Developing Certifications for Work Readiness
Many youth, even those at the top of the achievement scale, report that their schoolwork is boring and that they are disconnected from the curriculum. In many cities nearly 50% of students are evaluating the curriculum by leaving school. We need to expand the options that disconnected and out of school youth have for obtaining both a high school diploma and certificates that demonstrate their skills and understanding with respect to a set of essential competencies. We need to provide them with opportunities for obtaining high-paid work even as they continue with their learning. These new forms of certificates require new forms of authentic performance assessments that certify that learners are competent to do the work required and ready to continue learning to do new work requirements.
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We wish to develop innovative approaches to designing and using new forms of certificates beginning in high schools and continuing into postsecondary learning and work. At a time when we need much broader and insightful assessments of student competence, testing and assessment have dangerously narrowed the definition of success on at best a limited set of skills and at worst knowledge that is both narrow and at times false. We are particularly interested in credentialing and certifying learning in ways that supplement, and in some cases supplant, the traditional high school diploma and the Carnegie Unit system.
We have begun to work with selected companies in selected industries in order to identify potential areas for certificates. We have developed sample pathways in selected industries in which we intend to do this work. We are currently developing work agreements in the design, advertising, and aviation industries. We are also working with national programs such as Ford PAS and The Henry Ford Learning Institute and local programs such as the Steel Yard in Providence.
We have developed relationships with MetLife, Gilbane, Ecko Limited, J. Walter Thompson, Build-a-Plane, and other businesses. In these prototypes, we have developed comprehensive high school programs that are wrapped around the certificate work for each individual student. In doing this work, we have begun to engage businesses in new, more organic and sustaining relationships. We have created a process for constructing what we are calling within the Big Picture School design a Focused LTI (Learning through Interests), which could be adapted for use in a variety of traditional school, alternative school, and non-school settings.
Such systems of certificates based on authentic performance demonstrations can flourish within alternative schools as well as within alternatives to traditional schools and schooling. These certificates will enable students to pursue multiple career pathways and options within those pathways that lead to multiple career and life options. Moreover, such a credentialing system will provide young people with lots of options and with the agility and nimbleness to learn new work as the economy changes.
Goals and Objectives
Big Picture Learning has three goals for this proposed work:
- Develop and prototype an innovative approach to creating paid and unpaid internships and developing certifications that enhance student learning and lead to employment while students are in high school as well as after they graduate and pursue postsecondary education.
- Create more diverse and robust pathways and options beginning in high school and continuing into postsecondary learning and work. These pathways must lead to a variety of learning, work, and career pathways.
- Develop new mechanisms providing financial support to these youth as they pursue postsecondary learning pathways and options.
To achieve these goals, we will address these objectives:
- Create a minimum of six new mini-certificates in four industries—design, advertising, aviation, and environmental services. Identify for each of these new certificates the specific skill sets to be mastered.
- Prototype these certificates in selected Big Picture schools (N = 60) throughout the country.
- Forge new systematic relationships with employers and with community colleges in order that students can pursue high-wage work and postsecondary learning simultaneously.
- Provide the wrap-around support services (e.g., personalization, family, community) that help young people to find out who they are and develop themselves as people.
- Evaluate and for fine the process and certificates in order to replicate the program in all Big Picture schools as well as in diverse alternative schools (N = 240) served by the Alternative High School Initiative (AHSI).
Major Tasks
We have conducted a preliminary review and analysis of extant certification programs employed in career and technical education programs in the secondary school system. We have also examined similar programs operating in postsecondary learning settings. We need to finalize this analysis and then identify sites for prototyping specific certificates in specific industries where we can work with specific businesses. We have done some preliminary work in this area, but have not yet done a thorough evaluation of that work in collaboration with our schools. We are just beginning that work now, but its full implementation has been delayed because of limited resources.
We propose to work with a small number of major national corporations and local businesses, catalogue the scores of different paid internship possibilities that exist within those corporations, design a comprehensive internship system, and actually manage the system for the corporation with a turnkey option. We will also build in an evaluation of the system from both the school and business perspectives.
Resources Required
BPL has already committed its own resources to this work, but needs additional resources to support work with specific businesses in developing certifications and appropriate assessments and in prototyping these program components in selected Big Picture and other school environments. This work will require approximately $.665 million over three years. A portion of the needed funding will be used to procure the technical assistance of Eva Baker at CRESST and William Sedlacek, retired University of Maryland professor.