Alliance Insights

Inspiration for an Innovative Workforce

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Why the words ‘jobs that actually exist’ are so important

“Jobs that actually exist.”

There’s something profoundly important about those four words, which serve as the operative phrase in the mission statement of a foundation that actor and activist Mike Rowe established to help young Americans fill the “skills gap.”

Vitally, Rowe has never said that a four-year degree is a bad path. He’s simply noted, time and again, that it’s not the only path, and that may people who pursue a four-year degree find themselves with significant student debt and few prospects for work.

No matter the path, though, this much is clear: There is nothing wrong with education for the sake of education, but for education to actually create opportunity, it must be aligned to opportunities.  

Rowe may be one of the highest profile advocates for a realignment of American values that encourages people to pursue educational opportunities for jobs that actually exist, but he is by no means alone. In the wake of the passage and early implementation of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, especially, one thing has become crystal clear: As a nation, we must invest wisely, placing our collective bet on training and education that leads to jobs.

And there are jobs. Lots of them. Three million or more, at any given time, that will pay a good wage to Americans who have a high school diploma, some fundamental workforce and technical skills, the desire to continue to learn, and the capacity to work hard.

A high school education that prepares students to attend college is a very good thing. A high school education that only prepares students to attend college is not. It’s time we look at all of the workforce opportunities that exist, and align our education, training and social encouragement accordingly.

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Three vital practice recommendations for serving at-risk students

The report of proceedings from the 5th annual Alternative Accountability Policy Forum has been published, and the recommendations derived from 26 sessions from teachers, administrators, researchers and educational policy experts are eye-opening.

The report is available to anyone who cares about improving practices and accountability for organizations working with at-risk youth and includes 10 key recommendations for federal and state policy-makers and local education-providers.

The next forum is scheduled for Nov. 15 to 17 in San Diego. Meanwhile, here are three vital findings from last year’s forum that apply to schools, districts and communities seeking to improve the opportunities for over-age and under-credited students:

Invest in information

States that have built data systems to track at-risk students have a head start — but any school, district or community can do more to serve these students simply by launching and maintaining more comprehensive student records that can be: • utilized by teachers, parents and students to make educational decisions. • scrubbed of personalized information for the purpose of policy-makers and community to better understand the range of challenges facing students and to help build targeted programs to address those challenges. • used in re-engagement efforts by programs and districts who want to bring out-of-school youth back into the educational fold.

Adopt a flexible school day and calendar

No one in the at-risk student service community will be surprised to learn that experts have long recommended offering more programs with open-entry enrollment, which allows students to begin instruction at any point in time. In most schools and programs, though, we’re still a long way from that goal. But flexible calendars — and flexible school days — are vital for the continued engagement and re-engagement of students who have employment or family caretaking responsibilities, housing or transportation insecurity, short-term or chronic illnesses and injuries, or who have left school and wish to return.

Deliver a relevant curriculum

Reading, writing and arithmetic are as important today as ever before — but keeping students engaged means connecting fundamental skills to college and career-readiness in a way that is patently obvious to learners. Teaching and learning should focus on applying concepts and skills in real-world contexts, and should connect to the cultures, communities and aspirations of students.

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Why disabled workers can benefit from hitching their gig to the new economy 

(noun) 1. a light two-wheeled carriage pulled by one horse 2. a job, especially one that is temporary

A lot of folks lament the growth of the so-called “gig economy.” And sure — from taxes to insurance to retirement savings — there’s plenty to be concerned about when it comes to careers built on part-time contract and freelance work.

But growth is growth. And the growth of gigs can’t be disputed or turned back. Those who are able to successfully navigate the gig world are going to be better off than those who aren’t. And that’s especially true when it comes to workers in need of vocational rehabilitation due to disability.

Individuals who have seen their careers sidelined by chronic injury or illness can particularly benefit from learning how to compete for work-from-anywhere gigs, including writing, editing, bookkeeping, graphic design, tutoring, research, customer service and data entry. That’s because many of these jobs don’t require travel to and from a workplace, and work can be scheduled and completed around medical appointments and periods of acute illness.

The challenge? By and large, training for these sorts of jobs — and vocational rehabilitation for all sorts of other careers — has traditionally been place-based. And for all the reasons that a work-at-home job can be perfect for someone struggling with long-term health issues, scheduled training requiring to-and-from travel can be a non-starter.

