Linked Learning: A New Vision for California High Schools
California’s Department of Education is making a major effort to address the State’s “drop-out” crisis, but only recently (2008) began improving the accuracy of reporting. With an estimated one in four children not completing high school—and an alarmingly high rate among minorities – the effort to explore initiatives such as linked learning is intensifying.
As a nation, one of our greatest challenges for high schools is to create strategies that offer a variety of pathways to college and career success without lowered expectations, especially for the disadvantaged and students of color. This is hard to do, and there is no single right way. But there is a lot of evidence that we can do it.
One proposed solution is the introduction of a new approach called Linked Learning. Linked Learning transforms students’ high school experience by bringing together strong academics, demanding technical education, and real world experience which helps students gain an advantage in high school, postsecondary education, and careers. Linked Learning students follow industry-themed pathways in a wide range of fields, such as engineering, arts and media, biomedicine and health. These pathways prepare high school students for career and a full range of postsecondary options, including attending a two- or four-year college or university, an apprenticeship, the military, and formal employment training.
Right now you may be thinking, this sounds a lot like tracking. On the contrary, the Linked Learning strategy rejects the practice of tracking that has negatively affected students who are predominantly low-income, Latino, and African-American. Linked Learning recognizes that students will pursue a variety of options after high school. However, unlike tracking, in which judgments are made early in high school (often based on highly suspect criteria) about which students should be prepared for different postsecondary options, Linked Learning preserves the full range of postsecondary and career options for all students. And it allows students to select their own future directions after high school graduation. Furthermore, Linked Learning is not asking students to choose a career path in the 9th grade. Rather each pathway adopts an industry theme to offer students a real-world context for better understanding the academic and technical foundation they will need to succeed in whatever future postsecondary option or career path they choose. That said, for students who do have a strong sense of what they want to do—in both career and further education—Linked Learning offers the opportunity to pursue that interest in depth. Students will not only will develop a deeper understanding of the academic and technical knowledge relevant to their career choice, but also will have the opportunity to develop more specific occupational skills that will give them a leg up in the labor market.
AB 1304 Linked Learning (Block, D-San Diego) is a measure supported by the California Catholic Conference that would define "linked learning programs," and would authorize a commission to convene a workgroup consisting of specified members to develop program standards for the issuance of a recognition of study in Linked Learning. The bill would authorize the commission to work with the Superintendent of Public Instruction to gather and post, on an appropriate Internet Web site, best practices from school districts and schools on curriculum development and professional development relating to implementing and sustaining multiple pathway programs.
A Linked Learning approach relies heavily on teachers to increasingly blend academic and technical curriculum in ways that connect theoretical knowledge and real-world applications. Integration can occur in two directions—infusion of appropriate and related academic concepts into technical courses to provide a theoretical foundation, and application of technical skills into academic courses to bring relevance. For example, when a carpentry instructor teaches students how to calculate volume to determine how many sacks of cement are needed to lay a foundation of a house, the teacher is reinforcing the geometry standards that students must master. Similarly, when a geometry teacher directs students to study architectural plans to figure out how much sheet rock is needed to line the walls and ceilings of a new home in order to master their understanding of surface area, the teacher makes mathematics more relevant and understandable. Students are able to answer the question, "Why do I need to know this?"
Lastly, although it may be very difficult to have constructive conversations about new directions for American high schools, we must recognize that there are many different ways for high school students to pursue and achieve excellence. This is not about accepting low standards for some and high standards for others. Rather, it is about realizing that in our full and complex world, excellence and success take many forms—a single pathway is very much at odds with promoting widespread accomplishment for all students. Uniformity simplifies policy making; it does not nurture deeper learning. Imposing a uniform academic experience on everybody, simply to avoid the specter of tracking, is not in the best interest of all students. What engages and motivates some students will not excite and move others. Linked Learning is not the only way to redesign the high school experience, of course. But it does illustrate that diversification and choice are not at odds with equity.
It’s time to move beyond the simplistic college-for-all-vs.-tracking debate and get about the very difficult business of designing and delivering high schools that engage and motivate young people. We can prepare all students for both college and career, but they will need a range of experiences to get there. In this respect, advocating more “pathways to prosperity” is on the right track.
