May 1, 2014
CLASP
Releases Paper on Strategies to Create Stackable Credentials
The Center for Postsecondary and
Economic Success at the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) recently released the paper Scaling "Stackable Credentials": Implications for
Implementation and Policy by Evelyn Ganzglass. For
the purpose of her study, the author uses the Department of Labor’s definition
of “stackable credentials as “part of a
sequence of credentials that can be accumulated over time to build up an
individual’s qualifications and help them to move along a career pathway or up
a career ladder to different and potentially higher-paying jobs.”
In today’s unstable economy, there has been a focus
on stackable credits, and their effects on workers’ and students’ economic
viability and mobility. Workers with higher levels of education and credentials
are generally positioned to rebound more quickly during economic downturns. Ganzglass sees stackable credits as “potentially transferable currency that can help people progress in our
multi-layered education, training, and credentialing system without having to
start over as their needs and interests change.” She
explored reforms in policies and practices to address some of the barriers to
attaining educational and occupational credentials. Ganzglass also discusses the strategies being used to create
stackable credentials, a principal feature of career pathways, in the states where data was gathered—Kentucky, Oregon,
Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Career pathways systems, as the
report indicates, “connect progressive levels of education, training, and
supportive services in specific sectors or cross-sector occupations in a way
that optimizes the progress and success of individuals … in securing marketable
credentials, family-supporting employment, and further education and employment
opportunities.” The report
underscores the increased importance that policymakers, such as National Governors
Association members, place on stackable credentialing in response to the
president’s challenge that all Americans complete some postsecondary schooling
as a requisite for entering and staying in the middle class.
The paper reveals that the four states
and their local area colleges studied are increasing credential attainment in a
variety of ways. The findings are not
intended to be representative of all efforts, but rather to serve as a kind of window
into the diverse developments and emerging approaches to stacking credentials
and their associated implementation challenges. Ganzglass describes five strategies to help students, workers, and
job seekers overcome obstacles to attaining stackable credentials:
- “Modularize existing applied
associate degree and technical diploma programs;
- “Embed existing industry and
professional certifications in career and technical programs;
- “Streamline and scale processes for
awarding credit for learning represented by non-collegiate credentials;
- “Create ‘lattice credentials’ that
allow students to move both up to a career ladder within an occupational field
or across multiple pathways in a career lattice; and
-
Create dual enrollment options that
enable students to work concurrently toward a high school diploma or its
equivalency, marketable postsecondary credentials and industry certifications.”
While stackable credentials as a
best practice is still in the early stages of development, it appears to be
worth pursuing as potentially “transferable currency” that will allow people to
progress in education, training, and gaining credentials without having to
always start over.Click to edit this placeholder text.
The Importance of
Early Learning for College and Career Readiness
In
last week’s OCTAE Connection, we
featured ACT’s efforts to ensure that all students graduate high school ready
for college and a career. Further in its focus on the effect of readiness on
degree completion, ACT has investigated the relationship between readiness and
early childhood learning. The results were published in its 2013 study College and Career Readiness: The Importance of
Early Learning,
which concludes that we as a nation “are far from achieving this goal” of
universal readiness.
This
lack of readiness is more prevalent among economically disadvantaged students.
In 2012, in states where all 11th-graders took the ACT assessment, only 45
percent of low-income students met the ACT College Readiness Benchmark in
English. For reading, 30 percent met the benchmark, while in mathematics, 21
percent did, and in science, 13 percent did.
The
gaps between disadvantaged students and their more-advantaged counterparts
“appear early in childhood,” with large numbers of disadvantaged students
entering kindergarten behind their more-advantaged peers. These findings pose a
challenge for intervention models that assume that only approximately 5 percent
of students need long-term remedial assistance and approximately 15 percent
need shorter-term intervention. In situations where the “great majority of students are academically behind and need major
assistance, the regular academic program must be upgraded to deliver a richer
curriculum to all students.”
This
intensive assistance is imperative because, without a good start, students will
not succeed to their potential as they continue through school. Students need a
good start because: (1) learning takes time, (2) learning is cumulative, (3) their
interests often begin to develop in kindergarten and the early elementary
grades, and (4) remediating them in middle and high school is difficult. A good
start in reading and mathematics, a curriculum rich in content, and activities
that foster good academic and social behaviors are key components of a strong
early learning program, according to ACT.
After
discussing barriers to strengthening early learning, the report maintains that
in the early grades it involves “not a flurry of disconnected initiatives, but
a sustained, coherent, coordinated effort” to improve practices in the
classroom. Implementing the components of an early learning program adequate to
meeting the needs of disadvantaged students is arduous. It requires sustained
district-wide effort to promote public opinion on behalf of its importance for
the long term. Therefore, the report argues, school leaders and policymakers
must strive to ensure that the public (1) recognizes the vital importance of
early learning, (2) has a general knowledge of and is prepared to insist on the
teaching of knowledge and skills that enhance early learning, (3) is aware of
and does not support policies that are barriers to early learning, and (4) to
the contrary, supports a robust “system” that focuses on sound early learning
policies and practices.Click to edit this placeholder text.
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