Online training can be a particular boon for states like Minnesota, where waiting lists are growing for vocational rehab services intended for workers with disabilities. Meanwhile, as MinnPost observed in February, about 40 percent of U.S. workers are expected to “go gig” by 2020.

Just as online jobs aren’t perfect for every disabled worker, online training isn’t a panacea. But if it’s not part of every community’s efforts to help disabled individuals find work, a lot of people will be missing out on an opportunity to hitch their gig to the new economy.

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Want to get accepted to the perfect nursing school? Here’s how.

The future for nurses is bright. Really bright.

The number of nurses in the United States is projected to grow by 16 percent through 2024 — much faster than the average of all occupations. And the pay is much better, too — median compensation was nearly $70,000 in 2016.

That makes just about any nursing school a good bet for young Americans. But it doesn’t make all nursing schools equal. Like any educational institution, some are better than others. Schools vary widely in terms of training opportunities, job placement and tuition — and when prospective nurses find a school that seems to be the perfect match of all of those things, they’ve often identified a school that can be selective about who it accepts.

How can individuals differentiate themselves and create the best opportunity to get into the perfect program? One really good step is to ensure they’ve had a great preparatory selection of high school classes aligned with the needs of the medical field.

When students enrolled in Graduation Alliance programs express a desire to pursue a career in nursing, for instance, they’re introduced to courses like human health, psychology and medical terminology that put them in a position to shine when it comes time to apply for nursing school.

Admissions officials, after all, don’t just want to find good students. Because nursing school is tough – and many students drop out — the enrollment officials charged with bringing students into their schools want to find students who have already demonstrated a sustained interest and aptitude for work the medical field.

So, want to get into your top choice of nursing school? Be able to show that you’ve wanted to be a nurse for a long time — and that you’ve already taken steps toward getting yourself ready for that career.

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How to beat the workforce opportunity equation: Apprenticeships in the skilled trades

At its most fundamental level, workforce opportunity is an equation based on available hours and people to work those hours.

When the ratio of hours to workers is low, workforce opportunity is low. And when the ratio is high, workforce opportunity is high.

And right now in Michigan the ratio is very high.

In the region around Lansing, for instance, at least 105 million construction and skilled craftsman hours are expected to be available in the next two years — and that doesn’t include several large federally sponsored projects or any residential construction. And that’s to say nothing of the rest of the state, where experts say the construction outlook is exceptionally bright: Nearly three-quarters of construction firms are expected to expand their hiring this year.

Yet in Michigan, as is the case throughout the nation, the existing skilled trades workforce is aging, and pending retirements are creating a deep concern over the ability to match hours and workers.

That’s why one recent report concludes that Michigan needs to re-orientate its career pipeline through more skilled trades apprentice training opportunities. Such career pathways aren’t just a ticket to a good job, but also a route to the middle class for individuals who come from lower-wage-earning families. That’s because apprentices can begin earning wages while training — and graduate from apprenticeships into solid middle-class jobs with high wage growth potential and worker demand.

While the vast majority of apprenticeships are accessible to individuals with a high school diploma alone, young men and women who want to take advantage of apprenticeship training do need to be able to differentiate themselves from their peers. Viable candidates should have access to transportation, solid math and reading skills, and a strong work ethic — all attributes that are emphasized and certified in a new skilled trades credentialing program Graduation Alliance offers in partnership with Associated Builders and Contractors in Michigan.

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How one teacher helped change an entire community

Superintendent Harry Martin will readily admit that he was a career-tech-ed skeptic when he first arrived in the 2,000-student Kayenta Unified School District in the exceptionally picturesque and very rural northeastern corner of Arizona. A former English teacher, Martin wanted his predominantly Native American students to build upon more traditional areas of academics.

Then he noticed something. In a community facing crippling poverty and high unemployment, the students enrolled in a hands-on agricultural science program launched by teacher Clyde McBride in 1990 were outscoring their peers on math and English tests. And they were graduating — every one of them.

Today, Martin told EdWeek, he’s a believer.

And well we all should be.

There’s no real magic to what McBride did at Monument Valley High School. He simply looked around at the community he was serving, recognized the skills that were needed, and began to build a program to serve those needs.

“The ag-science building functions as both classroom and community clinic,” reporter Catherine Gewertz writes. “Dogs, cats, goats, cows, sheep, and horses flow through its big doors all day — more than 12,000 animal patients in the past five years. For a modest fee, community members can get a range of services that are either impossible to find nearby or are too costly.”

And the students, in turn, learn — and fast. Not just about basic animal veterinary care, but about customer service, keeping records, working as part of a team, and — perhaps most importantly — how skills, education and experience combine to make a person valuable to future employers.

What are the skills that are needed in your community? When it comes to career-tech-ed, that’s where to start.

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No laughing matter: A former comedian exposes the four-year college “joke”

Sen. Al Franken often jokes that his four-year degree gave him all the training he needed.

To be a comedian.

Now the Saturday Night Live alumnus is trying to convince young Americans that they might not need a four-year degree to reach their dreams — and, in fact, such a path could actually be counter-productive.

Indeed, he told high school students at Denfeld High School in Deluth, Minnesota, the four-year route actually doesn’t work out for many young Americans, particularly those who graduate with a mountain of debt and without the skills and experience to get a good-paying job, even in industries dying for workers.

That’s because while there are many good reasons to pursue a university degree, jobs in high-demand areas such as advanced manufacturing, construction and many healthcare careers require specific skills and experience.

“One thing we can do is start getting students to understand there is a career path where you don’t necessarily have to go to a four-year college right away,” Franken told the students. “You can get college credits in high school, you can get a community college or technical college degree, you can get credentialed, you can go into advanced manufacturing, you can start working and getting paid and go back to school and have your employer pay.”

Franken’s message wasn’t “don’t go to college.” Rather, it was “don’t assume college is the best path to your goals.”

As a nation, we need to do a better job of embracing that message. For far too long, high schoolers have been told that college is the optimum post-secondary situation for the “best and brightest,” and that the “college experience” will help prepare them for whatever they choose to do with their lives. We’ve spent way too little time telling these young men and women that not all jobs need — or even value — a four-year degree, that not all degrees are equal when it comes to the job market, and that there are many other paths to landing in a great career.

What has resulted is a world in which those who go to college all-too-often do so without a sense of direction, and in which those who don’t go to college all-too-often feel like second-class citizens.

What Franken was telling the kids at Denfeld was that skipping or delaying the straight-out-of-high-school-and-straight-into-a-university route has nothing to do with one’s potential. Indeed, the “best and brightest” are those who choose paths that are right for them, their families, and their communities — and that lead to meaningful and fulfilling careers.

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Three ways to re-imagine community college, raise grad rates, and better prepare ‘two-year’ students

We tend to call them “two-year colleges” — but that’s a serious misnomer.

At community colleges in Michigan, for example, just 13 percent of students who enrolled in the fall of 2013 had completed a degree or transferred two years later, according to state records.

And that’s not the worst of it. We could call these institutions “six-year colleges” and it wouldn’t make much difference. Nationwide, just 39 percent of students who enroll in a community college have graduated with an associate degree in six years.

Why is this happening?

In part, the low grad rates are a result of the way many community colleges were designed in the first place. The goals at the time of the community college boom of the 1960s was to make post-secondary education accessible and affordable to anyone — and many experts say community colleges have done a good job in those regards.

But being able to easily — and inexpensively — enroll in college means nothing if students aren’t prepared for college.

"Realistically, what keeps people from completion is not just on-campus issues," Mark Yancy Jr., a campus coach at Michigan’s Henry Ford College, recently told The Detroit News. "There's so much more going on in life that can cause problems."

Obstacles like a lack of transportation, job changes and unreliable child care can make college untenable. And that’s just the start. Even students who can avoid or overcome off-campus obstacles can struggle to know what to do when they get on-campus.

“No one in my family has ever gone to college of any kind,” Oakland Community College student Erica Mills told The News. “The professors hand out a syllabus — I’ve got no idea what that is. I didn’t know how to pick classes — I took some classes just because they sounded good.”

Add to all of those challenges the fact that community college students are more likely than their university counterparts to already have a history of having struggled in school, and a 1-in-8 graduation rate might not actually seem so bad.

Except, of course, that no one goes into higher education with the intent to drop out. The status quo represents a whole lot of broken dreams.

