In this chapter, we propose a measure of high school students’ career readiness that would focus on skills that employers value and be reliable enough to use as part of a school accountability system. Specifically, we propose to assess students’ actual performance in an extended experience of what we are calling “practice-based learning, "1 where students take real responsibility for providing valuable services to clients, customers, or the community. Practice-based learning could occur in a paid or unpaid internship, a parttime or summer job, a school-based enterprise, or a co-curricular activity. While there are many definitions of career readiness, 2 in this chapter we use the term to mean that a young person has begun to develop a range of knowledge, skills, dispositions, and capabilities that-in combination with appropriate postsecondary education-are likely to contribute to success in future careers. This is different from a concept of readiness that views entry into employment after high school as an alternative to postsecondary education-a concept that perpetuates a false dichotomy between readiness for college versus readiness for work. Our concept is consistent with the widely-stated goal of trying to prepare every high school student for both college and careers-a goal which is also supported by the continued evolution of vocational education into career-technical education (CTE), and the growing use of contextual and applied learning in the study of academic subjects at the high school level. © 2018 Information Age Publishing Inc.
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