Preparing Career Ready Graduates

An in-depth study of the corporate perspective on the readiness of new entrants into the U.S. workforce by level of educational attainment. The study includes results from both an in-depth survey conducted during April and May 2006 and interviews with a sampling of a dozen HR and other senior executives. In addition, a Workforce Readiness Report Card is presented to provide an accessible snapshot of the basic knowledge and applied skills that are either “deficient” or “excellent” in those areas that employer respondents rate as “very important.”
 

Public Schools and school systems as they are presently constituted, are simply not led in ways that enable them to respond to the increasing demands they face under standards based reform. Further, if schools, school systems, and their leaders respond to standards based reforms the way they have responded to other attempts at broad scale reform of public education over the past century, they will fail massively and visibly, with an attendant loss of public confidence and serious consequences for public education. The way out of this problem is through the large scale improvement of instruction, something public education has been unable to do to date, but which is possible with dramatic changes in the way public schools define and practice leadership.

Career preparation is necessary for anyone and career technical education supports all different kinds of students, despite of their background and abilities, be they economic, language, mental or physical. The public school system must provide rigorous academic content standards, relevant industry-specific knowledge and skills while preparing all students for the workplace and or higher education. Students enrolled in career technical education should have access to a rigorous, individualized curriculum with the opportunity for industry certification programs with high industry standards.

The Careers Project examined the preparation all students in public middle and high schools receive to explore career options and the relationship between that preparation and California’s state and regional economies. The California Research Bureau undertook this research at the request of a bipartisan group of 11 members of the California Legislature, with funding support from the James Irvine Foundation. The study consisted of three distinct phases:  1. A statewide survey of middle and high school counselors and principals.  2. An economic analysis and survey of representatives of business and industry in California. 3. School focus groups.

The Careers Project examined the preparation all students in public middle and high schools receive to explore career options and the relationship between that preparation and California’s state and regional economies. The California Research Bureau undertook this research at the request of a bipartisan group of 11 members of the California Legislature, with funding support from the James Irvine Foundation. The study consisted of three distinct phases:  1. A statewide survey of middle and high school counselors and principals.  2. An economic analysis and survey of representatives of business and industry in California. 3. School focus groups.

The purpose of the planning guide is to assist students through the career planning process. 

For CTE these curriculum standards are the foundation, identifying what is essential for students to master in each of the 15 industry sectors. With them in place, our schools can create, implement, and strengthen a CTE curriculum that benefits our youth, our communities, and our economy. Career technical education is a vital component of public education in California. Standards are based in research. Standards provide a focus on content—that is, what students actually need to know and be able to do. In 1991 the U.S. Secretary of Labor’s report Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) identified foundation knowledge, skills and abilities, and essential workplace competencies necessary to be competitive in our global, information-based economy. California’s CTE standards take the critical next step in providing the level of specificity needed to guide the development of high-quality, consistent, and relevant career-focused programs. Standards are rigorous and relevant. Narrow, job-skill-oriented secondary vocational programs of the past—that prepared individuals almost exclusively for entry into trades—have given way to broader CTE programs. These programs teach rigorous academic concepts within the context of career education. The CTE curriculum standards show direct linkages to California’s content standards in English–language arts, mathematics, history– social science, science, and visual and performing arts, and they provide learning opportunities in many venues both within and outside the traditional classroom. Standards describe what to teach, not how to teach it. Standards-based education maintains California’s historical respect for local control of schools. To help students achieve at high levels, local educators—with the cooperation of families, businesses, and community partners—can take these standards and design the specific curricular and instructional strategies that best deliver the content to their students. Standards are a continuing commitment to excellence. Standards answer the critical question, “What should our students be learning?” They represent a concerted effort to prepare our students with the knowledge and skills to make informed career choices, to integrate and apply academic and career concepts, to prepare for successful participation in our global society, and to seek and love learning as a lifelong endeavor. They represent our commitment to excellence.

