Our schools are weakest in their joints—those points where students pass from one school to the next. Students can pass every high school class and still find themselves in remedial classes once they get to college. Many earn credits at community colleges that do not count toward university degrees. Some graduate only to find that their diplomas mean little to employers.

When students waste their time and money, it is a lost opportunity to give more Americans the skills and credentials they need to reach the middle class. When Americans believe their hard work will not lead to economic success, they become frustrated, alienated, and politically polarized.

High school is where the joints connect elementary and secondary schools to all kinds of colleges and careers. It is the last universally required educational experience and the gateway to adulthood. And it is where students move from learning the fundamentals of reading and math to making real decisions about college, work, and community involvement that will shape their lives.

Helping teenagers make good choices about their futures is no easy task. Routing some students into uninspiring vocational classes, as many schools did in years past, was not the answer; nor was aspiring to send every child to a four-year college. Helping young people find their path is becoming even more challenging in the face of the profound uncertainty created by artificial intelligence.

The best approach is to give students a safe place to experiment and take their first steps into adulthood. They should be able to try college classes, experience meaningful time on the job, and improve their communities in concrete ways. These real-world experiences will help them reach informed decisions and make concrete plans for getting from graduation to where they want to go.

Many high schools do at least some of these things for some students, but these efforts remain scattered examples that are inconsistent in quality and often disconnected from students’ actual interests. Real-world experience should be central to high school. Well-designed federal resources can get us there.

The Evolution of the American High School

The blueprint for the modern American high school was written in 1959. By that time, high schools had transitioned from serving a small, elite group of students to a new era of universal education. Commissioned by the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, former Harvard president James Bryant Conant put forth a new vision, backed by practical steps, for the nation’s high schools.

Only two years earlier, the Soviet Union had launched the Sputnik satellite and kicked off the Space Race. American leaders were challenging schools to produce more scientists and engineers. Some argued for the European model, which sorted young people into academic or vocational tracks at early ages, often based on their inherited class.

Conant rejected that approach. An American system, he thought, ought to provide the same opportunities to everyone by offering both academic and vocational classes in the same school. His comprehensive approach would also strengthen American communities by bringing all young people together under one roof.

Conant prescribed instruction in core academic subjects for all students, with an individualized mix of more rigorous classes for more capable students. College-bound students would receive more instruction in academic subjects, while students headed for work would enroll in vocational programs.

An immediate bestseller, the Conant report landed its author on the cover of Time magazine. It had wide influence on our schools. Over time, though, its limitations have become clear. Efforts to individualize the curriculum ended up dividing students into separate tracks, often along lines of race and class. Many vocational programs were mere shop and home economics classes, rather than rigorous programs leading to middle-class jobs. Too little attention was paid to the knowledge and skills that students needed to engage in civic life. High-poverty schools, in particular, struggled to overcome low funding to meet their students’ greater needs.

Conant’s vision fell especially short in one area: He could not see the joints. His ideal high school was comprehensive, but it was also largely self-contained. He failed to connect high schools with colleges, employers, and communities. As a result, young people have struggled to find their own way.

There have been many efforts to improve high schools since 1959, of course. Early college high schools, career academies, small schools, and other ideas showed promise. But the limitations of the schools conceived by Conant—the disconnect between high school graduation and students’ futures—remain the norm today.

Many high school graduates are not ready for their next step. New college students often require remediation before they can take college classes. Twelfth-grade reading and math scores are at all-time lows. In plain terms, nearly half of seniors cannot apply percentages to a real-world problem, and about a third cannot make inferences that demonstrate a basic understanding of a text, like the author’s purpose. Most graduates who go directly into jobs are unprepared, according to hiring managers surveyed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Ask students, and they say they are tired, stressed, and bored. Students say the lack of useful material, especially for those who do not plan to go to college, is one reason. Almost one student in four is chronically absent. High school dropouts often say they left not because the classes were too hard, but because they were boring and irrelevant.

High school should be the opposite of boring. It should expand young people’s sense of the possible, encourage them to explore the world, and help them plan concrete next steps. That requires meaningful opportunities not only to learn about, but also to try out, college, jobs, and community service.

What Works Today

The first step is to give students a chance to try college, and schools are making progress. There are now 2.8 million students enrolled in both high school and college at the same time, more than triple the number a decade ago, though economic disparities remain. These dual enrollment classes demystify college and lead to more college degrees.

The next step is to ensure that those college classes are connected to students’ interests and count toward college degrees and career certificates. Some students never intend to pursue the subjects of their college classes, which limits their educational value. Meanwhile, colleges are stingy in awarding academic credit for these courses without careful documentation of their content and rigor. Expanding students’ horizons is worthwhile on its own, but failing to provide actual college credit is a missed opportunity to make college cheaper and faster.

The gold standard is early college high schools, which allow students to simultaneously earn their high-school diplomas and up to two years of college credit for free. At Bard High School Early College in Manhattan, for example, students complete a liberal-arts college curriculum while still in high school and can graduate with both a high school diploma and an associate degree. Students at Ruth Batson Academy in Boston can complete the first year of UMass-Boston before finishing high school and without ever leaving the neighborhood of Dorchester.

Meaningful work experience is the second key to connecting schools to the real world. Vocational education left woodworking behind a long time ago. The best career education programs combine strong academics with work experience, adult mentors, and new career opportunities. Yet only a few students receive more than cursory exposure to jobs. Only 4 to 5 percent of 16-to-18-year-olds have an internship, and only about one in 1,000 participate in an apprenticeship.

Career academies are schools-within-schools organized around a career theme, like finance or hospitality. They work closely with employers, and—unlike under Conant’s vision—they offer all students both rigorous academics and relevant career classes. They lead to higher graduation rates and, for boys, higher earnings.

Big Picture Learning, founded in Providence in the 1990s, goes further by organizing the school day itself around each student’s interests. Its motto is “one student at a time,” meaning they start with the goals of each student rather than fitting all of them into a preset course schedule. They also emphasize internships in the community.

Some promising high schools combine college and career experiences. P-TECH began as a partnership among the New York City schools, IBM, the NYC College of Technology, and the City University of New York, with support from the teacher’s union. It allows students to earn a high school diploma and a two-year college degree on a single integrated path that depends on high school and college teachers working from a shared curriculum. There are now P-TECH schools in 16 states, and New York City has implemented a similar idea at 190 high schools through a city initiative called FutureReadyNYC.

Finally, high schools should connect students with their communities through civics. Some educators debate whether civics should prioritize knowledge about American history and the U.S. Constitution or opportunities for real-world problem-solving. But this isn’t an either-or: Our young people need both knowledge and skills to solve problems together across political and economic differences.

Too often schools leave civics on the back burner, but new ideas are emerging. In 2019, a group of scholars and educators came together to rethink civics and history education with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Department of Education. The resulting “Roadmap to Educating for American Democracy,” which reflects a broad consensus across ideological lines and encourages respectful disagreement, is already guiding curriculum in some schools. In the time after school, groups like the YMCA bring together students from different backgrounds to debate legislation, negotiate compromise, and experience democracy firsthand.

What Should the Next Administration Do?

The next presidential administration should make college classes, paid internships, and civic experiences the norm for all high school students. Of course, high schools are locally controlled, reflect different priorities and needs, and depend on the expertise of teachers. But national leadership can improve those schools through targeted investments and higher expectations. Here are five places to start.

1. Launch 500 excellent high schools. Best practices and model schools are emerging. The federal government can bring these ideas together with onetime investments to launch or redesign 500 high schools. The result would be a cadre of model schools in urban, rural, and suburban school districts across every state. Each would feature paid work experience; real college classes that would allow students to make progress toward—or even earn—college degrees and career certificates; and opportunities to master the knowledge and skills needed for citizenship.

There have been many federal and philanthropic efforts to redesign schools, with mixed results. Many have focused on changing the governance of schools or the school day’s structure. This idea is simpler: Bring the real world into high school in ways that are already working. The model schools would prove that they can bring together the above three different forms of connection.

