Leadership magazine Nov/Dec 2015 V45 No 2 | Page 21

ous gap in workforce skills, and nearly
50 percent are struggling to f ill jobs. In
2013, CNBC surveyed 500 top executives
about the skills gap, and nearly 44 percent
believed the gap is based on “soft skills”
or “career readiness.” Only 22 percent believed it was a technical skills issue; another 14 percent thought it was a lack of
leadership; and 12 percent believed it was
a lack of computer-based skills.
Looking closely at what is needed, 70
percent of the skills identified in the skills
gap survey are addressed in the California
Standards for Career Ready Practice. The
technical skills gap (22 percent) can also be
addressed in the California CTE Model
Curriculum Standards, adopted in 2013.
It is clear that business and industry need
students who are college and career ready;
that’s why the new state standards make sense,
and why they are more important than ever.

To truly bridge
the looming skills
gap identified in
national surveys,
it’s going to take
strong, authentic
partnerships
between education,
business and local
governments.

A new kind of partnership
Educators can’t do it alone. To truly bridge
the looming skills gap identified in national
surveys, it’s going to take strong, authentic
partnerships between education, business
and local governments. Only with a solid
partnership and strong work-based learning
plan can districts begin to fully prepare students for college and career. This is the full
intent of the new state standards.
Partnerships in education have existed
for years. Districts have historically had
pa rent adv isor y commit tees, Engl ish
learner advisory committees, joint meetings with local city governments, agreements/MOUs with local community colleges and county offices of education and,
in some cases, partnerships with law enforcement around school safety. These are
all important partnerships, but sometimes
they are not enough.
Now, more than ever, it is important
to ensure we have our business partners
engaged in conversations around college
and career readiness and that our graduate prof ile is one that prepares students
for the current and future work environment. As districts, we often try to develop
graduate profile outcomes ourselves. We
look at outcomes through academic lenses
and neglect to engage our local industry

leaders regarding their needs. We write
outcomes that align to our standards, and
while they speak to college and career
readiness, they may not align with the
specific needs of our community.
Many educators will say, “Local business doesn’t understand education” or “We
don’t have time to review our outcomes
and align them.” In an authentic partnership, we value the importance of the needs
of our business community, and we take
time to engage them in that process. How
can we not? Schools prepare students to
become active members of society, able
to contribute to the community. We want
them to be successful and financially independent. Why would we not engage the
very businesses that may eventually hire
our students and ask the question: “What
do you need, and how can we better prepare our students for you?”

VUSD’s partnership journey
Visalia Unified School District is having these conversations and developing
tremendous partnerships with local business and industry to develop a solid and
progressive graduate profile.
In 2013, Visalia Unified joined the Tulare/Kings Linked Learning Consortium.

At the time, it was a seven-district consortium led by Porterville USD and focused
on the implementation of Linked Learning. Linked Learning is an approach to
education that combines relevant academics, rigorous career-themed courses, workbased learning, and wrap-around student
support structures in a school-within-aschool/academy model.
With the need evident and pressing,
VUSD resurrected an old committee developed in 2001 called Visalia Partners
in Education (VPIE). At its inception in
2001, it was convened to support Career
Technical Education programs in the district and give them a little boost of support during an economically trying time.
The partnership between education and
business focused on partners going into
schools to talk to students about career
readiness and job preparation. This part
of the partnership included $150,000 of
direct and in-kind financial support from
industry partners. In addition, Visalia Unified committed $150,000 a year to support
CTE throughout the district and help keep
up with an ever-changing work world. The
program was successful; unfortunately,
due to programmatic changes and the time
commitment of a select few business partNovember | December 2015

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