What can be done? Here are some ideas that Tom Bailey, the director of the Community College Research Center at Columbia University, shared with The Hechinger Report:  

Offer a concrete graduation plan. College programs tend to have a lot of variability — with literally thousands of potential pathways to a single degree. That can be overwhelming to students with no college experience and little peer or family guidance. Default programs — a class-by-class and semester-by-semester plan of courses students must take to complete a degree, can provide a far less nebulous picture of the path to success.

Provide “meta majors.” “What some places have done is to institute nine or 10 meta majors,” Bailey said. “You might not know you want to be a nurse, but you’re interested in the medical field. Or business. There are some basic courses in those fields that everybody takes. They don’t need to specialize that much.”

Change the preparation dynamic. It’s no secret that many students enter community college (and universities as well, for that matter) lacking fundamental academic skills and knowledge. At most schools, these students are placed in remedial English and math courses ostensibly designed to bring the students up to snuff — even if they’re pursuing degrees where such skills aren’t necessarily vital to success. Instead of preps and prerequisites that delay a student’s journey, Bailey recommends addressing academic needs as they arise in the context of program goals. 

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When did certifications become as important as education? It’s been a quarter-century journey

WorkKeys, the ACT-built workforce readiness test, has been around in various formats for nearly a quarter-century.

But every few months, it seems, someone else discovers the exam — and treats it a bit like something new.

That’s in no small part because ACT appears to be quite content with the very slow and steady growth of the test, and the credential it produces — the National Career Readiness Certificate, also known as a CRC. It hasn’t over-boasted and hasn’t over-promised. It’s just provided a solid certification process, and even improved upon it year after year for decades.    

WorkKeys was, in many ways, an idea ahead of its time. And like many other ideas about how to best measure proficiency — from high school diplomas to SATs — it’s now become less of a value-added proposition and far more of a standard. More than 3 million certificates have been issued across the nation, and that number is weighted heavily toward younger workers, who are increasingly likely to have been introduced to the test in high school.

That doesn’t mean that WorkKeys is not longer valuable — it most certainly is — but it’s also not the differentiator it once was. A person who might have stood out for their possession of a Gold-level CRC several years ago might only be one of several people with that certification on his or her résumé today.

But WorkKeys has set the stage for a professional world that increasingly sees certifications as just as important — if not in some cases more important — as education itself. And just as someone with multiple degrees might have looked appealing to an employer in the past, a person with multiple certifications will look more appealing today.

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It’s time to start filling worker shortages from many different directions

U.S. jobless claims may be at historically low levels,  but even though many Americans are now able to find work, not everyone is finding work in the fields in which they have been trained.

Among those who are most struggling to find jobs in their fields: graduates in sociology, with an under-employment rate of 56.5 percent; psychology, with an under-employment rate of 56.6 percent; and criminal justice majors, with an under-employment rate of 74.4 percent.

And those folks aren’t alone. Even in STEM pursuits like chemical engineering, biology, and economics, many people are having a hard time finding work.

Meanwhile, America has a teacher shortage — and there are some signs that it’s getting worse.

That’s why a new Oklahoma program to help unemployed and under-employed people enroll in a teacher preparation program is so promising. The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act-sponsored program is a tacit acknowledgement of both the vital importance of teaching and the sad reality that, over the past few decades, our nation has issued a whole lot of four-year degrees for professions that don’t have room for new blood at this time.

But teaching isn’t the only profession with a worker shortage. And backfilling many other jobs may be an even tougher nut to crack. That’s in part because while it might not be hard to convince under-employed people with four-year degrees to consider teaching, our society has allowed a workforce pecking order to persist — one that suggest people with four year degrees in things like sociology, criminal justice and biology couldn’t possibly be interested in jobs in fields like plant and systems operations, rail transportation, machining and electrical work.

If we’re going to address our worker shortages, we need to destroy the notion of the “sorts of people” who might be interested in good jobs with good pay and good benefits — and build pathways to fill these sorts of jobs from all different directions.

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Diplomas are a great goal — but an incomplete story. Here’s why.

Stacey Scott’s accomplishment should not be dismissed in any way.

The 30-year-old mother of four from Alabama overcame tremendous adversity on the way to earning her GED this week.

But as heart-warming as it was to read about Scott’s journey from frequent joblessness to the graduation stage, it’s important to remember that a diploma of any kind — from a GED to a PhD — isn’t an indicator of success. And until the education that document represents is put into action, it’s worth nothing more than the paper on which it’s printed.

