#5. The business of education (is
education)
“Business can play a critical role in education that goes far beyond
simply advising educators. By extending
the classroom into our places of business, we can become producers, not
just consumers, of the education system.” Noel Ginsburg, CEO
and Chair of CareerWise Colorado[i] [Bold
throughout is mine.]
“People
are waking up to the situation that our education system is not aligned to the outcomes we want for
our kids and our businesses and our communities,” Noel
Ginsburg, 5280 Magazine[ii]
A letter from a former teacher
Dear Business Community: Educators are your allies (pp. 4-5)
|
What outcomes does business want for our kids? Should schools let business determine the
outcomes? What if Colorado educators have already set a rigorous goal for
students: to meet our Academic Standards[iii]?
CareerWise
Colorado is the largest initiative to expand apprenticeships in the state. It has the full-throated support of Gov.
Hickenlooper, is led by gubernatorial candidate Noel Ginsburg, and has the
backing of many business leaders. I believe it is based on a flawed idea—that
training equates to education. As currently structured I do not see how CareerWise
is aligned with our current goals for high school students—to graduate, as the preferred
phrase these days goes, “college and career ready.” How can it be, when it reaches down to 10th
graders (too early) and redesigns their final two years of high school? Juniors will apprentice 16 hours a week,
missing two days of schools. Seniors will
be at the job 20 hours or more and miss up to three days of school.
Hickenlooper and Ginsburg speak of a goal of 20,000 high school
students a year taking part in apprenticeships within a decade.[iv] Unlikely, and as I will argue, un(career)wise.
My guess is that CareerWise can provide a meaningful option … for a few hundred
students each year. I do not see how it
will ensure we provide teenagers the public
education they deserve. While I do
not believe it was not designed to lower our academic expectations for these
student apprentices, I believe that will be the result.
Gov. Hickenlooper speaks of this initiative as his chief legacy for
education (see Addendum A). In his past two State of the State addresses he
has doubled down on “training for jobs” as his top priority (see Addendum B). How unfortunate he has not followed his three
predecessors in tackling issues that pertain to teaching and learning (see Letter
to Business Community). Ginsburg
believes CareerWise can “change education
as we know it in this state.” I hope
not. These are not educators
speaking.
What do I see as the basic flaws?
I will focus on what the Governor
and CareerWise tell us.
1. “CareerWise was envisioned by its founder
and CEO Noel Ginsburg and Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper following a 2015
trip to Switzerland to learn about its youth apprenticeship system. In 2016,
the organization was created as a public-private partnership, and a few short
months later it launched its first cohort of modern youth apprentices.”[v]
Have Hickenlooper
and Ginsburg thought deeply about the impact on the education these high school
students will get? Both have indicated the
program is especially geared for those students not likely to get a 4-year degree (Hickenlooper[vi],
Ginsburg[vii]).
I believe it lowers the academic
expectations for these students—putting them on a career path, which has its
short-term benefits, but one that does not expect them to get a full high
school education. No wonder fewer schools and students jumped on board this
first year than the Governor has claimed.
Reality Check – Our salesman-in-chief exaggerates
Gov. Hickenlooper at the Denver workshop
of the Western Governor’s Workforce Development
Initiative.[viii] Sept.
18, 2017
|
Gov. Hickenlooper’s
State of the State Address,[ix]
Jan. 11, 2018
|
The Governor noted, however, that success
has a flip side. "Part of (the) challenge is that the labor pool is so
tight, businesses are finding it hard to find the talent that they need. So
by necessity, we are reaching out to markets we hadn’t focused on before….
"
The search for
talent also extends to younger people, in part through the new CareerWise
Colorado program. "We're going to have 250 high school students going to work for 80 companies in the coming
year," the Governor said. "But I want to see us get to 20,000
apprenticeships in the near future."
|
“Working closely with
business and education leaders, in a public-private partnership, Colorado is
igniting an apprenticeship renaissance
with Careerwise.