Summary report on California Partnership Academies

In PPIC’s California 2025 report, a potential mismatch was highlighted between the level of education the future population is likely to possess and the level of education that will be demanded by the future economy. This study provides further evidence of the future workforce skills gap and discusses the causes, magnitude, and likely consequences of the gap.

This Guide begins with a combined Self-Assessment Checklist and Scoring Guide. The three sections of this—Small Learning Communities, Curriculum and Instruction, and Partnerships with Employers, Community, and Higher Education—derive from the definition of Career Academies agreed to by the organizations working to support them nationally, supplemented by more recent guidelines for evaluating SLCs.

Resource guide that provides information on available career guidance materials and resources for the elementary and middle/junior high school levels. 

To prepare today's students for tomorrow, schools are working to help students achieve in challenging subjects.   One key approach to this goal is to provide students with relevant contexts for learning. Career clusters link what students learn in school with the knowledge and skills they need for success in college and careers.  Career clusters identify pathways from secondary school to two- and four-year colleges, graduate school, and the workplace, so students can learn in school and what they can do in the future.  This connection to future goals motivates students to work harder and enroll in more rigorous courses.

Using a theory of resiliency, this study provides a Chicana student’s perspective of the role of parents in the development of college aspirations. Qualitative interviews with Chicana high school seniors shed light on the different ways these students perceive and come to understand the manner by which their parents influence and shape their educational goals and aspirations. The findings of this study point to the pertinent role of parents in the development of educational aspirations.

This operational plan represents the final step in a strategic planning process that Capital Area Michigan Works! and the region’s Educational Advisory Group (Career Connections) undertook in February, 2000 with guidance from the Michigan Department of Career Development’s Workforce Advisory Board.

Work-based learning (WBL) includes a range of activities that extend beyond traditional cooperative education, such as job shadowing, service learning, internships, and apprenticeships—all of which provide CTE students with valuable experience in the world of work. This Digest reviews the approaches used to provide work-based learning, issues involved in structuring meaningful worksite learning experiences, and benefits that CTE students realize through participation in those experiences.

A 1968 study of more than 10,000 high school graduates examines student decision making processes and how they are affected by family, friends, school experiences, and personal traits.

The traditional vocational guidance paradigm expects students, with help from career counselors or teachers, to make an informed, long-term career choice before graduating from high school. Yet, when groups of adults are asked if they are now doing what they expected to be doing when they graduated, less than 10 percent (educators and nurses excepted) raise their hands. The evidence suggests only a small minority of people is able to identify a “calling” at a young age, despite the pressures to which we continue to subject youth, and their advisors, to do so.  The new career management paradigm is not so much about making the right occupational choice as it is about equipping people with the skills to make the myriad choices necessary throughout their lives to become healthy, self-reliant citizens, able to cope with constant change in rapidly changing labor markets, connect with work they enjoy, and maintain balance between life and work roles.

ConnectEd California developed the "Multiple Pathways" model.  Pathways are programs of high school study that connect learning in the classroom with real-world applications outside of school. They integrate rigorous academic instruction with a demanding technical curriculum and fi eld-based learning—all set in the context of one of California’s 15 major industry sectors.

American schools aren't exactly frozen in time, but considering the pace of change in other areas of life, our public schools tend to feel like throwbacks. Kids spend much of the day as their great-grandparents once did: sitting in rows, listening to teachers lecture, scribbling notes by hand, reading from textbooks that are out of date by the time they are printed. A yawning chasm (with an emphasis on yawning) separates the world inside the schoolhouse from the world outside.

The base of the U.S. economy has changed over time from agricultural to industrial to information and now, at lightning speed, to infotech, biotech, and nanotech. New skill sets and high-level academics are required for the new technological workplace. What are our schools doing to prepare students for their future?

As the threshold between elementary and high school, between childhood and adulthood, middle school provides a significant

The following pages represent the Knowledge Worker Task Force’s first draft report to the CRI, the Fresno Business Council and California State University, Fresno on the completion of our initial phase of work.  We welcome comments and suggestions from community stakeholders and look forward to integrating our task force’s priorities and recommended action steps with those of the other CRI task forces.

