Aligning Secondary and Postsecondary Education: Lessons from the Past

Publication Date: November 2009

Publisher: Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education (WISCAPE), University of Wisconsin-Madison

Author(s): Marc VanOverbeke

Research Area: Education

Keywords: P-16 education

Type: Brief

Coverage: United States

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.