WaPo: Seven Warnings and One Mistake in High School Reform

5. Many reports say that high schools should also prepare students for the workplace, but nobody really knows how to do that either. Grubb and Oakes find this glaring weak spot in many higher standards proposals: "It's not obvious when and where anyone might need to find a tangent line or solve a quadratic equation, and so there's no help for teachers who want to motivate students by discussing the practical usefulness of academic work."

6. Amid all the talk about involving employers in high school reform, few people have good examples of this actually working. You often read in newspapers like mine about businesses forming partnerships with high schools. They sound good, but I have yet to find one that has had any significant impact on student achievement.

Full story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/06/AR2007110600549.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns