College- and Career-Ready Students: How Can We Tell?

President Obama recently announced that he wants to require all states to implement college- and career-ready standards as a condition for receiving Title I funding. The president noted, "Because too many students are not learning the basic skills needed to succeed in college or work while they are in high school, the nation sacrifices more than $3.7 billion a year in lost productivity and remedial education costs."

But what will "college- and career-ready" mean? How would such a mandate look in federal law and how would it be implemented by local educators? This discussion will help define how we know if students are "college- and career-ready," and how that information can be used for school improvement and designing the right rewards and accountability framework.

In March 2010, Education Sector and College Summit hosted an important discussion about what "college- and career-ready" means and how it looks in policy and practice. This is the first in a series of "Race to Reauthorization" forums Education Sector is convening to discuss the impending reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. 

This discussion featured:

Linda Perlstein, public editor of Education Writers Association and writer of Educated Reporter blog (as moderator)
Chad Aldeman, Education Sector policy analyst
David Coleman, founder and CEO of Student Achievement Partners
Angelique Simpson Marcus, principal of Largo High School, Prince George's County, Maryland
Jamie Pueschel Fasteau, senior education policy advisor to Education Committee Chairman George Miller
J.B. Schramm, founder and CEO of College Summit.