CareerStart: Improving Education and Life Success for Children in Middle School

1. CareerStart:Improving Education and Life Success for Children in Middle School Prepared by: Dr. Dennis K. Orthner Dr. Donald Martin Dr. Patrick Akos Dr. Hinckley Jones-Sanpei Mr. Roderick Rose Ms. Julie McCann February, 2009

2. The Challenges We Face Today • Jobs today require more education and technical skills than the jobs of the past • The labor market for good jobs is now global • Our young adults compete for jobs with people all over the world • Our schools are part of our workforce development capacity as a nation • But too many of our students are not achieving the competencies needed to compete for the jobs of tomorrow

3. So What is CareerStart? • A set of tools to help teachers improve the relevance of what they are already required to teach. • No new information. • No significant new burden. • Lessons tied to the Standard Course of Study for each Middle School core course. • Teaching tools available on the web with all instructional materials. (http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/careerstart-grade6)

4. What support is provided? • 10 CareerStart mini-lessons for each Math, Science, Language Arts, and Social Studies course in Middle School grades • Teacher email newsletters updating their knowledge of regional labor market jobs/careers • Teacher and curriculum coordinator training and technical assistance • Teacher and school accountability system

7. Teacher Awareness of Jobs & Careers Helpful CareerStart Lessons Tied to SCS What Makes CareerStart Work? • CareerStart Promotes: • Student school engagement • Career thinking • Classroom relevance • Parent conversations • Attention in the classroom • Learning Teacher Values & Pedagogy Coherence

8. How Big is CareerStart Today? • 24 Schools in 6 School Districts • 475 Teachers Providing CareerStart Lessons • 14,500 Students Hearing More Career Relevant Instruction

9. How Do We Know This Works? • Longitudinal study of nearly 8,000 students from WSFCS • Cohort 1 tracked from end of 5th grade to end of 8th grade (now in 9th grade) • Random assignment of 14 schools • Data merged from teacher reports of lessons taught, teacher values survey, student surveys, administrative data, EOG scores

10. How Much Career Relevant Instruction is Happening? • How much difference does using CareerStart lessons make? • 20% increase in student reports of teachers offering career examples

11. What Difference Does This Make For: Student School Engagement? Engagement scale includes: extent to which students find school exciting, look forward to learning new things at school, and see school as being important in their lives

12. What Difference Does This Make For: Student School Engagement?

13. What Difference Does This Make For: Students’ Valuing Their Education? Valuing scale includes: school is important, useful, important for getting a job, not a waste of time, and dropping out would be a mistake

14. What Difference Does This Make For: Student Attendance?

15. What Difference Does This Make For: Student Suspension Rates?

16. What Difference Does This Make For: End-of-Grade Test Scores

17. What Difference Does This Make For: End-of-Grade Test Scores Summary: Students overall perform better on EOG tests but the greatest benefits occur for low-income Black and Hispanic students on their math OEGs 17

18. Student Perspectives “I like it when they talk about career stuff, because then I’ll get an idea of my future. But I would like it if they would do it a bit more.” “A lot of students would ask during class how this would be related to real life, how we would use this for life. He told us.” “They [CareerStart lessons] are more educational… It helped put my education in a larger perspective, like, how is education going to help me in life?” “I’ll hear some people talking about like in math, they’ll be like when is this going to relate in life, and the teacher would be like well actually you are going to use this in so and so job, and it just kind of keeps you motivated.” 18

19. Teacher Perspectives “Pretty much I have done the entire unit. The kids reacted positively, I noticed that the following day, after they had the career start lesson they were more serious about their learning, which I think is very positive.” “A lot of our kids come from a place where they don’t see the connection in real life and what they are doing in school and they just don’t care. So when you show them there is a connection between what is going to happen when they turn 18 and what they are doing now, it pushes them harder in class.” “It’s been good. So far I haven’t gotten through all of them. I think they are well written and applicable to the students I teach.” 19

20. So What Do We Know So Far? • CareerStart burden is relatively light and teachers are doing it (to varying degrees) • Many good teachers are already talking about career applications within their subject areas • Students are benefiting through: • Much higher school engagement • Much improved valuing of their education • Better attendance and fewer unexcused absences • Fewer behavior problems that cause suspensions • Better EOG test scores, especially in math

21. What’s Next? • Updating the CareerStart lessons on the LearnNC website, including 8th grade courses • More analyses to assess CareerStart impacts: • Results from teacher and student focus groups soon • Detailed analysis of teacher and student data to assess effects of student and teacher experiences & values • Results on early dropout from 8th and 9th grades • Search for continued funding and support