April 1, 2016
On
Wednesday, March 9, Secretary King announced the launch of the
Department-sponsored CTE Makeover
Challenge—a
competition offering a total of $200,000 to be distributed likewise among as many
as 10 high school grant beneficiaries, to convert classrooms or existing spaces
into places where students have contact with tools to design, build and
innovate. The CTE Makeover Challenge builds on the administration's Nation of Makers
initiative,
launched in 2014 by the White House as an all-hands-on-deck call, to give many
more students, entrepreneurs, and citizens entrance to a new class of
technologies that allow them to build just about anything. The challenge
explicitly calls upon high school students to design representations of
"makerspaces"— formalized spaces for manufacturing things.
These unique facilities may be classrooms, libraries and mobile spaces, all of
which will provide resources for students to build and acquire skills through
making. The locations are ideal spaces for students to gain essential
21st-century career skills, such as critical thinking, planning, and
communication.
Additionally, Secretary King announced that the White House, along with federal
agencies and the broader community, will celebrate a National Week of Making from
June 17–23. The week will correspond with the National Maker Faire from June 18–19
in Washington, D.C., featuring makers from across the country, and including
participation by federal agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Education,
National Science Foundation, U.S. Agency for International Development, U.S.
Small Business Administration, Institute of Museum and Library Services,
National Institute of Standards and Technology, NASA, Corporation for National
and Community Service, U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Smithsonian
Institution.
According to a recent press release by the U.S. Department of Education, Tom
Kalil, deputy director of the White House Office of Science and Technology
Policy, said, "The President launched the Nation of Makers initiative to
give more students, entrepreneurs, and Americans of all ages access to the
tools needed to design and make just about anything." Deputy Director
Kalil went on to say, "We need to rethink high school for the 21st
century, and give our students experiences that will build their creative
confidence and problem-solving skills, and also prepare them for potential STEM
careers."
Expectations Meet Reality: The
Underprepared Student and Community Colleges (https://www.ccsse.org/docs/Underprepared_Student.pdf), a recent publication from the Center
for Community College Student Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin,
is dedicated to the community college students each year who are “underprepared
and not ready for college-level work.”
Yet, year after year, these students enroll in community colleges,
seemingly with little awareness of how underprepared they are. According to the report, these students are
owed the “guidance and supports they need to continue” successfully.
Recognition
of the dismal completion rate of underprepared students motivated the American
Association of Community Colleges’ 21st-Century Commission on the Future of
Community Colleges to challenge community colleges to “double the rate of
students who complete developmental education and progress to successful
completion of college-level gatekeeper courses by 2020.” Achieving this goal will require a
transformation of community colleges with the help of “community college
adjunct and full-time faculty, staff, and leaders who are actively committed to
improving assessment, placement, and developmental education.” According to the
report, policymakers and educators must recognize that “[d]evelopmental
education is broken—and it is worth fixing.
Just as students must have the courage to start,” faculty, staff, and
leaders must “press on to redesign the entry process to ensure that all
students are successful.”
Developmental
education began in the 1960s to serve students unprepared for college-level
academics, but it was only partially successful. A redesign of developmental education emerged
in the early 2000s, encompassing a culture of inquiry, the use of evidence, and
a focus on accountability, but it is far from where it needs to be today. Early findings from developmental education
assessments showed “dismal results,” especially in mathematics sequences. Expectations Meet Reality puts its cards on
the table early in the report: educators
must face the reality that “[m]any community college students did not have
successful K–12 experiences.” Moreover,
many of them have been out of school for a number of years. If these students are not successful in
completing the necessary developmental courses to enable them to “catch up,”
their life prospects will be severely diminished. For many of these students, community college
“is a last chance to succeed.”
The
report’s closing section, “Questions for Consideration,” encourages community
colleges to “review their own data in light of the disconnect between students’
desire to succeed and the reality of their outcomes.” It is not enough, the report maintains, to
fine-tune assessment and placement practices.
Instead, “straightforward conversations about long-held beliefs and
practices” must be held.
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