“We’re connecting
companies, talent, K-12 schools, community colleges and training centers. We have youth apprentices in pilot programs at 31* schools in four districts
and we’re partnering with 40
businesses.”
|
Additional
Reality Check – 116* students, not 250
as
reported in The Denver Business Journal,
(NOTE) Aug. 17, 2017
“More than 40 employers offered 116 youth apprenticeships in four industries: advanced
manufacturing, technology, business operations and financial services.”
|
|
*Final
Reality Check – Now, 103 students,
in 24 schools (email to me from
CareerWise, Jan. 15, 2018).
|
|
2.
“The
CareerWise model borrows elements from the Swiss system, which is widely
regarded as the gold standard in apprenticeship, in that it ensures benefit to
both students and businesses as it serves as an intermediary between the
complex systems of education and industry.”[x]
It is great to learn from other states and countries, but
let’s remember, context matters. (More
on this later: DPS and Cherry Creek.) My
foundation experience taught me this—often translated from the world of
medicine as “donor-donee compatibility.” To transplant an organ into a new body
is risky business. Will it prove
receptive—or inhospitable, and reject the new heart, kidney, or liver? A nonprofit adopts an idea that flourished in
one setting, only to find it to be a poor match in a different location.
What if borrowing “elements from the Swiss system” conflicts
with the goals Coloradans have set for our
kids? “Compulsory school in core
subjects” ends in Switzerland after completion of their “10th
grade.”[xi]
This is not our system. We still expect students to meet the Colorado
Academic Standards, yes? And yet we know
a terribly high percentage of our students cannot do that in twelve years. Who expects
20,000 students to meet these expectations when they miss school almost half of
junior and senior year?
3. “CareerWise apprenticeships require a
student be out of the classroom for two
or three full days each week,* so working with districts on scheduling
flexibility and graduation requirements is crucial. They also require
collaboration regarding programs of study and coursework. Again, the task
shouldn't be put solely on teachers, counselors, and administrators – and with
CareerWise, it isn't. Our team works closely with districts to ensure a smooth
process for students, businesses as well as educators and administrators.”[xii]
(*Last week CareerWise spoke of a change: seniors next year might work only 20
hours—not 24.)
“Flexibility,” “collaboration,” working together “to ensure
a smooth process…”– it all sounds nice. CareerWise
tells me Denver Public Schools has been especially accommodating in making the
weekly schedule work for the 41 Denver juniors
involved this year. But what if business
is asking too much? How flexible can schools
be? Next year, can they tell seniors: you have to meet our graduation
requirements, even if you miss school two or three days a week—at work? These 17-year-olds might receive some valuable
training on the job, but these are students, first, not workers. It is our task as educators to graduate them “college
and career ready.” How can we do this in half the time?
“CareerWise Colorado is a public-private partnership to
change education as we know it in this state and provide more opportunity and choice for
our students, so everyone has an opportunity to earn a real living wage.”
CareerWise Colorado CEO and Chair, Noel Ginsburg. (“Noel Ginsburg on His Run for
Governor and Why Colorado Needs a Moderate,”
Westword[xiv])
“CareerWise embodies the idea that businesses should lead the effort to ensure
our education system prepares students for the competitive, global 21st
century economy.”[xv]
I was taught that when a
nonprofit presents itself as “the first of anything in the United States,”
beware. Proponents come across as presumptuous
and willfully ignorant. CareerWise is
learning from other programs, yes? (See Youth
Apprenticeship in America Today: Connecting High School Students to
Apprenticeship.[xvi])
It is condescending to tell educators we should adopt a new
mission: serve business, focus on career preparation, and replace education with training for the workplace. Is
it now our purpose to see students “earn a real living wage”? Is this why we teach?
5.
“CareerWise
is an initiative created by leading Colorado industry associations. These
industry leaders understand that schools are not experts in addressing the needs of businesses. By partnering
with these organizations and focusing on
experiential learning, we believe we can meet these needs and provide added
benefit to all students.”[xvii]
True, principals
and teachers are not experts “in addressing the needs of businesses.” In fact, it never crosses our mind. Why?
Because this is not our
purpose. This is not what drives us.
Educators want to make a huge difference in the lives of our students,
if we can. At the very least, at a minimum, we hope to do our job: to educate. And to be successful at this, we need time.
TIME
·
We appreciate why high schools ask the state to
respect their efforts to graduate students, even when it takes five or six
years. (See letter from Commissioner
Katy Anthes.[xviii]) Note too: “Denver students taking longer to
graduate….,” Chalkbeat Colorado: “… 10.1 percent, or almost 6,500 students, are still
enrolled in high school and could still graduate after five, six or seven years.”[xix]
I enjoyed my time in an Aurora
high school classroom last week – with 19-year-olds still learning
English. It is good we can extend public
education until these students turn 21.
More time, not less, is critical for so many.
·
We recognize how many charter and innovations
schools have added time to the school
day and/or school year in order to better meet the needs of their students.
·
We know that Colorado has one of the shortest
school years in the country.[xx]
It is even more distressing to be reminded, as one headline put it, “Half of
Colorado School Districts Have 4-Day Weeks”[xxi] And now, it’s not just for rural school districts
anymore: Brighton too?[xxii]
(Talk about being a national model—perhaps
we will be the first state to make four-days a week the norm! And for junior
and seniors – heck, they only need to show up roughly half the time….)
More time in school
is proving critical for student success.
CareerWise takes the opposite approach.
Context matters: CareerWise at two Denver high schools – Graduating
“college and career ready”?
This first
year CareerWise Colorado has student apprentices in 24 high schools, including
three Denver schools sending 10 or more students. Abraham
Lincoln and High Tech Early College are
two of the schools. Consider (below) their low attendance rate, high truancy
rate, and recent ACT/SAT scores—well below College Readiness Benchmarks. The
state’s most recent report on their graduates
who enroll in college show most require
remedial classes (2015-Abraham Lincoln-65.6%
- yes, 59 out of 90); High Tech-60%[xxiii]). So of course I doubt that most juniors from these schools will be able
to take, as CareerWise literature asserts, “college-level coursework aligned
with your career pathway” and earn “approximately 6 debt-free college credits.”
(I would love to see the high school transcripts of these 21 students after they
graduate in 2019.)
Attendance Rate
2016-17
|
Truancy Rate
2016-17
|
ACT 2016
English
|
ACT 2016
Math
|
SAT 2017
R&W
|
SAT 2017
Math
|
|
College
Readiness Benchmark Score
|
18
|
22
|
460
(11th gr.
|
510
(11th gr.)
|
||
State
Average
|
92.9%
|
2.7%
|
19.6
|
20.0
|
513
|
501
|
Abraham
Lincoln
|
84.9%
|
11.64%
|
14.9
|
17
|
432
|
429
|
High
Tech Early College
|
83.63%
|
12.95%
|
14.6
|
16.8
|
451
|
444
|
More details, sources, Addendum C.
Again, context matters. Addendum C
compares these two schools with five Cherry Creek schools—sending an equal
number of students into apprenticeships this year. We all want Denver students to have all the
opportunities in the world, but first they need a sound public school education,
leading to a high school diploma that reflects a certain degree of
learning. As I have written, I doubt
this is the case now: “High school graduation rates aren’t necessarily a reason
to celebrate,” The Denver Post, July
2015.[xxiv] I fear CareerWise will be one more way to
award diplomas that mean little in terms of academic skills and knowledge.
CareerWise Colorado staff met and
talked with me about these matters, but I cannot see how it all lines up. For example, how can a CareerWise student (in
DPS, for example) earn 230 credits? I am told “schools are giving elective credit for
the time spent at work.” Meeting what academic standard, I wonder. At schools like Lincoln and High Tech,
students need more time for teaching and
learning, more interventions, more support.
Sure, that disengaged sophomore might love to be out of the building
DOING something “real” his last two years of high school. But schools cannot—or should not—surrender
our responsibility; these 15-16 year-old kids have one final crack at a free
public education. Training for job
skills can come later. We have a huge challenge as it is: to help our students
graduate “college and career ready.” First things first.