That’s why the second part of Scott’s story is so important. She didn’t just earn a GED, but also a set of credentials demonstrating her ability to be effective in a wide range of jobs.

And she’s not stopping there, either. She is also enrolled at Gadsen State Community College to learn to be a welder — training made possible by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act.

"Welding is very challenging, but I love it," Scott told The Gadsen Times. "I'm not a girly-girl, so this is right up my alley. I like to get dirty. I work on cars. Now, I want to learn to weld. It's something I'm very interested in. I come home dirty and smelly, but I love it."

Yes, it feels good to celebrate the earning of various educational and workforce credentials — and we shouldn’t stop doing that. And yes, Scott’s experiences should be shared, both in honor of what she has done and in recognition that such stories inspire others to work toward their educational goals.

But these experiences are all just waypoints. The real signs of success — indeed, the outcomes Americans must watch for as we assess the effectiveness of WIOA-funded programs — will come when Scott gets a job, keeps it, and becomes promotable over time.

Admittedly, “Local woman overcomes obstacles, earns diploma” is a more compelling headline than “Local woman maintains steady employment, eyes promotion.” But as we enter a period of time in which the longer-term benefits of WIOA begin to reveal themselves, we’ll nonetheless be eager to tell stories just like that.

Good luck, Stacey. We’re confident the most important part of your story is still yet to be told.

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President Trump proclaimed a school choice week — that’s a start, but just barely

What presidents do in their first few weeks in office can be telling, as it often signals the issues that have their attention and will be priorities for their administrations.

So it’s notable that President Donald Trump, in one of his first acts as the nation’s chief executive, proclaimed a “National School Choice Week” and called upon states and municipalities to work toward expanding educational options “for every child in America.”

That’s a nice sentiment. Now the hard work begins.

It’s rather easy, after all, to call for sweeping new programs from the campaign trail, where Trump proposed a $20 billion federal voucher program to give low-income students the opportunity to seek better school situations. It’s harder to get Congress, even one controlled in both chambers by fellow Republicans, to commit taxpayer money to such grandiose ideas.

And even if Trump could wave a magic wand and make it so, that $20 billion would barely scratch the surface of what is needed.  

That’s because the lack of choices that hold back individuals from low-income backgrounds isn’t limited to where they go to school — which is why we can put aside arguments about whether vouchers are even a good investment (the research findings are mixed) in the first place.

Let’s start with the most obvious and influential lack of choice: Students don’t get to choose their parents. That’s why, even if we agree that rational and responsible parents should have the ability to make more choices when it comes to their children’s educations, we still need a safety net for those who didn’t luck out in the parental lottery, or whose parents simply do not have the social, intellectual or economic resources to consider and select from a range of school choices.

Add to that the myriad other socio-economic-emotional obstacles that conspire to steal choices away from students before they can even make them. Transience. Physical ailments and injuries. Mental health challenges. Learning disabilities. Transportation insecurity. True educational choice isn’t just about having the option to choose from the best of several schools — it’s having the support to overcome whatever challenges might prevent a student from getting there.

Add to that the lack of post-secondary choices that low-income students have. Research consistently shows that low-income students are more likely to end up at for-profit universities with low graduation rates, or at community colleges from which successful transfers to four-year colleges are rare. “In part because of disparities like this,” a 2015 Hechinger Report paper concluded, “students from high-income families are a staggering eight times more likely to get bachelor’s degrees by the time they’re 24 than from low-income families.” That’s up from six times more likely in 1970.

And add to that the overwhelming lack of choices for adult learners who wish to pursue a high school diploma if they missed the opportunity to do so when they were a child. In most places across the country, the best an adult learner can hope for is a GED — which is a better-than-nothing option in most cases but, as Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman has pointed out “recipients still face limited opportunity” due to deficits in noncognitive skills such as persistence, motivation and reliability, as well as social stigmas surrounding this “degree-of-last-resort.” Most adults simply have no options for earning a high school diploma, because public education funding in most states is reserved for individuals under the age of 22.

Where’s that leave us? In a world where true educational choice is a far bigger issue than whether low-income students can access a few additional options via charters and vouchers. So if school choice is, as the new administration has indicated, a priority, it’s going to take a lot more than a proclamation to make it truly happen — it’s going to take a complete re-imagining of what “school choice” actually means.