Results of a new ACT study provide empirical evidence that, whether planning  to enter college or workforce training programs after graduation, high school students need to be educated to a comparable level of readiness in reading and mathematics. Graduates need this level of readiness if they are to succeed in college-level courses without remediation and to enter workforce training programs ready to learn job-specific skills.

The diploma has lost its value because what it takes to earn one is disconnected from what it takes for graduates to compete successfully beyond high school — either in the classroom or in the workplace. Re-establishing the value of the diploma will require the creation of an inextricable link between high school exit expectations and the intellectual challenges that graduates invariably will face in credit-bearing college courses or in high-performance, high-growth jobs.

The Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE), on behalf of career and technical education (CTE) professionals in the United States, advocates for clearly focusing American high schools on the goal of preparing EVERY student for full participation in a spectrum of college opportunities, meaningful work, career advancement, and active citizenship.

Seven short essays that follow this research review look forward to where CTE will go rather than back to what past research has found. The authors address the challenges and possibilities for Remaking Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Executive Summary Remaking Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century: What Role for High School Programs? secondary school CTE in today’s knowledge economy, charting a course for a reformed and vital secondary CTE sector. In the process, they highlight concrete examples of how states and schools can change for the better and how states and the federal government can drive improvement in CTE programming. They also identify practical challenges facing CTE programs trying to ratchet up quality, in the areas of curriculum, scheduling, the integration of technical and academic studies, the upgrading of technical teachers’ skills, and more.

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills model is focused on improving high schools to help them meet the challenges they face in preparing students for college and careers. 

This paper presents not only a new vision of how federal funding for CTE should be used, but also proposals about changing the way funding flows and who gets it.

The totality of successes highlighted in the main body of this report shows our region’s remarkable progress and is the work of numerous hands and minds.

Article on struggling small high schools in Sacramento and the challenges with keeping students from dropping out.

This document reflects the intent of Manatee and Sarasota Counties to meet and exceed expectations for the planning, creation, and sustainment of CAPE Academies within the state of Florida and reflects a joint five-year overarching strategic plan for secondary and postsecondary career and professional education within those counties.

The purpose of the Summit (October 26, 2006) was to solicit input from business, industry, and public service stakeholder groups in order to perform a gap analysis with current vocational offerings. Prior to the Summit, the district inventoried all vocational offerings. The report was distributed to participants in advance of the Summit. The report served as a guideline for participants as to what programs are currently offered throughout the District.

Middle schools are critical to the future success of our students yet they have been largely ignored in the debate on education reform. Research continues to show that academic planning and counseling needs to start as early as the 6th grade so students are prepared for the rigorous curriculum of high school and the future challenges of college and the workforce. Yet more than half of our middle schools in Los Angeles County are failing to meet national education standards.

In spring 2005, the National Association of Manufacturers’ Manufacturing Institute/Center for Workforce Success and Deloitte Consulting LLP (Deloitte Consulting) developed the fourth iteration in a series of surveys designed to learn more about how manufacturers plan their human capital strategies and the barriers they encounter in the process.  The results of this survey confirm the skill shortages found in earlier reports. However, the 2005 report goes much beyond earlier findings in detailing the breadth and depth of the skill shortage, the negative impact of the shortages on business operations, and the extraordinary increase in employee performance requirements.

Despite the widespread presence of CTE in most high schools, many policymakers have limited knowledge about CTE and the changes it has undergone or are unsure how CTE can play a role in redesigned high schools and expanded learning options for youth. This  paper will provide ideas on how federal and state policies can support a greater role for CTE in high school reform by providing meaningful, relevant, and rigorous learning opportunities for all youth.