**
A letter from a former teacher
Dear Business Community: Please know, we are your allies
“… at its best,
schooling can be about how to make a life, which is quite different from how
to make a living.” Neil Postman, The End of Education
|
From Jim Collins, author of Built to Last, Good to Great and How the
Mighty Fall
“Aligning Action and Values”[xxv]
“Studying and working closely with some of the
world’s most visionary organizations has made it clear that they concentrate
primarily on the process of alignment…
there is a big difference between being
an organization with a vision statement and becoming a truly visionary
organization. The difference lies in creating alignment—alignment to preserve
an organization’s core values, to reinforce its purpose, and to stimulate
continued progress towards its aspirations.”
Educators have
much to learn from business, especially from those who stress the need for a clear
purpose and a strong commitment to a mission.
As Jim Collins argues, above, alignment is key. K-12 education is jeered for having an
amorphous mission—“You name it, we start
it,” or “We just say yes”—and it rings
true. We know we must work harder to
establish clear goals and stay aligned
with our core values and chief purpose. Your recent initiative, however, only exacerbates
our struggle to avoid further “mission creep.”
Business men and women—many of you might not realize how public
education in America has spent much of the past 25 years working to clarify our
goals around a set of strong academic standards. I offer here a brief history: how Colorado’s
three previous governors kept us “aligned” and on the same path.
·
It began in 1993, House Bill-1313 – the
standards bill. No one made a stronger
case for this new direction than our governor.
Thank you Roy Romer.
·
It continued in 2000, Senate Bill-186, an
accountability bill calling for school report cards. Thank
you Gov. Owens. During his time in
office House Bill-1433 was passed, leading to the creation of Colorado’s growth
model in 2008—HB-1048 (showing student progress toward the state standards), signed
that year by Gov. Ritter. Romer to Owens
to Ritter. Consistency. Thank you.
·
In 2008 Colorado stayed the course with Senate
Bill 212, Colorado’s Achievement Plan for Kids (CAP4K). It called “for the
development of rigorous standards delineating what students need to know and be
able to do at the end of each grade to be college and career ready.”[xxvi] In 2009, Senate Bill 163 provided more
clarity connecting accountability with the state’s standards. Thank
you Gov. Ritter.
Assessments and
accountability, even when poorly designed or badly executed, looked first to
the standards as their guide. This has
led to many controversies over these many years, and yet through it all major
business organizations have backed this work: to establish high expectations
and to restructure education in ways to help more and more students demonstrate
they can reach these standards. And we
are grateful.
Sadly, Gov. Hickenlooper seems oblivious to this. (Again,
Addendum B.) This history, this context, is why K-12 educators
will push back on CareerWise and similar efforts. It is not about being anti-business.
It is about trying to stay true to our mission. If we believe alignment is key, we must keep
our focus: to help our students learn what is essential—before they graduate. That is our job.
Are we pleased with our progress? No.
Do we understand why the business community is frustrated that our focus
the past 20 years—standards and accountability, etc.—has not led to significant
improvement? Yes. Shouldn’t we redesign high
schools to make the final two years more engaging and meaningful? Again, yes.
And when we read: “The founders and team at CareerWise recognize that
high school graduates are ill-equipped to enter the workforce,” would we agree?
Absolutely. To get them there—I would like to assure
business leaders—we are your allies.
The “knowledge economy” of tomorrow—that
is your phrase, yes? We read that, in hiring, you look for “good
communication skills”[xxvii]
(this old English teacher is cheering!) and the ability to adapt, to continue
to learn, to work well with others. The
Dean of the Business School at Villanova writes: “Employers want graduates who can think
critically, analyze data and challenge the status quo.”[xxviii] These are our goals too! We believe by doing all we can
to help all students meet the
standards we give them the foundation to be contributing members of American
society: as individuals fulfilling their potential, as good citizens, and as members of the workforce.
That last phrase,
“as members of the workforce,” matters.
But it is not the purpose of K-12
education. Our “end”—or goal—is
broader. We are reaching higher than that.
This is why we say: Sure, let’s find ways to help our students see
what’s ahead, connect to the workplace, and serve internships, etc.—but do not tell
us you want to take students out of school much of junior and senior year to
train them in your business. We need
every day possible—maybe more than
four years—to provide the interventions and support to ensure our students
learn the fundamentals, before it is too late.