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What the past tells us about WIOA’s future under Trump’s picks for Labor and Education

Everything is about to change.

Or maybe not. No one really knows at this point.

Here’s what is clear, however: The administration that took the reigns of our federal government on Friday has a vastly different set of priorities than the administration it replaced. And that could mean big changes are in store when it comes to the implementation of one of the most important pieces of legislation in the past decade.

That’s the contention of Kathy Carmody, the CEO of the Chicago-based Institute for Public Policy for People with Disabilities. She contends that the challenges that service providers are already facing when it comes to interpreting the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act may be accentuated by the fact that the new administration could choose to interpret the law in vastly different ways.

What clues do we have as to how Labor and Education will address their responsibilities under the law, which was passed with overwhelmingly bipartisan support? A good start is to look at what the people at the helms of both of those departments have said and done in the past.

Andrew Puzder, Labor

Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of labor, Andrew Puzder, is the CEO of CKR Restaurant Holdings, which franchises the Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s fast-food restaurants.

There may be some clues as to how he would view a rapid shift in approach when it comes to WIOA in his June 2014 testimony before the House Education and Workforce Committee’s Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions. In that testimony, Puzder took an “if it’s not broke” approach to regulations, arguing that it would be rash to rush into new standards (in that case those regarding the relationship between franchisors and a franchisee’s employees) without due consideration to the long-term effects of such decisions. Is WIOA broke? It’s way too early to say, but given its broad bipartisan support and state-centric approach to deciding how money is spent, there’s been precious little complaint about its implementation so far.

In that same testimony, Puzder also indicated an appreciation for entrepreneurship (albeit through the franchise system) and for creating opportunities for women and minority workers to succeed, noting with apparent pride that 62 percent of his franchisees’ general managers are minorities and 66 percent are women. “Several of our executive vice presidents and senior vice presidents started as restaurant employees and learned the business as restaurant general managers,” he added. This might be a hint that the new secretary will have an appreciation for the parts of WIOA aimed at stoking entrepreneurship, creating chances for people to climb their way to the top, and improving opportunities for women and minorities.

Immigrants — especially those who are undocumented — have been a sticking point for some states when it comes to the implementation of WIOA programs. Hardliners have argued, and sought to create barriers, for program participation by immigrants who came to the United States illegally. Those on the other side of the issue have intentionally created standards for programs that don’t require any sort of residency verification for participation. As an appointee of Trump — who has argued passionately for tighter immigration enforcement — Puzder’s policies might come as a surprise to many people. That’s because he has expressed support for immigration reform. As such, he may be unlikely to meddle in state control over how that particular issue is handled.

Betsy DeVos, Education

Trump’s pick for secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, is a staunch and long-time advocate for school choice and free market charter schools.

Among her triumphs: Helping pass legislation that attached state funding to students, rather than districts, and additional legislation that removed the cap on how many charter schools could operate in the state of Michigan.

That could be a strong indicator of how she’ll view the right approach for funding of WIOA initiatives — tying money to participation rather than programs and loosening restrictions on who can launch a program to compete for such money.

Many people have also called DeVos “the perfect person” to help Trump keep his promise of eliminating the Department of Education. She hasn’t said quite as much as that, but it’s very likely that DeVos will seek to further roll back federal rules and oversight over how WIOA money is spent, leaving it further in the hands of the states.

Perhaps the best indicator of the sorts of programs DeVos will champion is the charter school her husband, billionaire Dick DeVos, founded — West Michigan Aviation Academy, where educators seek to engage students in academics through training in “flight science.” It’s no secret that DeVos is a fan of out-of-the-box thinking when it comes to student engagement (a big part of the WIOA mission, particularly for out-of-school youth) and she may seek to prioritize such initiatives.

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What a teen-aged Martin Luther King wrote about education is absolutely prophetic

Here’s a part of Martin Luther King’s history about which many people are not aware: He enrolled in college at the age most students are sophomores in high school.  

King was just 15 years old when he passed the entrance exam at Morehouse College in 1944. So while he was still but a teenager in 1947, he’d been around the university long enough to draw some conclusions about the purpose of education — and how far too many of his fellow students seemed to be missing out on it.

