English Leadership Quarterly - Ready for the Real World?, Aug 2012

President Obama’s educational goal that high schools prepare students who are “college and career ready” leaves us to debate exactly what that means. Editor Susan Groenke contends that if we ask our college freshmen what they needed in high school to be “college ready,” they will tell us. This issue’s authors describe research with college students about their high school English experiences, share ideas about how to transfer literature-based skills to “real-world” contexts, address the teaching of students who are not college-bound, and contemplate how to develop English teachers who both work within and critique current standards-based instruction. Also included is an interesting letter from a Canadian high school student who wanted to respond to the February issue, “Troubling the Literary Canon.” This student supports the growing perspective that listening to the voices of young people can help us better know what they need to be ready for the “real world.”