Team 4  Program of Study

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We need a whole day with a whole bunch more people. There were so many factors and variables that we don’t understand yet, that we couldn’t get any farther than this. We need to look at the programs of study for all the different schools.

We started with the sequence that address the career field. This gives the school that chance to say they want to create their programs around career pathways. Using the NCE model or looking at specialties, shows how we align with the programs. That wasn’t so difficult. What we’re still wresting with is what it’s going to look like.

We looked at language. Whatever program a school has for study, they need to have at least two 9-12 career focus courses. Right now, the language is three. We need to give districts the option to have a maximum of four. If they can’t get to them, then thye also need to look at having supporting academic courses, such as those which have a direct tie to that particular course of study. If someone puts together a manufacturing, you could include trigonometry because that ties together. Schools could also look at going out to the post-secondary level. Students could take courses at the local community college.

The value added experiences could also contribute and be a part of these programs. We don’t know exactly how that would look.

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Team 3 Academic and Technical Rigor

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All content has to be taught with rigor and relevance. We redid the ABCD chart, which usually shows each quadrant as equal. We redid it to show where the rigor and relevance has a larger slice.

Carl Perkins needs to embrace contextual learning that support 21st century skills. We identified critical think as part of that. The action that needs to make that happen is advisory council include reps from all subject matter areas. We would all then have a common language. We need to start making these connections for the kids. We also need to include post-secondary people on these councils and have our administrators use the in-service time instead of expecting it take place on their own.

Through these councils we would require interdisciplinary activity. We need to align curriculum that leads to certification. We need to use some kind of assessment, like CALS or TAB. Work keys could be used there too. Students need to identify earlier enough so that we could offer interventions where needed.

Student certification in industry, such as SkillsUSA or pharmacy aide, as well as safety certifications would possibly have some legal issues, but we need to look further into that. We would want cluster councils. There are various certifying agencies, but we’d like to have a state-wide council so we don’t have to go through all the different ones. We’d like the council to develop virtual walk-throughs to businesses so that they could see operations live, not just a video tape. We could also have the students make the virtual walk-throughs or maybe do something with SecondLife as avatars.

We have the students do presentations so that we identify what kinds of skills the students gain by doing these things. Right now we don’t do that very well. We went through an example of how a home schooled student could get his degree by choosing what he wants to do. We also looked at organizations, such as 4H, Boys Scouts, Girl Scouts and asked whether or not they can get the information they needs through these organizations.

Questions:

Q: Would the state wide council that you’re referring to be FutureForce?
A: Sure. It could be, but we didn’t know if they’re up for it yet.

Q: About highlighting awareness of skills during presentations, would you have them make these to businesses?
A:  Yes. We also talked about senior exit programs and that came up in our conversations as well.

Q: We should challenge ourselves to have our advisory councils to be part of our schools and not as a separate body.
A: That’s a good idea.

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Team 6 - Professional Development

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This is our model of what we want professional development to look like. We were all over the place with this. We started looking at outcomes and focused on 21st Century skills. We need partners actively working together, many of who were here yesterday, but also a broader view. Teachers will start facilitating more experiential types of learning. We also talked about teachers having plans like the students’ personal learning plans.

We want all of us to have a common mission and everybody have buy-in. We think the components of the NCE model is very important. We need to understand why we’re connected to each other.

We need to build a case, use the InnovationLabs model to develop curriculum and a methodology to teach through experiential learning. We would restructure the CTE conference for all teachers. We want to have train the trainer cadres.

We also talked about accountability. Teachers need to be held accountable for making the changes. In taking these conversations, we created a plan. One of the first things is to create that buy-in and we could do this through an InnovationLabs modality. We can use the people in this room to do that. Many of us has been through this process enough that we can do this ourselves.

We want to utilize current business trainings and even though we’re not at the table now, maybe we could be part of this with them.

We thought having a training account so that teachers can tap into and have conversations with their administrators before and after to talk about what they’re doing would be a good idea.

Questions
Q: Did you talk about having Perkins professional development for access to funds? I was thinking of having it as a statewide focus.
A: No. But that sounds like a great idea.

Q: We’ve done some great stuff here. How do we get all of this out to each school?
A: Great question.
A: We’re already doing it. If you’re not participating in professional development, you don’t get access to funds. The incentive is that we build into it the $750 for their classroom.

I wonder if at the NCE conference is that is how this will look. I don’t know.

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Team 7- Innovations

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Our job was to think outside the box. It’s not written. There is no one prototype of what we’re oding. We started with the assumption of what we’re doing.

Sometimes being out here is not very secure. Sometimes we have to create a certain level of competence and confidence before we can break open the wall and enter the arena.

We looked at the s-curve and jumping off. The pool right now is pretty empty. We need to create a prototype, not just one. We need personal learning plans because each kid is different. So we need to do that with our prototypes as well. We need to build it around the strengths of the adults in our system. We need to blur the lines between business, industry, and education. We need to understand the process of facilitation but not necessarily the content.

We need to create the ability to build buy-in. We may not know what business and industry want today, but we can find out. We need to build flexible learning systems that are responsive to the kinds of needs of our kids and our community. We need a different funding system and not based on butts in seats. We need to blur the lines between consumers and producers.

We need to experiment with joint determination. I need to take ideas from you and the students and the parents so that I can get a higher level of buy-in. We need to facilitate learning. We came in here as learners and produced things. These should be requirements in our school system. Everyone can benefit from this.

We need systems that work together over distance. We need to not be afraid to go outside our system to make this work and grow. We need to create prototypes that will give us the confidence to go outside our current system.

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Team 1 – Secondary & Post-secondary Articulation

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Instead of thinking about articulation, which most of our constituents do not know what that means, we focused on integration.

We started with the problems. We realized that we have no common language across the state. We have different names for the same things. Not everybody buys in. How are we going to move beyond this?

We had a struggle because what we’re proposing has been done in other states, so how innovative is that? But we figured it still was because it hasn’t been done here.

We have advanced placement and thought about concurrent enrollment for students. What if they were to earn credits for high school and for college? Does it matter if it’s academic or extracurricular? Why should they have to pay for it? Shouldn’t they be recognized for achieving those skills?

We talked about paired instruction with the secondary and post-secondary teachers team teaching. We want to save students time and money and give them equal opportunities.

We created a model here that shows the core courses and the grey areas. Students could take the same curriculum but by the time they finish high school, they could also complete an associate degree or an industry certification. They could move to university or other post-secondary institution by grade 11 and continue their education forward.

Our greatest challenge is money. Who gets the money for the seat time? For the dual credit? For state aid?  If we could eliminate dollars in the scenario we could have a much easier time. Right now, the various factors are not equal.

Some of our policy barriers is our assumptions. We need to have data. We need to come to consensus between the education board and the state.

How are we going to get it done? We need to have consequences and incentives. We need a legislative mandate so that we people play fully, fairly, and finally. We need professional development and student involvement. We need to get the word out, do marketing, so that parents and students buy in to this. Also, we need to measure on competency instead of on attendance.

Comments:

Comment: This was piloted in Colorado and the resentment came from parents. There were all kinds of issues. Many kids did the hours but didn’t get the degree. There were some successes in this but not total.

Comment: We also run into issues because we have both a community college as well as a 4-year university. Some kids are ready for the experience of moving to college early and then others do not. We haven’t talked about how this affects the extracurricular activities.

I’ve had several calls a month from students who don’t want to be in high school any more. There are those students who don’t need to be there any more.

If you’re a high school doesn’t offer vocational studies you can only go to the community college.

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Team  5 - Target funding and innovation

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We looked at what Perkins funds now, such as equipment, career exploration. For post-secondary it also funds salaries. If we started over with a blank slate by thinking innovatively, this is our plan.

We felt there was a big emphasis on leadership. It oculd be FutureForce to oversee funding and innovations in every career field. This is a huge task to coordinate so we felt there needed to be a separate board. We would need to develop criteria for the distribution of funding.

We stated that if we’re going to cut funding in one area, we need to identify alternative sources. We also need to communicate best practices. 

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Team 2  - Accountability

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What can I say? Accountability is a very important topic. We came up with no substantive answers. Probably the most significant piece, is a way to reduce the burden though a statewide consortia. Each region would contribute a portion of their funds to this overarching group. We would then deal with things that affect each of them. We would try to provide and coordinate the common things that all the regions need.

We would also try to coordinate between the STARS and IPEDS to create a common data piece. We also want to have consistent assessments. We also talked about using work keys.

We really have more questions than answers. There are unclear regulations on accountability. Part of our frustration and struggle is related to how much time and effort do we spend on a system that we don’t know what they’re doing. We’re looking to have a great accountability summit at some point.

We also looked at using satisfaction surveys. Several people asked if there are other or better measures that we want to add. We don’t really want to add additional burdens but a lot of the questions here do come up. Where out of our core indicators do we measure the things that come up? If we can benchmark and measure what we do, we’ll be more successful.

Comments:

Comment: The whole accountability system we have right now, states that it’s whoever is closest to home can determine whether or not you’re successful. It seems that we could expand that and have more flexibility. I don’t know if we need to all look alike even though I know that will make it more difficult on a central body, but I think we need that flexibility.

One of the things we’re struggling with is the technical skills assessment, which should really be the bread and butter. In an effort to try to create consistency of aligning industry standards, that makes the most sense to use. But everyone will be at different levels. How do we orient ourselves to that?

Comment: If we’re going to say that all teachers are career educators, then it would simplify things if we could have all students be on a career track. For at least part of what we’re talking about. Then you don’t have to recreate data.

Q: Are there academics in this room with the idea that technical skills is important and should be combined with the rest of the academic skills?
A: I think we only have one of them left. I’m totally comfortable with it and that’s why I’m here.

Q: If the money that we get must have immediate results in theory, don’t we have to take into account that the results in practice, that won’t that show up next year in what our students are doing?
A: Yes. Right now we have about 6 years of data. That is, if it’s been entered correctly. Right now we start over at zero. So, we’ll have to see. Each year, we evaluate the data.

By the way, this means federally agreed upon performance levels. We have to FAPL our world.

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