Integrated Career Preparation System: A Model to Teach Academic and Scans Skills
A Forum — April 30, 1999
The SCANS 2000 Center at the Johns Hopkins University, Institute for Policy Studies, has created a "Career Transcript System" which is being piloted in five Baltimore City Public High Schools and in ten community colleges serving participants in welfare-to-work programs across the country supported by a U.S. Department of Education Technology Learning Challenge Grant. In these high schools, 9th and 10th graders are using two of eight CD-ROMs, teachers are involved in a faculty development program and have begun to use special assessments which are precursers of the full Career Transcripts to be used next year.
Arnold Packer, Principal Investigator, SCANS 2000 Center and Melissa Siberts, Project Manager, describe the use of the Career Transcript System to teach SCANS skills to high school students. SCANS is the acronym for the U.S. Department of Labor Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) formed in 1990. Through a careful process the Commission interviewed employees in a wide variety of work places regarding the skills needed to undertake their jobs. The analysis of their findings resulted in descriptions of two types of skills necessary for success in the workplace: workplace competencies and foundation skills.
Workplace competencies include the ability to allocate resources (time, money, material, staff and space); interpersonal relations (working on teams, teaching others and interacting positively with customers); using information (collect, evaluate, interpret and explain); understanding systems including social organizations (monitor and correct performance, design and improve systems); select and apply technology to achieve specific tasks and know how to maintain and troubleshoot equipment. Foundation skills include the basic skills of reading, writing, and mathematics as well as thinking skills (the ability to learn, reason, think creatively and solve problems) and personal qualities (responsibility, self-management, self-esteem, sociability and integrity).
The Career Transcript System took nearly a decade to develop. Using a "Career Transcript," educational institutions can assure employers that their graduates are ready for successful careers. The Transcript documents students’ achievement in each of the SCANS skills. It is an on-going record of achievement that can be used by and for high school students, Welfare-to-Work participants, community college students and mid-career professionals. Use of the Transcript can also change curriculum by integrating academic and career education through the use of real-life scenarios developed on CD-ROM for use in a variety of classroom settings. With one of the CDs, tenth graders are using their Algebra II, Geometry, and English skills to conduct market research and write a business plan to open a store in a local mall. In the process, they learn estimating skills, use equations, interpret graphs and tables and learn about designing systems.
Packer and Siberts see one barrier to the use of the Career Transcript system in the increased emphasis on academic testing to the exclusion, they feel, of work-related standards. They fear that if SCANS skills are not tested for, there is little impetus for teachers to integrate them into the curriculum. One of their goals is to use the Career Transcript System as an effective assessment tool.
Evaluations of the pilot Career Transcript System projects are underway. Preliminary results show some increase in student grade levels.
This information is from an American Youth Policy Forum held on April 30, 1999 on Capitol Hill reported by Donna Walker James.
The events of the Forum are made possible by the support of a consortium of philanthropic foundations: Charles S. Mott Foundation, Ford Foundation, and General Electric Fund.