What does a Colorado kid need to know to successfully move from high school to college, other training or the workforce?
Teams of Colorado educators and others think they’ve managed to answer that question in three pages that list the content knowledge and learning and life skills necessary for what’s called in current jargon “postsecondary and workforce readiness.” (The unavoidable acronym is “PWR.”)
Creation of that document is required by the 2008 Colorado Achievement Plan for Kids law, which calls for descriptions of school and postsecondary/workforce readiness, new K-12 content standards, new statewide tests, adoption of high school graduation requirements by school boards and general alignment of the K-12 and postsecondary systems.
The State Board of Education got a look at an almost-final version of the PWR description Wednesday. The board and the Colorado Commission on Higher Education will meet together on June 30 to jointly adopt a final version. (Further tweaking is expected before that meeting.)
In broad terms, the document lists the content skills high school graduates should have in literacy, math, science, social science and the arts and humanities. The description also lists learning and life skills in nine areas.
According to the document, “Postsecondary education and workforce readiness assumes that students are ready to demonstrate the following without the need for remediation.”
Some may see the description as a statement of the obvious, but it’s meant to provide the broad guidelines for the more detailed requirements of CAP4K. Those include a total update of state content standards, due to be finished and approved by SBE in December, and selection of new state tests by December 2010. Following that school districts will have to align graduation requirements and curricula to the new state system.
The PWR description was developed by staff at the departments of education and higher education. Several public meetings on the issue were held around the state, and various K-12, higher ed and business groups also were consulted.
Learn more
- Draft description of postsecondary and workforce readiness
- A graphical view of the description
- More information about CAP4K
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