CAP4K Town Hall Meeting in Sterling Next Week on Postsecondary and Workforce Readiness

The Colorado Department of Education and the Colorado Department of Higher Education will jointly host a town hall meeting next week in Sterling as part of the ongoing effort to establish a description of "postsecondary and workforce readiness."

 

Next week's meeting is 5–7 p.m. Wednesday, April 22 at the RE-1 Valley School District's Hagen Administration Center, 301 Hagen St., Sterling.

Educators, students, parents, business and community members, and interested citizens are invited to the meeting – the eighth in a series of 13 statewide meetings to solicit a broad spectrum of community thinking.

 

The work was launched by Senate Bill 08-212, the "Preschool to Postsecondary Education Alignment Act" also known as the Colorado Achievement Plan for Kids (CAP4K).

 

The town hall forum will focus on such questions as:

 

• What do students need to be workforce ready?
• What do students need to be postsecondary ready?
• Are there special considerations for the workforce or higher education in your region of the state?

 

S.B. 08-212 requires that the Colorado State Board of Education and the

Colorado Commission on Higher Education adopt a description of "postsecondary and workforce readiness" by Dec. 15, 2009.

 

Further, S.B. 08-212 seeks to establish a seamless pathway from preschool into college or the workplace. Essential to that pathway is an understanding of what it means to be ready for education or the workforce after high school and a plan to ensure that students take the necessary courses and master the content to do so.

 

The description of postsecondary and workforce readiness will provide a bookend to a description of "school readiness," which was adopted by the

Colorado State Board of Education in December 2008.

 

These descriptions of school readiness and postsecondary and workforce readiness will guide the final selection of new statewide model content standards, which are being revised for the first time since they were adopted

13 years ago.

 

Similar community meetings are scheduled from 5–7 p.m. for Tuesday, May 5 in Steamboat Springs; Thursday, May 14 in Glenwood Springs; and Tuesday, May 19 in Durango. Additional meetings also are being planned in Limon (rescheduled from March 26) and Boulder. Precise locations are to be announced.