Tuesday, June 18, 2019
2019 is an exciting year for CTE and career readiness, and Wisconsin is poised to make the most of it! The DPI CTE, Academic and Career Planning (ACP), and Pathways Wisconsin teams are working diligently to ensure that coordinated efforts complement each other. Some examples include:
Xello Transition
Xello is contacting every district’s Career Cruising data administrator to prepare for this transition. Here are a few important dates:
- May 10 – August 12, 2019: ACP team staff should attend the webinar trainings and review resources.
- July 29, 2019: Career Cruising goes offline for all accounts in Wisconsin.
- August 12, 2019: Xello is live for all accounts in Wisconsin, and set-up instructions are provided for the new single sign-on (SSO).
- August – November 2019: In-person trainings occur in each CESA.
- Summer 2019: Stay up to date on available virtual trainings and webinars.
ACP Evaluation and Equity
ACP practices and service delivery remain at the forefront of K12 career readiness preparation. DPI continues to partner with CESAs and the UW Wisconsin Evaluation Collaborative to identify areas of excellence and places for improvement. In particular, in 2019-20, DPI will focus on the Xello transition and on using data to determine if there is equitable access to ACP career readiness activities for all students.
Tip: Review your annual data on student placements in CTE courses and work-based learning settings. Ask yourself these key questions:
- Is the same student demographic always participating? Are students always placed in the same locations? For example, does employer A only hire white males who are straight-A students?
- Are you inadvertently creating barriers to student participation? Do your prerequisites—grades, attendance, behavior, or letters of recommendation—create roadblocks that disengaged students find demotivating?
ACP, Pathways, and CTE Programs of Study (POS)
DPI has been piloting the JPMorgan Chase New Skills for Youth grant (also known as Pathways Wisconsin) in four regions for the last two years. While DPI is still compiling best practices and lessons learned, two questions tend to arise from schools outside of these regions:
How is this different from what we already do with CTE POS?
Under Perkins IV, the CTE Program of Study (POS) was a four-year plan of courses with connected work-based learning and dual credit in a distinct cluster/pathway according to the 16 Cluster/79 Pathway curricular framework designed in 2000. These were submitted for Perkins compliance in order to receive federal funding. Sadly, most schools used them for compliance, not advising, about career paths.
With Perkins V reauthorization, through Wisconsin’s established ACP services, we now have the opportunity to use a definition of “career pathway” that is aligned with other agencies, including technical colleges and workforce development. While not fundamentally different from the POS Guide elements, the focus now shifts to leveraging common elements across the state and region to support CTE development in each school, including:
- comprehensive counseling through ACP with CESA support
- partnerships through regional collaboratives
- technical skill attainment through vetted credentials and state work-based learning programs
- seamless articulations for college credits that also count in the postsecondary programs
Employers from around the state have worked together to create a State-Endorsed Pathway for their industry. This pathway “outline” can then be tailored by a collaborative of regional partners to become a regional career pathway. Once a district adopts the regional career pathway, it becomes a State-Endorsed Regional Career Pathway (SERCP), validated and supported by employers, in high-skill, high-demand industries in the region. In effect, it is also a ready-made ACP.
When can I start?
More than adopting a new advising template, the regional career pathways approach requires a collaborative of partners led by employer-industry sector partners. Also, the collaborative cannot be solely owned and managed by one educational entity, like a CESA or a technical college. In 2019-20, the CESA ACP coordinators may begin to identify and develop the collaborative for a region in partnership with a regional employer group and their local Regional Economic Development Organization. Once the grant year has ended, DPI intends to take the SERCP approach statewide.
Save the date
ACP/Pathways Conference: Education and Business Partnerships on Wednesday December 11, 2019.
—Submitted by Robin Kroyer-Kubicek, Education Consultant, Career Pathways, Career and Technical Education, Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction