Whether or not it’s via pupil surveys, greater charges of persistent absenteeism, or declining school enrollment, an increasing number of proof—particularly because the begin of the COVID-19 pandemic—factors to college students’ rising disengagement with conventional highschool and essentially questioning of the four-year school pathway because the norm.
It’s a actuality ever obvious to David Coleman, the chief govt of the nonprofit Faculty Board, which runs two core establishments of the college-going world: the Superior Placement program and the SAT evaluation—each packages traditionally aimed toward excessive schoolers with plans to attend school.
Whereas most college students say they want post-secondary schooling, and enrollment in AP programs and the variety of SAT check takers continues to develop, Coleman acknowledges a big subset of scholars are disengaged from highschool and aren’t proactively making post-secondary plans. On the identical time, college students say they need extra alternatives to find out about profession choices and put together straight for these prospects.
It’s why the Faculty Board not too long ago has taken a decisive flip into the profession exploration and preparation house. The AP program, lengthy dominated by conventional, core tutorial topics, is increasing into profession and technical schooling courses by piloting two such programs this yr that might assist college students earn each school credit score and {industry} credentials. And now, after college students take the SAT, they’re studying about potential profession choices that may very well be a match for them after they obtain their rating reviews.
“For a lot of college students, they see highschool life as center faculty—as soon as extra with feeling,” Coleman mentioned on Oct. 21 on the opening session of the Faculty Board’s annual discussion board right here in Austin. “If we’re going to be related, if we’re going to work collectively for a brand new stage of relevance, the Faculty Board has to vary essentially.”
New program affords highschool and school credit score and {industry} credentials
Whereas the share of highschool college students enrolling in school has usually declined over the previous couple of years, the variety of college students in undergraduate certificates packages, which prepare college students in industry-specific expertise, has grown.
Consequently, extra excessive colleges have been investing in serving to college students discover profession pathways.
One such profession exploration device has been profession and technical schooling, or CTE.
An EdWeek Analysis Heart survey from June discovered that 66 % of faculty and district leaders say their districts supply college students entry to CTE pathways that result in industry-recognized credentials as a technique to introduce college students to profession choices.
And 62 % of educators mentioned their district affords extra profession and technical schooling programs now than 10 years in the past.
Consistent with this nationwide pattern, the Faculty Board’s AP program is piloting the Profession Kickstart program that extends the AP mannequin to CTE.
The purpose is to supply programs that fulfill highschool credit score necessities whereas additionally permitting college students to earn school credit score and an industry-recognized certification, mentioned Clare Bertrand, govt director of profession technique for the Faculty Board.
The CTE programs comply with a lot of the format of conventional AP programs. The Faculty Board units a framework, academics obtain specialised coaching, and college students can probably earn school credit score in the event that they rating nicely sufficient on an end-of-course examination.
The Faculty Board is piloting two CTE programs this faculty yr. AP Networking Fundamentals and AP Cybersecurity Fundamentals are full-year programs that some colleges throughout the nation try out. They function hands-on, problem-solving actions that cowl fundamentals within the discipline and put together college students to sort out the present—and shortly evolving—cybersecurity panorama.
College students enrolled within the pilot this yr can earn highschool credit score and, primarily based on their AP examination scores, are eligible to earn a voucher to cowl the price of check prep and and the examination for the associated CompTIA industry-recognized certification.
“Does that pupil want to enter work instantly? No, in no way. They might select an internship, they could select an apprenticeship, they could use that credential to truly get a higher-paying, part-time job whereas they go right into a post-secondary program,” Bertrand mentioned. “There’s a whole lot of flexibility when it comes to how that credential might be used.”
The Faculty Board is working to safe college-credit eligibility for the programs, largely via partnerships with group schools, Bertrand mentioned.
Whereas a CTE program by design, the Faculty Board encourages colleges to supply the Profession Kickstart programs alongside current AP programs, comparable to AP Pc Science Ideas.
“We should finish in highschool and in school the unproductive divide between profession schooling and normal schooling,” Coleman mentioned.
SAT turns into profession conversation-starter
College students taking the Faculty Board’s SAT final yr might have observed one other means the group is encouraging college students to discover potential careers.
Because the Faculty Board ready to flip the SAT digital, leaders heard from educators who had been fielding questions from their communities about how the SAT’s evaluation of pupil’s math and studying expertise utilized to careers and whether or not college students ought to take the examination in the event that they weren’t planning on a two- or four-year school pathway, mentioned Priscilla Rodriguez, the senior vp for school readiness assessments on the Faculty Board.
In response, the Faculty Board deployed a brand new device with an eye fixed towards highlighting potential careers for college students.
The group partnered with HumRRO, the Human Sources Analysis Group, which matched expertise examined on the SAT with expertise wanted in 1,000 careers in a U.S. Division of Labor database.
For the primary time this previous yr, college students might entry a profession insights device of their SAT rating report—a chart that maps out six totally different profession curiosity areas primarily based on college students’ SAT scores. It contains details about the profession paths, what post-secondary schooling the careers require, and the way in demand these careers are in college students’ house states.
Courtesy of Faculty Board
The Faculty Board doesn’t need college students to assume these are the one six careers the SAT recommends they pursue, Rodriguez mentioned. As an alternative, the brand new device is supposed to function a dialog starter for college students to allow them to discover quite a lot of careers.
“The very fact of the matter is that every one college students are going into totally different locations after highschool,” Bertrand mentioned. “So how will we ensure that they’ve all of the details about all of these totally different pathways? However once more, school is a profession pathway. It’s a part of the multiple-pathways choices for college students.”
