Aligning Secondary and Postsecondary Education: Lessons from the Past

Abstract:

Educators, reformers, and commissions have long underscored the need to align all levels of education and build a seamless, coordinated P-16 system. Failing to do so, they have argued, has kept too many students from pursuing an advanced education and the nation from benefiting from a more educated populace. Such was the case in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when reformers first began to wrestle with the proper alignment of America's loose
educational structure. In this brief, Marc A. VanOverbeke provides an overview of past P-16 reform efforts and offers historical lessons that can be applied to policymaking today.