ABSTRACT
Higher education and public high schools evolved independently in the United States without strong alignment between the two systems (Reese, 2005; Thelin, 2004). This chapter examines the shift in political arguments about pathways between high school and college within state systems of education. We apply our three-level analytic method to illuminate the challenge by (1) reviewing the emergence of the college preparation rationale as an outgrowth of the standards movement, the reactions to the standards movement among K-12 policy researchers, and the emergence of standards-oriented research in the fi eld of higher education; (2) examining trends in higher education policies and outcomes during the decades of high school reform; and (3) reviewing the literature on high school preparation in relation to policies and trends.