It is what they, and their families, deserve.
I have written this series of newsletters to
challenge efforts to pull public education off course, to make us carry out a
new and fundamentally different mission of career preparation and job
training.
Business leaders, we value your partnership –
when and where it is aligned with our mission.
Our mission, the business of
education, is education.
***
Addendum A
CareerWise Colorado – Part of Hickenlooper’s
legacy on education?
Chalkbeat’s Capitol Report – “What makes a legacy?”[xxix]
(by Erica Meltzer, Jan. 15, 2018)
Hanging over
the session is the question of whether anything grand will come out of it that
might cement Gov. John Hickenlooper’s legacy [Bold mine].
In an interview last fall with Joey Bunch from Colorado Politics, Hickenlooper cited two initiatives that he considers his greatest accomplishments: the launch of an interactive, personalized trails map that should help people get outside and enjoy our state more and the CareerWise apprenticeship program that gives high school students access to work experience, college credit, and income. Hickenlooper devoted considerable attention to the apprenticeship program in his State of the State address, and it’s growing in its second year — though it still has a ways to go to reach its full potential.
“Hickenlooper in the homestretch: Colorado governor
ponders his legacy, not his future”
(Colorado
Politics, by Joey Bunch, Oct.
17, 2017)[xxx]
His biggest
idea is apprenticeships to help secure good-paying jobs for those young people who don’t get a college degree. Hick said
most young people still don’t get a college degree. “Yet we’ve told all these
kids that unless you go to college you’re a failure, essentially,” he said.
A junior in
high school who enrolls in the program could go to work in banking, insurance,
cyber security or advanced manufacturing, as examples. Three days a week they
could work and two days a week take classes at a community college related to
that work.
Along with a
high school diploma, they would have a year of transferable college credit,
along with a taste of income and responsibility from their job, Hickenlooper
said.
“I think
this is one of the most important things I’ve ever worked on and an amazingly
powerful solution,” Hickenlooper said.
Colorado is
the first state to work on a database, called Skillful, to inventory the
experience and training someone has and show them the skills they need for the
job they want, plus where they might go to get those skills.
The idea is
so good the New York-based Markle Foundation, Microsoft and LinkedIn have put
$25 million behind its development.
But the
clock is ticking.
“I’ve got
469 days to prove we have a model that’s worthy of being a national model,”
Hickenlooper said.
Addendum B
The Hickenlooper
Administration: From liberal arts to
training
THAT
WAS THEN: 2014 - 2015
Defending
the liberal arts
AV #115 - “Sorry,
Governor(s), but the purpose of education is not ... a job” (July 4, 2014)
“I
came to Colorado to study rocks … and ended up selling beer.”
On how he made the transition:
“…
I was lucky that I had had a great education, some great teachers, a good
liberal arts education at Wesleyan University, so I had learned how to learn.…”
- Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper[xxxi]
AV #130–“The basis of a well-rounded
liberal arts education for K-12: Colorado’s Academic Standards,”
(May 15, 2015) [Bold mine]
Lt. Gov. Joe Garcia spoke at the Microsoft YouthSpark Connections Breakfast last month. The session could have focused exclusively on
STEM, but he—and other speakers—reminded us of the big picture: “We don’t need
just scientists and engineers,” he said, we need them with “a good liberal arts education. What makes innovative students? The arts. The
ability to communicate.” And when
Suma Nallapati, Colorado’s Secretary of Technology and the State
Chief Information Officer, was asked what advice she would give high school
students who wish to be ready for the job market, answered: “Focus on the liberal arts. We don’t need to separate them from
STEM.”
THIS
IS NOW: 2017 - 2018
Gov.
Hickenlooper doubles down on one theme: training
for the workplace
Gov.
John Hickenlooper’s State of the State Address – Jan. 12, 2017[xxxii]
Realizing
their potential?
And quality of
life starts with a good job.
From high school
students wanting to work as apprentices--to the many Coloradans who want a new
career--either from passion or necessity--these jobs should be available for
everyone.
