The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) has just issued a report - Opportunities and Options: Making Career Preparation Work for Students - which calls on states to adopt three main recommendations in order to ensure all students are career-ready:

• Enlist the employer community as a lead partner in defining the pathways and skills most essential in today's economy.
• Set a higher bar for the quality of career preparation programs, enabling all students to earn a meaningful postsecondary degree or credential.
• Make career readiness matter to schools and students by prioritizing it in accountability systems.

Read more on the CCSSO Website or download the entire report (21 page PDF).

A quick and easy to understand explanation of career pathways from CLASP
(Center for Law and Social Policy).

http://www.clasp.org/issues/postsecondary/pages/career-pathways-explained

By Scarlett Wilson, Published September 21, 2014

So you’ve just finished year 11 and you’ve been thrown into the big wide world – which can be a pretty scary time to say the least. It can be difficult to decide what to do after you finish your GCSEs and it doesn’t help that there are some many options to choose from. But a pretty common question is; “Do I go to college or do an apprenticeship?”

This can be a stressful time, because you’ve got to try and make your mind up about what you actually want to do in life. It’s important to think carefully about your decision – you don’t want to be back to square one in six months because you’ve decided you don’t want to be an apprentice anymore. Remember that this this is your life so you’ve got to think carefully about what suits you!

We’ve come up with some pros and cons of choosing an apprenticeship over college. Hopefully this will help you make the right decision.

Read the entire article here. 

In a recent post from Liberty Street Economics, Jaison R. Abel and Richard Deitz show that  ". . . a good number of college graduates earn wages that are not materially different from those of the typical worker with just a high school diploma. This suggests that, at least from an economic perspective, college may not pay off for a significant number of people.  .  .   .   .   This means that the wages for a sizable share of college graduates below the 25th percentile are actually less than the wages earned by a typical worker with a high school diploma. "

Read the entire article here.

The Alaska Department of Education & Early Development has created six posters highlighting technical careers and the CTE APS - a great way to advertise this opportunity to our students! These posters may be printed, posted on websites, used in publications, etc. by Alaska schools and CTE training programs. Download the printer-ready posters in PDF format below.

The Pathways to Prosperity Network is now two years old, with eight state members—California, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, Ohio, and Tennes_see—doing significant work in creating career pathways in grades 9-14. Two more states, Arizona and Delaware, joined the Network in June 2014. This report is a letter to the field about what’s been accomplished to date. As is often the case in such initiatives, the results thus far are due to a combination of good luck, good timing, deep knowledge of implementation, and a simple but urgent message and strategy. The unique stories of the developments in each state are included in this report as well as observation and description of key aspects of this work across the states in the Network as a group.

Download or read the report here.

June 4, 2014

A Dear Colleague Letter on Career Counseling [PDF, 361KB] was jointly released by the U.S. Departments of Education, Labor and Health and Human Services to provide education, workforce development, social services, and private-sector leaders with information about ways that high schools and human services agencies can work with the American Job Center network to ensure that students and their parents have relevant and timely information with which to make informed career decisions. In support of the Administration's goal of leading the world in college completion by 2020, the three Departments are committed to giving students informa­tion about college and career options, and opportunities that can help them make informed choices for their futures.