We’re ringing in a new school year with a new look, a new logo and a new focus. Along with our new website, the changes reflect an evolution the Consortium has undergone in just the past few years–developing several new programs and redesigning longstanding ones as well.
In the past three years, we’ve introduced College & Career Knowledge, Refugee Youth Employment Project and Opening Doors. Additionally, we kicked off Career Ready last November and this fall, and we’ll be introducing a brand new program called Student Powered Solutions (SPS). We’ll also be making some changes in The Forum, which we’ll tell you more about as we get ready to reconvene our professional learning network later this month.
Meanwhile, we want you to know that all of the changes have been carefully conceived and designed to support our focus on helping schools give kids opportunities to develop career awareness and skills beginning in kindergarten. As part of this focus, we’ll be creating the kinds of partnerships essential to giving students of all ages opportunities to practice 21st century skills not formally taught in classrooms.
The factors that led to this emphasis in our work are coming from two directions. Education research and employer surveys have converged to expose a gap in learning that schools can’t alone address: both show that skills like collaboration, communication and critical thinking, and dispositions like adaptability, agility and perseverance, are as important to future success—in the classroom and the workplace—as academic preparation.
We’ll be sharing more information about all of these changes in the next several weeks, so please be sure to check back here often for updates.