The following three recommendations will help other schools follow their lead, and the final recommendation will allow them to measure their results.

2. Invest in college courses done right. Millions of high school students are already taking college-level classes through dual enrollment at a local college, as well as Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate classes. But these opportunities remain uneven, and, while they offer students the chance to experience college, too often they are unrelated to students’ actual interests and plans.

Federal resources can ensure that all high school students, including students at schools with few of their own resources, have access to these programs. They can also encourage high schools to work with students, teachers, and local colleges so that credits for these classes actually transfer to college, which would ensure their rigor and cut future tuition costs.

3. Connect high school students to paid internships. Paid work is an opportunity for young people to explore their career interests and gain context for their academic coursework. The best evidence comes from college students: In one study, a paid internship boosted earnings in the first year after graduation by more than $3,000, while unpaid internships had no benefit.

Creating quality job experiences is not always easy. Schools need capacity to design worthwhile experiences that meet students’ interests and are connected to coursework. Employers need to train and manage students for short-term placements. Students face scheduling conflicts and transportation obstacles.

Federal funding can glue these opportunities together by supporting schools that offer job experiences and subsidizing wages to reduce employer and student costs. Paid service opportunities can be a particular win. College provides a model here too: The federal work-study program subsidizes wages, with higher subsidies to encourage certain jobs, and it sets aside funds to help colleges find high-quality job placements. Leading nonprofits can help build relationships with employers—the nonprofit PENCIL in New York City is a great example—and new technology platforms can reduce administrative costs.

4. Make civic preparation the norm. The federal government can make it easier for local schools to offer civics. One recent bipartisan proposal, the Civics Secures Democracy Act, would give local leaders $1 billion a year to prepare students for democracy. Senators Angus King and Andy Kim have their own proposals to support hands-on civics education such as service projects, model legislatures, and student journalism.

The next administration should follow through on plans to test twelfth graders across the country on their civics knowledge. The Bipartisan Policy Center recommends testing students in each state on civics to pinpoint gaps and areas for improvement.

Nineteen states now allow high school graduates to earn a civic seal on their diploma. Well-designed civic seals can recognize students who master the civics curriculum and know how to get involved in their communities, and they encourage schools to view fostering citizenship as one of their primary missions. The federal government can convene states to make the process of earning these seals more rigorous while ensuring they reflect a consistent vision for what it means to be prepared for citizenship and connect civic skills to college and career readiness.

5. Measure what matters. It’s not only federal resources that play a role. Federal information does too. Test scores and graduation rates tell us what happened to students in high school, but the goal of high school should be to look beyond graduation day. High schools generally have only anecdotal or incomplete information about whether their graduates succeed in college, pass real-world tests on the job, or become active members of their communities.

Most educators do not know, for example, how many graduates are placed into college remedial classes, let alone possess the data they need to identify specific knowledge gaps or manage improvement efforts over time. Similarly, earnings data would help high schools pinpoint which of their programs put graduates on track to middle-class careers.

Many states are trying to answer these questions through initiatives like California’s Cradle to Career Data System. But federal data on earnings includes more workers than many state systems and allows a comparable nationwide analysis, allowing fuller measures of career success and economic mobility. Federal tax and student aid data can also produce information on which high schools are producing graduates who succeed in college. Building secure, privacy-protected federal databases can give educators the insights they need to steadily improve student performance.

From Average to Excellent

When they have their turn at bat, politicians and policymakers like to take big swings. But progress is not always made through grand slams. We can often run up the score by stringing together singles—by identifying what is working and doing more of it, a little at a time.

That was Conant’s approach. As Carnegie president John Gardner wrote in the preamble to Conant’s study, “[O]ur average schools can become good schools, and our good schools excellent, by a series of steps easily grasped by any informed American.”

Today, too, we need to learn the lessons of what is already working. Leading high schools are already connecting their students with the communities they live in. Giving all students the chance to explore their college, career, and community interests will make schooling more relevant and help more students achieve a successful transition to adulthood.