Newly Formed Council Focuses on Career Readiness

The Career Readiness Partner Council is a coalition of nearly 30 education, business, policy, and philanthropic organizations, formed in 2012 and led by the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium. The group is charged with developing and articulating a clear vision of what it means to be career ready and leading efforts to help bridge the gap between education and workforce preparation.

According to the Council’s statement, which has been endorsed by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, being career ready includes possessing academic and technical knowledge and skills as well as employability knowledge, skills and dispositions. The statement advocates that a career-ready student must be adaptable and open to life-long learning skills in order to be successful in a global economy. The Council also emphasizes the importance of building a comprehensive system of supports and relationships among different stakeholder groups – such as policymakers, education leaders, and parents – that is aligned across the K-12 spectrum and delivers learning and supports where students need them most in order to succeed.

The Council’s latest report, Building Blocks for Change: What it Means to be Career Ready, is the group’s first major effort towards defining career readiness and outlines major players and suggested actions for building a comprehensive system that supports career readiness.

For more information, and a list of Council organizations, visit the Career Readiness Partner Council’s Web site.

Note: This blog post was originally authored under the auspices of the National High School Center at the American Institutes for Research (AIR). The National High School Center’s blog, High School Matters, which ran until March 2013, provided an objective perspective on the latest research, issues, and events that affected high school improvement. The CCRS Center plans to continue relevant work originally developed under the National High School Center grant. National High School Center blog posts that pertain to CCRS Center issues are included on this website as a resource to our stakeholders.