College and Career Ready: Helping All Students Succeed Beyond High School

by Conley

Giving students the tools they need to succeed in college and work College and Career Ready offers educators a blueprint for improving high school so that more students are able to excel in freshman-level college courses or entry-level jobs-laying a solid foundation for lifelong growth and success. The book is filled with detailed, practical guidelines and case descriptions of what the best high schools are doing. The book considers the impact of behavioral issues-such as time management and study habits-as well as academic skills on college readiness.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, Teaching

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 28, 2010

Reviews

[Lisajean]

College and Career Ready is primarily geared towards school administrators and advocates large scale high school restructuring and refocusing; as a classroom teacher, the book was less applicable to me, but it was still thought-provoking. Conley’s primary argument is that, “high schools should be considered successful in proportion to the degree to which they prepare their students to continue to learn beyond high school.” He outlines the academic behaviors and self-management skills necessary for students to become independent learners and offers suggestions for how to build these skills into the curriculum. He then suggests a range of larger structural changes, many of which would require new state-level policies.

Most of his suggestions sounded convincing; however, while I agree that we should raise the floor and hold all students to high, college-ready standards, I worry that proposals like Conley’s can lead to less rigor for the highest level students. As a final note, the prose style of this book was painfully bland. This is a topic that I’m very interested in, but I continually found my eyes glazing over - fortunately I have the self-management skills to persevere!

[Nara]

Reading this to get a deeper perspective on the EPIC model of readiness for work and to play mini-book-club with my mother.

I have reservations about this model of college and career readiness - it is far more academically focused and college focused than I think is appropriate for all of today's students - but I also have great respect for Conley's intentions, his research, and what he's trying to do. I hope to approach it with an open mind, learn some good facts, and maybe understand how I can integrate his (dominant in the current conversation) definition better with the career and technical education perspective.

[Shauna Tharp]

While this book doesn't present any thinking I haven't seen elsewhere, they do present all the separate arguments, methods, etc. contained in different places in one book. They make the current issues clear, provide clear variables to focus upon, and outline steps on a large scale and small scale to work towards success for all students.

[Marty]

this was hard to slog through. Not as relevant to me as I thought it would be. It is almost entirely aimed at changing high schools.

[Marianne Hetzer Hawn]

Reading to prep for my new job!

[John]

My reading list gets sexier with age.

[Jill Adams]

Fairly opinionated but interesting info in the 1st part of the book. Not worth purchasing, however. I do love that I'm still thinking about some of his ideas, though.