While presenting at the ECIS Leadership conference in Berlin, I was fortunate to attend a keynote presentation by Yong Zhao,   an international scholar, author, and speaker with a  focus on the implications of globalization and technology on education. He is the author of Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization and World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students.  He currently serves as the Presidential Chair and Associate Dean for Global Education in the College of Education, University of Oregon.

53% of Recent College Grads Are Jobless or Underemployed (The Atlantic April 23, 2012)
These sentences from a January, 2013 posting on Zaho’s website, (Five Questions to Ask About the Common Core), capture this “preparing students” question.
“If all children are asked to master the same knowledge and skills, those whose time costs less will be much more competitive than those with higher costs. There are many poor and hungry people in the developing world willing to work for a fraction of what workers in developed countries need. Thus for those in developed countries such as the United States to be globally competitive, they must offer something qualitatively different, that is, something that cannot be obtained at a lower cost in developing countries. And that something is certainly not great test scores in a few subjects or the so-called basic skills, because those can be achieved in the developing countries.”