1996 Report.  In the last several years, the combined movements of Tech Prep and School-to-Work have spread to many school districts across the country. These movements, involving the collective efforts of local schools, community, and business and industry—supported throughout by the cooperative actions of educators, parents, students, employers, and community leaders—have achieved significant levels of success in many different places. In many instances, the actions of the high school principal, the key change agent, were instrumental in bringing about total reform in the school.  This report examines six model Tech Prep/School-to-Work programs as described by the high school principals. It seeks to identify the unique elements—or themes for reform—that high school principals recognize in successful Tech Prep/School-to-Work programs.

This is the 4th annual report from a 5-year longitudinal project that examines diverse and promising programs for integrating career and technical education (CTE, previously called vocational education) with whole-school reform in schools that serve predominantly disadvantaged students. Prior annual reports have reviewed the research base on the integration of CTE and whole-school reform, provided preliminary qualitative findings in areas such as leadership, and analyzed student outcome data for mathematics coursetaking and progress toward graduation.

Despite the widespread presence of CTE in most high schools, many policymakers have limited knowledge about CTE and the changes it has undergone or are unsure how CTE can play a role in redesigned high schools and expanded learning options for youth. This paper will provide ideas on how federal and state policies can support a greater role for CTE in high school reform by providing meaningful, relevant, and rigorous learning opportunities for all youth.

How do we craft a new vision that captures the power of CTE to engage students and motivate them to achieve higher levels of both academic and technical competency? We can begin by using public policy to promote development of comprehensive, multiple pathways that simultaneously prepare students for career and the full range of postsecondary options—two- and four-year college, apprenticeship, the military, and formal employment training.

The 2006 California Educational Opportunity Report provides new analyses of data about how well California’s K-12 public schools are preparing students for college, and it compares California’s schools with schools across the nation. For the first time, policymakers and parents can look across the state and see, for every high school, the relationships among California’s educational infrastructure, rates of high school completion, and enrollment in the state’s four-year colleges and universities.

Powerpoint presentation that examines course list update process; course requirements for "a-g" approval; recommendations for course articulation, including CTE courses; policies and programs; resources and websites

The high school has been criticized at least since the 1930s, with a crescendo of critical commission reports since 2004. While no single reform can counter all critiques, creating multiple pathways within high schools—schools-withinschools, or “majors” following a particular theme, or themed high schools and magnet schools—provides a clear alternative to the conventional high school.  A “weak” version of multiple pathways would restructure high schools to include multiple, theme-based pathways. These would respond to many of the historical and recent critiques of high schools, as well as to the problems of motivation and engagement. Pathways structured appropriately should increase engagement, and thereby high school completion.

Database of companies and their partnerships with schools.  http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1993/11/29/78668/index.htm

The sum total of what is reported in these pages is a hopeful, even inspiring, perspective on what is being done to return thousands of American young people to productive participation in the nation’s economy and society. We urge our readers to make similar contributions to the public good by studying this report, contacting the caring women and men who daily create, manage, and refine their mission of reclaiming out-of-school youth, and then proceeding to explore and shape authentic ways to achieve equally laudable results in their own communities.

Given the benefits—and the potential price of not acting—shouldn’t career planning have a higher priority in high school? A collaborative effort by parents, counselors, and teachers is needed to coach and guide students, as they are unlikely to initiate action on their own. An effective career-planning program should help students learn how to identify career interests and follow a process to eventually select a career path. It should educate students about the role competition plays in the workplace and which skills are valued by employers. Lastly, it should coach students in how to learn and practice these skills, so that they are prepared to achieve success in their work lives.

The Higher Education—Students Speak II survey was developed by the New England Association of Schools & Colleges (NEASC) and the Educational Policy Institute to identify the types and breadth of work-based learning activities that four-year college students experienced during high school, and to determine the correlation of these activities on their postsecondary experience. The survey, administered to eight institutions in spring 2002, queried first-year students at fouryear institutions about their work-based learning experiences during high school and about their learning preferences. A subsequent transcript analysis allowed us to collect outcome data, including cumulative Grade Point Average, credits earned, and persistence.