Alliance for Learning: 'Our K-12 System Is Falling Apart'

By Shirley M. McBay

At the very time America is becoming more dependent on science and technology, its educational system is failing to produce high school graduates with the skills necessary to succeed in technology-based workplaces or in quantitatively oriented fields in college.

While both business and higher education face spiraling costs--brought on in part by the need to offer extensive remedial assistance--colleges and universities are not at the forefront of K-12 reform efforts. The business community, private foundations, professional associations, nonprofit organizations, a few professors at geographically dispersed institutions, and government officials at the national and state levels are all attempting to fill the resulting leadership void.

As America's college-age population shrinks in size and shifts in racial and ethnic mix, higher education is not playing a visible role in the dismantling of an outmoded pre-college system that has historically neglected and structurally discouraged the very groups to whom the country must now turn for its workforce. Hence, our colleges and universities must assume a good portion of the responsibility for the poor instruction and inadequate preparation received by most...