Carnegie leader urges high school overhaul as AI job fears rise

Warnings about AI-related job losses are adding pressure to rethink how American high schools prepare students for work. Tim Knowles, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, argued in a Fortune commentary that states should treat the moment as a call for broad secondary-school reform.

Knowles pointed to recent forecasts from business and technology figures. He said short-seller Carson Block predicted that AI could wipe out 15% of knowledge-worker jobs within three years, while Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned in a policy memo that AI could create labor disruptions larger and longer-lasting than earlier waves of technology.

Knowles framed the challenge against an earlier shift in the U.S. economy. He said agricultural employment fell from about one-third of U.S. jobs to 8% over 50 years around the turn of the 20th century, eliminating nearly 10 million jobs in less than a lifetime.

As economist and Opportunity@Work founder Byron Auguste has noted, Knowles wrote, policymakers, employers and families responded by expanding formal education. States adopted compulsory-schooling laws, and the number of high schools rose by an average of one per day for 30 years, according to figures Knowles cited. He said the U.S. later produced a larger share of high school graduates than any other country.

Alabama’s waiver proposal

Knowles said Alabama is among the states using federal K-12 waiver requests to push changes in high school expectations. He described the state as part of a “Southern surge” in education outcomes and said its proposal puts career preparation alongside college readiness.

Under the Alabama plan as described by Knowles, students would be assessed on both academic and workplace-related skills instead of relying only on a college admissions test. He said the state wants students to show they can interpret data and work with complex practical documents, while still demonstrating academic skills such as solving quadratic equations.

Knowles said Alabama’s state schools chief has argued that 67% of jobs in the state requiring high-demand skills pay more than the median wage. He wrote that students should be prepared for those opportunities.

The skills Knowles identified include critical thinking, communication, collaboration, adaptability, digital literacy and work ethic. He said the shift would place academic learning and workforce preparation at the center of the high school experience.

College outcomes add pressure

Knowles also cited college-completion data to argue that high schools should prepare students for more than one postsecondary route. He said 61% of students who enroll in college earn a degree within six years, and more than half of graduates end up underemployed.

He acknowledged concerns that tying schools more closely to labor-market needs could lead to weaker academic standards or tracking students into narrower paths. Knowles said Alabama’s approach aims to make applied learning more rigorous and relevant, rather than reduce expectations.

Knowles said states still need research-backed standards that define workforce skills and tools that can assess them reliably. He argued that Alabama and other states are beginning that work as AI raises new questions about what students need from high school.

This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.