineering is.

Likewise, the real fact is, about 70% of high school students never complete any postsecondary program of instruction.  We now send them off into the world, almost universally, with not a shred of career preparation or skills development.  It is any wonder that there are so many underemployed people in society, so much crime?

Meanwhile, as I have mentioned in another thread, business and industry cannot find qualified applicants for open positions, and we face a serious problem in the future as our skilled workforce moves on toward retirement. 

Finally, good, accountable programs in Technology Education can provide a unique service to ALL students (beyond our much needed tech literacy):  they can provide meaning and context to make academics relevant!

We should be reforming our ITE system, making it better linked into academics, and requiring all students to study technologies, both from an exploratory stand-point, and from a knowledge and skills development stand-point.  Our current ITE system provided career and technology exploration in grades 8 through 10, and specific knowledge and skills development in grades 11-12.