If we do this
right, there should be an opportunity for thousands of Coloradans to acquire skills either in classrooms or on the
job that are career-focused and transferrable to different industries in the
future. …
Today,
we are a national model for matching
education with skills based training.
Sean
Wybrant is Colorado’s Teacher of the Year. He has been teaching for 11 years at
Palmer High in Colorado Springs, as he said, to “change the world.” And he’s
changing it by focusing on the one-third of our kids who won’t go on to four
year or two year colleges. He’s
preparing the next generation for the career and technical jobs of tomorrow.
Tim
Kistler is the Superintendent of the Peyton School District in El Paso County,
where he helped open the Woods Manufacturing Program in an empty middle school. It teaches students cutting edge skills
needed in the woodworking industry.
We
thank both Sean and Tim for helping to
close the skills gap, and for making
sure all students realize their potential.
Closing the gap means giving students a
solid foundation for success at every step of their education, as they move
from preschool through K-12, toward college, certificate, or apprenticeship and
onto a good job.
Gov.
John Hickenlooper’s State of the State Address – Jan. 11, 2018[xxxiii]
Workforce, training, skills – “We don’t need no education”
In his State of the State on January 11, Gov. Hickenlooper moved directly from the issue of money
for schools back to his favorite – I won’t call it education – theme, because
he is not talking about education. I will call it his workforce, training,
skills theme.
… to create the kind of workforce that will keep our state at the forefront of the new
economy, we need to go beyond the funding issue – we need to rethink
and retool our approach. We need to transition from a degree-based
education system to one that also includes skill-based training.
Experts tell us over 60 percent of our kids in school today will
not get a 4-year degree. Careers and professions by the dozens will be
swept away in the coming decades. But new industries will emerge at an equally
frantic rate. We will need not just engineers but huge numbers of
technicians and analysts with new sets of skills. We
need to get more kids learning skills that
matter….
We need flexible solutions that can adapt to what employers need
tomorrow, not just what they need today. This means training and apprenticeships.
Working closely with business and education leaders, in a
public-private partnership, Colorado is igniting an apprenticeship renaissance with Careerwise.
We’re connecting
companies, talent, K-12 schools, community colleges and training centers. We have youth apprentices in pilot programs at 31 schools in four districts
and we’re partnering with 40 businesses.
This isn’t your grandparents’ version of apprenticeship. This is on-the-job, skills-training in
industries, like business operations, health care, and advanced
manufacturing.
Within a decade we want to see twenty-thousand students per year
receiving college credit, developing skills,
and learning how business works. Apprenticeships
are designed to grow hand in glove with Skillful, a digital platform, developed
with LinkedIn and the Markle Foundation, that will help connect job
seekers and employers in this new economy….
Projections of all
kinds suggest we will fall well short in trained
workers…in every industry in the next decade. We need all hands on deck. We need to expand our training programs and tailor them
for people with disabilities and the incarcerated soon to be released.
There’s a lot to do, but Colorado has become an early model for
the country. I presented our apprenticeship
and Skillful programs to dozens of executives from some of the nation’s
largest foundations, who are putting their considerable weight behind solving
challenges of the 21st century, and building a skills-based workforce.
Addendum
C
2 DPS high schools, 5 Cherry schools – all part of CareerWise
Colorado in 2017-18
There are 21 juniors from in the program this
year from Denver’s Abraham Lincoln and High Tech, and 21 juniors from five Cherry Creek schools. It is possible, of course, the 21 Denver
students performed well above their school average on college tests. But note the huge gap in the scores on
college admission tests, and–after
graduation from high school--the percentage of students requiring remedial
classes in college. The contrast is
telling enough to invite the question: will most of these Lincoln and High Tech
students graduate “college and career ready,” when they will miss nearly half
of their academic program junior and senior year in fulfilling their commitment
as student apprentices?
I trust we
still believe that time in school, in class, learning academic subjects, matters.
