A quick perusal of Dr. John Deasy’s newsletters and the LAUSD website in general, as well as, sound bites from Board of Education meetings highlight the frequent use of the phrase college and career (or workforce) ready. Like any good PR term, this phrase easily rolls off the tongue and finds itself placed squarely at the center of most current initiatives, e.g., Common Core Standards and A-G Curriculum. But what does it really mean? Are the two terms synonymous or are they different? Can a student be one and not the other? In California and LAUSD, we know that college ready means meeting a set of course requirements prescribed by the UC and CSU systems, irrespective of the fact that these institutions serve only about one-quarter of high school graduates and the California Master Plan aims to serve only one-third. Yet, there seems to be no parallel for career ready. Dr. Deasy and Dr. Jaime Aquino, Deputy Superintendent of Instruction, both promote the philosophy that if a student is college ready (has completed the A-G curriculum), he/she is automatically career ready. While there are connections and intersections between college and career readiness, research has found