The State Board of Education’s vision for K-12 students fits nicely with a recurring theme that surfaced when about 50 people met recently to craft a strategic plan for USD 257 — as well as its board members’ interest in upgrading vocational education.
Kansas Education Commissioner Randy Watson said the proposal was to have individualized education plans for each student to place focus on both academic and nonacademic skills to help graduates be successful in the workaday world.
The Associated Press reported: Carrying out the vision would mean having different graduation requirements and less emphasis on standardized tests. School counselors would develop education plans for each student.
A limitation Watson mentioned: Such plans aren’t — and couldn’t — be accomplished today because so many counselors have been cut as result of proportionally less state aid being made available to schools.
Businesses would have a role, through internships and job-shadowing. Community service projects also would be a part of the equation.
Watson did not denigrate academic skills, but recognized that not all students are likely to be predisposed to post-secondary academia. Some will pursue any number of jobs soon after high school graduation. For example, many employees, who provide very necessary services to all residents, don’t have college hours on their resumes. But, they are exceedingly important to daily life of everyone.
Implementing much of what Watson envisions will fall to local boards of education and administrators.
USD 257 has a leg up.
Tuesday those who participated in the first phase of strategic planning will meet again to flesh out avenues to follow in meeting goals, one of which is to provide an education environment that will have all students career and/or college ready.
Specifics are yet to be detailed, but Watson’s point of involving businesses and industries surely will be one that will be suggested for USD 257.
Administrators and board members already have visited a center in Pittsburg where students from several high schools learn more than reading, writing and arithmetic, and are given hands-on opportunities. Something similar may unfold here, through a consortium that would beg inclusion of several area high schools.
Components of technology, which have been pervasive in schools from elementary through high school for several years and surely will become even more so in the years ahead, would be integrated academically and for those who find themselves in post-secondary career pathways.
Another goal — one of far more than passing importance in the world of work — is to equip students with soft skills so they will have the wherewithal to go about finding employment and then meeting expectations of employers. Such realizations should start in the classroom and be nurtured throughout a student’s time in public education.
WATSON and others with a pulpit in the Statehouse must convince those who hold the purse strings that providing a comprehensive education to our children is the most important function of state government, which is a theme that’s an integral part of the constitution. And it doesn’t stop with high school graduation. Adequately investing in all levels of education is the soundest economic development policy Kansas, or any other state, can have.
Making each generation of children well-educated and well-prepared to take their role in society should be a given, not a struggle each year at budget time.
— Bob Johnson