Writing in the January-February 1947 issue of the college newspaper, The Maroon Tiger, King opined that university students seemed to believe that education was either a means to get ahead of others or a way of bettering themselves as thinkers regardless of improvements in their social, economic or moral circumstances.

Indeed, it was then and is still today both of those things.

But in his passionately worded essay, King argued education needed to amount to something more than either of those ends. And although 70 years have passed, his words could not be more applicable to today’s world.

“Education,” he wrote, should help a person “think incisively and to think for one’s self.”

And while that is difficult, he noted, it is vital to helping students become not just smarter or more employable, but better.

“We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda,” he continued. “A great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.”

Still today, the purpose of education is often conceptually siloed into “get a good job” and “become a more intellectual person.” There is nothing wrong with either of those aims. But on this day, upon which we observe what would have been King’s 88th year, it behooves us to remember his young wisdom.

Education may improve a student’s lot, and it may help that student become a better thinker, but if it does not render a student more capable of knowing and appreciating truth, it has not served its purpose.

“Be careful, brethren,” King concluded. “Be careful, teachers!”

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Three things workforce development programs can do to help participants improve their health

Amongst the mix of life skills classes that a new program is offering to out-of-school youth in Union County, New Jersey, is a subject that is rather unusual in workforce training programs: Healthy living.

The other subjects being offered by the Union County board of Chosen Freeholders’ Second Chance program are oldies and goodies: Leadership, financial literacy, vocational school familiarity and entrepreneurship. Those are all absolutely vital topics for young men and women who have gotten a rough educational start, most often due to socio-economic struggles that most schools don’t have the resources to address.

But so is wellness. Poverty and poor health, after all, are the proverbial chicken and egg. Economically marginalized groups have more trouble accessing the kind of information, food, medicine, activities, habitation, and medical care that can help prevent and treat sickness and disease. That, in turn, can lead to an inability to work, stoke debilitating debt, and prompt bankruptcy. The cycle that results can be devastating and last for generations.

That’s why we’ll be watching with great anticipation to see how the Second Chance program — which includes health curriculum and access to a YMCA fitness room — helps its participants break out of this cycle.

Meanwhile, we’d like to encourage anyone who is planning or providing workforce innovation and opportunity initiatives to consider the role of health education in their programs.

Here are three easy places to get started:

Accessing healthy food. People suffering from poverty in America are more likely to lack reliable transportation, and yet also more likely to live in so-called “food deserts” — areas with little or no access to fresh, healthy food. That means they’re all-too-often missing out on what is almost inarguably the most important factor in healthy living. Poor eating, after all, leads to a lack of energy, poor concentration and sickness – all of which are prohibitive for people trying to find and keep good work. Leaders of programs working to help individuals improve their career status, then, should also consider helping those individuals improve their access to healthy food — through mini farmers’ markets, group trips to supermarkets and help with connections to food-support resources.

Smoking cessation programs. Individuals who grew up in poverty are both more likely to start smoking (the reasons for this are fascinating and surprising) and less likely to be able to access the resources to quit. But as anyone who has ever fought a smoking habit can tell you, cigarettes aren’t cheap. And neither are the health conditions that often result from smoking. Smoking has further been shown to have significantly negative impacts on people’s careers. So, want to help workforce opportunity program participants save money, have better health and have more successful careers? Invest in connecting these individuals to smoking cessation resources. 

Mental health help. Almost everyone now recognizes the devastating impact warfare can have on a person’s long-term mental health. Increasingly, albeit way too slowly, we’re learning how to address these impacts and better support our nation’s veterans. What many people don’t recognize is that socio-economic struggles can have similarly devastating mental health consequences. And while our nation has finally turned a corner in addressing the mental health needs of veterans, the needs of people who grew up in poverty have been virtually unaddressed. While a small number of workforce opportunity programs might have the resources to connect participants to mental health professionals, most simply don’t. But self-care can be incredibly effective and it takes very few resources to educate people on how to improve their mental health one small step at a time. Mental Health America, for instance, has offered a list of 31 free or nearly-free things that anyone can do to improve their mental health. That’s the kind of information we can and should be putting into the hands of workforce opportunity programs.

[allianceinsights]

Let’s stop bickering about job creation and start helping Americans access ‘good jobs’

The reaction was as predictable as it was unenlightening.

On Dec. 28, President-elect Donald Trump claimed that 8,000 new jobs were coming to America because of “the spirit and the hope” his election had sparked.