5 Cherry Creek high schools with 21 student
apprentices in CareerWise in 2017-18
|
|||||||
Cherokee
Trail High School
|
91.2%
|
2.04%
|
22.6
|
21.7
|
542
|
528
|
42%
|
Cherry
Creek High School
|
93.5%
|
2.5%
|
25.6
|
25.5
|
598
|
607
|
17.4%
|
Eaglecrest
High School
|
92.6%
|
1.5%
|
21.1
|
20.9
|
528
|
506
|
36.4%
|
Grandview
High School
|
92.0%
|
3.1%
|
22.8
|
22.5
|
566
|
557
|
25.2%
|
Overland
High School
|
87.6%
|
6.4%
|
19
|
19.5
|
483
|
477
|
49.8%
|
Remedial rate - https://highered.colorado.gov/Publications/Reports/Remedial/FY2016/2016_Remedial_relMay2017.pdf
*ACT tells me those benchmarks of 18 (English) and 22 (Math) apply for both juniors and seniors.
SAT offers a breakdown for the
benchmarks by grade – see below. I use
the 460 (Reading and Writing) and 510 (Math) as they are benchmarks set
for 11th grade, and the 2017 scores above are from last year’s junior
class (now seniors).
See https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/educator-benchmark-brief.pdf: “The
Values of the College and Career Readiness Benchmarks—Across the SAT Suite
of Assessments, the benchmark scores are as follows:”
Assessment – Grade Level
|
Evidence-Based Reading and Writing
Benchmark
|
Math Benchmark
|
SAT
|
480
|
530
|
11th grade
|
460
|
510
|
10th grade
|
430
|
480
|
ENDNOTES
[vi]
AV#171 - Gov.
John Hickenlooper (on CBS, Face the
Nation): “Two-thirds of our kids
are never going to have a four-year college degree, and we really haven’t been able
to prepare them to involve them in the economy where the new generation
of jobs require some technical capability. We need to look at apprenticeships.
We need to look at all kinds of internships.”[vi]
(August 7, 2017)
[vii]AV#171 – “(Ginsburg) echoes the college-but line, telling The Grant
Junction Sentinel: “What do we tell everyone to be successful in
this country? You need a college degree.
But only a third do. So we’re basically saying to the rest of the
country that you’re something less. (College) needs to be a choice that’s
attainable, but it’s not the only path.”
ALSO, from the PBS News Hour last
August, “Colorado apprenticeship
program turns the factory floor into a classroom,” where both men made this
point about which students would be well served by apprenticeship programs:
·
GOV. JOHN
HICKENLOOPER: For more than 30 years, we took on this challenge that we were going
to make sure every kid went to college, and this was the only solution. But we
have barely nudged the needle in terms of how many kids actually go to college
and graduate. And in that sense, I think it’s been a failure.
·
NOEL GINSBURG: I was part of
that mantra, saying everybody should go to college. The reality of it is,
that’s never going to happen. In this country, what the percentages?
Twenty-eight percent, at best, will get a four-year degree in this country.
So, we’re essentially telling everybody else
that they can’t be successful in our economy and in our country. And it’s
simply not true. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/colorado-apprenticeship-program-turns-factory-floor-classroom#transcript
[xi]
Ginsburg explaining the Swiss model at the Governor’s Business Experiential
Learning Commission, https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/sites/default/files/BELCommissionMeetingNotes-11-4-15.pdf.
[xviii]https://www.denverpost.com/2017/06/09/a-more-complete-picture-of-colorados-high-school-graduation-rates/
“Colorado is committed to
keeping students in school if they fall short of graduation requirements or are
in a program to earn college credit. As a result, the state’s five- and
six-year graduation rates provide a more accurate picture of high school
completion.”
“The Colorado School
Finance Project reports that 80 of Colorado's 178 districts, or 45
percent, have all their schools on four-day weeks. Nine more
districts have some schools on four-day weeks, meaning half of all the
districts in the state have at least some students on this schedule.”
[xxiv] https://www.denverpost.com/2015/07/02/huidekoper-high-school-graduation-rates-arent-necessarily-a-reason-to-celebrate/ Doubts are
raised in national articles as well -see “Are the Gains Real?” in https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/12/07/whats-behind-the-record-rises-in-us.html
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