If you have a middle school student, chances are the school they’re attending is already discussing career options. While there’s always been a place at this age for discussing a child’s hopes and dreams for the future, the push to make career-ready children is creating a lot of anxiety among parents.
Much of this involves placing students online and gathering personal information through surveys to align student interests to future jobs.
How must children feel when they are coerced into determining what they want to do with their lives when they are only in eighth grade, or when their reading difficulties already prevent them from moving into a career path they find interesting?
This is tracking at an early age.
Middle school students (6th, 7th, and 8th grade) might already be pushed into learning career-technical education (CTE).
Having taught the same 6th, 7th, and 8th-grade students in a resource class and high school students, I know that academic and social differences between the same sixth and eighth-grader can be profound!
High school students change too. Students are somewhat more settled on a college and career direction by a student’s junior and senior year. This seems like a good time to discuss careers and interests.
Most children, aside from a few prodigies, dream about and change their minds about a career. And some students don’t proclaim a college major until they are well into their college career!
So why is there such a push to stamp a career on a student before they’re ready?
Policymakers and school reformers claim they’re worried about the future economy, and schools must prepare students for future jobs. This hyperbole has been running rampant in the school reform arena for years.
Much of this hyper-focus on college and career readiness was ushered in with the Common Core State Standards and Smarter Balanced Assessments.
No shortage of career online testing companies will gather personal information about children. Naviance is an example of a software provider to middle and high school, collecting personal data about students, including student values. This data collection is especially worrisome.
Along with assessment, nonprofit programs have popped up to match middle school students to businesses.
While discussing middle school students and career education, Education Week showcased a program called Spark. The chief executive officer, Jason A. Cascarino, stated, Nobody knows what to do with these kids. Developmentally, it’s a challenging age.
Education Week also described the middle school in another Education Week report, The Forgotten Middle. The Bermuda Triangle. The Black Box. The Educational Weak Link.
These perceptions of middle school are not entirely true. Middle school is a challenging age, but well-prepared teachers who study preadolescent development and work with students succeed at helping students identify their interests.
If preteens become bored and disengaged, school reform measures have destroyed the ability of educators to provide a good foundation in coursework with access to a whole curriculum. Teachers may lack resources and good preparation.
There’s possibly been too much focus on career planning and testing.
Exposure to language arts, math, social studies, science, music, and art still makes the most sense for all students at this age. Middle school students also require plenty of socialization opportunities through engaging in extracurricular activities.
Any apprenticeship opportunities might be best offered in the summer—students at this age like to discuss and explore careers. But businesses should back off.
To some extent, it is necessary to forecast the kinds of jobs available to students when they graduate. Businesses have every right to express their needs.
But steering children into those jobs, especially at an early age, is more about business than about children.
Elementary schools even obsess about career preparation. Children in kindergarten are assessed to determine a career route!
All of this is foreboding. It shouldn’t be permitted, certainly not at such a young age when students constantly change and reinvent themselves.
The seriousness of a career choice cannot be underestimated. But forcing this commitment onto middle school students goes way beyond what is ethically appropriate.
References
Caralee J. Adams. “Career Prep Moves Into Middle Schools.” Education Week. July 15, 2015.
Caralee Adams. “Focus on Middle Grades Seen as Pivotal to High School and College Readiness. ” Education Week. December 5, 2014.
Please explain more about Naviance. My high school daughter and middle school son will both experience this program next year.
Thank you,
Karen
I would ask the school guidance departments how it’s going to be used. I’d especially be concerned with how it’s used at the middle school level. But I’d want to know what data is going to be collected, what the information will be used for, and whether it’s necessary. Good luck.
I refuse Naviance for my son in MS. There are lots of career surveys and personality tests given. The school has implemented SEL assignments into the math curriculum (growth mindset) due to low test scores. The school paid an outside company to come into the school for 2 days of “empathy training”( which was to be a secret until a parent found out). All of these things are put into Naviance. The behavior at this school is absolutely outrageous, but the teachers and admin won’t admit that it’s their fault because they have denied these children a well rounded education in lieu of test prep and career prep.
I can’t refuse Naviance for my daughter in HS. Everything for college is done in Naviance. SAT scores, AP scores, FAFSA, and all teacher recommendations MUST be done in Naviance. I believe it is tied with the College Board, but I can’t find a direct link.
Remember when your parents used to tell you it would be on your personal record if you got in trouble at school? Well, it really will be on your permanent record thanks to Naviance. That fight that your child had in the 7th grade will follow him into college and onto his career. Naviance is tied to the State’s Longitudinal data system which wants to collect data from cradle to career…hence the push for universal all day pre-K. It is data collection to the max and it is really creepy. I am tired of having my children surveilled every hour of every day in the place that is supposed to be a safe haven for children…school. Naviance is tied into all the data collection from test scores to behavior.
The words “surveillance” and “creepy” stand out here. Assessment is really being taken to a new and troubling level. I appreciate your taking the time to describe this to us, Lisa.
I’ll add that the Bill Gates small school initiative that Bloomberg / Klein championed in NY has also done tremendous damage in this regard. By setting up comprehensive high schools to fail and replacing them with small, themed high schools, students are forced to decide what they want to do by early 8th grade.
When they find out that their choice wasn’t so well informed they’re stuck since the schools can never have robust elective programs like large comprehensive high schools would.
You’re also describing the problems with what happened with the break-up of Manual H.S. in Denver due to the Gates initiative. Comprehensive high schools can’t be beat for the variety in what they offer students. There’s a place for small schools for students who are overwhelmed in a big high school, but students there also deserve vocational options. Thanks, Mike!
It has always been my belief that a really effective education does prepare young people for the future, including the world of work. However, my deep reservations about the purpose of education being to prepare them for employment are as strong as ever..
In the UK too, “Policymakers and school reformers claim they’re worried about the future economy, and schools must prepare students for future jobs.” I believe if they really were worried about the economy, they would have more of an oversight on the scope and pace of change, especially in technological terms. The pace of change is leaving us behind before adjustments have been made to how we might be prepared for what lies ahead. The direction of education reform is making the situation worse. Narrowing of options early in life is not even in the policymakers interests, so why suggest it for our young people.
Apart from this, have we learned nothing about the pitfalls of granting pretty broad, unfettered access to our personal data? Should we be extremely cautious about some of the trends spoken of by Lisa M, especially in relation to data collected about young people before they are able to make value judgements for themselves?
I agree, John! If teachers do their jobs well, students learn and find their interests.
But here, even little children are being coerced into learning about college. We have high schools in North Dakota that will be pushing all their students into the workforce during the last year of high school. Certainly, there are some students who might benefit from career-technical positions, but it seems extreme.
And, of course, the data collection starting at an early age seems to cast a child’s future in stone. Tracking children is a real fear here.
Thank you. Always good to hear your insight!