Trump’s supporters rushed to praise the real estate developer and reality TV show star. “Are you getting tired of all this winning yet?” several people Tweeted.

The business mogul’s detractors, meanwhile, lambasted his willingness to take credit for business moves that appear to have been planned months before he won the presidency. “For eight years, I watched liberals give Obama credit… for economic successes having nothing to do with any of his policies,” RedState’s Jay Caruso wrote. “It’s just as bad seeing Trump supporters, and Donald Trump himself, take credit.”

As usual, the truth is likely somewhere in the middle. And, as is all-too-often the case these days, the bigger picture is being completely ignored as partisans seek to score political points.

If these jobs do come to fruition, thousands of people will have an opportunity to get to work. That’s great. And to the extent that Trump has had a hand in making that happen, it’s nothing to shrug at.

But it’s also just a drop in the bucket. President Barack Obama’s supporters will tell you that 15 million jobs have been created during his presidency. His detractors will tell you that the number is closer to 10 million. Even the more conservative figure, though, equates to an average of about 100,000 new jobs per month during Obama’s presidency.

And that’s a credit to Obama, but not a particularly unique one. That’s because job creation isn’t unusual. Private sector job creation has grown by the millions under every president since Franklin Roosevelt except for George W. Bush. And total job creation grew under Bush, too. If every president took credit for every company that added jobs — and every media organization covered the matter as Trump’s claims were covered last month — we’d have time to talk about very little else.

The question we should be grappling with today (and indeed, the question that may have led to Trump’s victory) is whether the average American is actually able to get one of those jobs — and whether those jobs will convey the sort of salary, benefits and satisfaction that would lead someone to conclude a job is “a good job.”

After all, for most workers real wages have been stagnant for decades. In about the same time period, the number of Americans who say they like their jobs has fallen sharply. Meanwhile, many workers stay put in jobs that don’t pay well and don’t give them satisfaction because they have a hard time envisioning a better path.

The antidote to all of this: Education and training. The more workers have, the less likely they are to feel stuck in a job they don’t like. Indeed, the more likely they are to be able to say they have “a good job.”

As president, Trump is almost assuredly going to spend a lot of time talking about the jobs that have been created under his watch. Responding with Pavlovian partisan bickering won’t help us understand the world American workers are truly living in.

So, do we really want to make America great? (Or greater?) If so, we must make access to education and training a priority.

The “good jobs” will follow.

[allianceinsights]

Here’s why the nation needs basic workforce training in high school and adult diploma programs

Here’s the challenge Virginia Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam heard from constituents during a recent roundtable with local business owners:

Employers are ready and willing to hire more workers into middle- and high-skill technical jobs, but there aren’t enough workers who have the right amount of post-high-school training to even begin the job-specific training.

“We have some great training institutions here, but the bottom line is they’re just too slow,” one Economic Development Authority consultant told the lieutenant governor at the small downtown gathering. “We end up in this crazy cycle of being way behind the employer’s needs.”

A big part of this problem is that workers with a high school diploma alone almost always need a lot of remedial workforce training before they can even get to the technical training and apprenticeships that employers need them to have before they can be hired full-time. One solution that workforce development officials in Lynchburg Virginia, are trying out is a three-month “boot camp” training process that will teach basic skills preceding an apprenticeship. Lynchburg is using funding from the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act to sponsor the program.

Here’s another solution that we hope more workforce development boards will consider in future years: Ensuring more students come out of traditional high schools and adult diploma programs with those “boot camp” skills.

Northam, after all, isn’t the only elected official hearing about this same conundrum from employers. The skills gap is a problem in every state in the nation — and in some states it’s downright epidemic. (There are those who deny the existence of the problem; they’re essentially alleging “a worldwide scheme by thousands of business managers,” the Harvard Business Review recently pointed out.)

There’s no question that a high school diploma is the essential first step to almost any modern job. As more communities come to understand that basic workforce training is an essential second step, dovetailing diploma attainment with such training simply makes sense.    

And that, in fact, is exactly what the Association for Career & Technical Education has been saying for years — and not just because such programs create employees who are ready to hit the ground working. CTE programs have also been shown to improve academic motivation, school engagement, grades, self-efficacy and college aspirations.

That’s a true win-win. And the sooner more people can access such training, the better.