Career and College Readiness…Are You Ready?
Skills, skills, skills...21st Century
Career and College Readiness…Are You Ready? Did you know that there are over 4000+ colleges and universities in the United States, offering all sorts of programs to educate America’s future.
Really makes you wonder…we have an enormous array of educational institutions and professional organizations in this country educating and training all types professionals and workers – teachers, doctors, business managers, engineers, lawyers, middle skill workers (community college programs) - who in turn, go back into society to practice their professions and occupations and share the wealth of their knowledge.
Yet, according to recent statistics, the average high school graduation rate in 50 of our largest cities is an abysmal 52.8 percent. Even U.S. college graduation rates are on the decline.
So who is minding the nation’s “talent” store. Clearly, we have a talent challenge in this country. Take a look at all the issues swirling around the Achievement Gap and America’s “diamonds in the rough” – poor children and children of color – not having access to the knowledge and/or skills needed to become effective producers and competitors in a world marketplace. Look at the fact that in 2009, 2 million U.S. skilled jobs went vacant because we did not have the talent to fill those positions.
The Internet, the World Wide Web, and the rapid proliferation of information and communication technologies literally demand a new type of learner and worker if we are to sustain our competitive advantage internationally and secure our future as a first rate nation. Learners and workers today need a 21st century boost to their skill sets. Twenty-first century skills constitute this century’s basic literacy foundation for effective teaching, learning, and training in the United States.
What are those skills, you ask? What was once called the 3R’s – reading, writing, and arithmetic – have transformed into the Super 3R’s. So what is the “Super”. The “Super” is the information literacy (soft skills) and digital literacy(hard skills) foundation required to function effectively in a competitive global economy, an economy whose infrastructure is based on the efficacious use and management of information and communication technologies. The broad based need for those skills was practically non-existent in the 20th century. Today, it’s a different story.
Our K-16 “elite” educational system falls flat when it comes to promoting and systemically integrating the Super 3Rs across the entire spectrum of educational and workplace training in this country. Everybody’s talking about improving the skills of America’s workforce, but very few are actually doing anything to make certain that that change, in fact, occurs.
Our dismal graduations statistics really do tell the story in terms of America’s escalating slide into second class status. Another factoid food for thought – who owns America’s debt – China and India, among others.
As it now stands, our future is looking pretty grim in terms of having a 21st century skilled labor market and as long as we refuse to nurture the enormous talent we already have residing here in the United States, then our slide into the graveyard of super powers is truly inevitable.