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Our policy makers no doubt have been striving to bring in effective higher education reforms. However, most of them fail to produce any significant results predominantly due to ambiguous orders.

Looking at the scenario on the face value, we cannot but be impressed with the shared vision. This is evident with the results of the Gallop Poll that showed that almost 84% of Americans are in sync with President Obama’s opinion that in order to ensure a successful college and career, it is necessary for students to be well prepared.

In the context of our classrooms, what exactly is being prepared for college mean? This is very ambiguous and there is not clear consensus on what high schools must do in order to ensure that students are prepared well enough. This is an important issue that must be addressed at the earliest if we wish to make progress.

Unless this aspect is well defined, schools cannot put in the right amount of effort in the right direction. There will be a tendency to drift and gauging failure and success will continue to be a futile task.

We do know that one of the most important aspects for preparing students for a successful higher education and career is mastery of academic content. In order to achieve this, two critical factors must be augmented namely focusing school reform debates on enhanced accountability and increased rigor.

In today’s ever changing environment, it is important for schools to prepare students for lifelong learning. In other words, successful students must feel at home in the changing, fast paced world. This is possible only if they know how to adapt to emerging skills and have enough knowledge and awareness of global cultures.

Schools must also prepare students well enough to adapt to ever growing technological infrastructure, mastering and applying advances in a creative manner. Students in high school must be allowed to explore their interests and capabilities as it is not enough to just develop their intellectual and academic skills at the fundamental level.

Students who pass out of high schools must be proficient in collaborating with their peers and must be enterprising enough to look beyond the limitations of their community or neighborhood. In order to achieve all this, we must first work on the infrastructure.

Our ambitions cannot be supported by traditional methods of teaching. Learning must essentially be linked to the real world work. Career oriented experiences must be provided to students in order to equip them to face college and workplace challenges.

As a first step, it is imperative to make our high schools sophisticated in terms of technology. This must be personalized depending on the interests, circumstances and capabilities of students. Tech curve that most classrooms are lagging behind in must be worked upon and improved.

Standards of accountability and rigor must be maintained by our high schools. Students must be challenged enough to enable them to strive harder. Investment in high school infrastructure is a must to achieve these important goals and instigate the necessary changes. This is the only way true education reform can be brought in.