More College and Career Ready Resources

Reducing barriers to postsecondary education, January 2012

College and Career Ready Summit: Moving Idaho Forward

Idaho Commission for Libraries hosted a summit in Boise August 16-17, 2012 with community partners to establish connections among libraries and community partners to work on college and career readiness challenges; raise awareness of available online resources; and create action steps for building healthy, inclusive communities. The Commission brought together people from all areas of
the state who represent Idaho libraries, state agencies, and post-secondary
educational institutions to facilitate discussion and next-steps planning to
ensure that more students are college and career ready.

The goal of the summit was to provide an opportunity for committed participants to share an expanded vision of how to prepare Idaho students with information and communication technology skills, and develop specific plans to leverage each agency’s resources and roles through Idaho libraries and online access.

Libraries play an important role already in helping Idaho kids graduate from high school ready to be successful in higher education or a career. For 15 years, the Commission has dedicated resources to the beginning of that continuum by supporting public libraries and their community partners in “Read to Me” early literacy programs. Idaho libraries provide access to a growing number of online resources that support both formal and informal education, including the 21st century skills that are increasingly needed for success in today’s world. Thanks to the broadband project, “online @ your library,” many Idaho public libraries have significantly more computers and broadband capacity available free to the public to access those resources.

With the current statistics – Idaho children in poverty, high-school drop-outs, students who need remediation when they get to college, and who don’t graduate from college – we see the need to expand beyond that first phase of early literacy to help Idaho librarians identify what more we can do collectively to support student success at every phase of the continuum.

Notes from Summit

Click on the links below to see the ideas, challenges, and opportunities that were discussed in various activities of the summit:

• Executive Summary
• Networking Notes: Participants went on an information quest for college and career ready resources, networked with colleagues, and included their thoughts on flip charts.
• Debrief and Voting Notes: Participants captured reactions to keynote speech and other information gathered
  during the evening and “voted” on intriguing ideas to discuss further.
• Conversation Cafe Notes: Facilitated participant discussion.
• Think-Pair-Share Notes: Participants discuss what they can do on individual, organizational, and state levels.

Presentations from Summit

- Garry Golden, Futurist:  Keynote
- Brent D. Reinke, Director, Idaho Department of Correction: The Broken Pipeline
- Dawn Schatz, Coordinator, Clark Fork GEAR UP and library staff member: Gear Up and Idaho Stats
- Kay Flowers, Idaho State University, Director of Academic Programs: Remediation and Retention
- Alex Macdonald, Director of Instructional Technology at the Idaho State Department of Education, New Programs for Students Come First

Handouts and electronic resources from Summit

Agenda
Speaker Bios
College and Career Ready Concept paper
BTOP Overview Summer 2011
Building Digitally Inclusive Communities: A Framework, IMLS
Complete College Idaho Plan
Idaho Career Connect, Idaho Department of Labor
LearningExpress Library ebooks
LearningExpress Library Resources and Tests
LearningExpress Library Software Tutorials
LiLI Resources for STEM
Maximize Your Job Search workbook, Idaho Department of Labor
Statewide Online Resources,  Idaho Commission for Libraries
Students Come First handout

Websites with Additional Resources
- "online @ your library" Project: http://libraries.idaho.gov/online
- Digital Literacy Resources: http://libraries.idaho.gov/page/digital-literacy
- LearningExpress Library, LiLI Databases, and links to other "online @ your library" online Resources: http://lili.org
- Scout Video Collections: http://scout.lili.org

Photos from Summit

View at http://www.flickr.com/photos/icflphotos/sets/72157631182807464/.

Watch for more information, continued discussions, and next steps coming from the College and Career Ready Summit: Moving Idaho Forward.

College and Career Ready Summit: August 16-17 in Boise

Idaho Commission for Libraries is hosting a "College and Career Ready Summit: Moving Idaho Forward" August 16–17, 2012, at the Riverside Hotel in Boise. The purpose of this summit is to facilitate discussion and next-steps planning with other community partners to address the student dropout rate in Idaho and ensure that more students are prepared with 21st Century information, communication and technology skills. And, as Idaho educators look to online learning, digital literacy and computer/Internet access for students become even more critical.

The Commission is providing travel stipends by reimbursement based on the criteria listed on this PDF.

Presenters include Garry Golden, Selena Grace, and Brent D. Reinke.

• Garry Golden is a professionally trained Futurist who speaks and consults on issues shaping society and business in the 21st century. Golden has consulted on a wide range of projects related to the future of infrastructure for energy and transportation, education/learning, emerging markets, social technologies and the implications of demographic transitions.
• Selena Grace, Chief Academic Officer at the Office of the State Board of Education, will be presenting information from the new Complete College Idaho Plan.
• Idaho Department of Correction Director Brent D. Reinke and representatives from Idaho State University and the Gear Up program are featured panel members.

Please join us and discover how your library can get involved; learn about available online resources; establish connections among libraries and community partners to work on college and career readiness challenges; and create action steps for building healthy, inclusive communities. Registration deadline is July 27, 2012.

• Where: Riverside Hotel, Boise, Idaho
• When: August 16-- 3:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. (MDT)
  August 17-- 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. (MDT)
• For registration and agenda: Click here
• For travel reimbursement information: Click here
• Registration deadline: July 27, 2012

If you have questions, please feel free to contact Stephanie Bailey-White at Stephanie.Bailey-White@libraries.idaho.gov.

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The startling statistics

• Nearly 5,800 students did not graduate from Idaho’s high schools in 2010; the lost lifetime earnings in Idaho for that class of dropouts alone totals over $1.5 billion⁽¹⁾  
• Idaho ranks 46^th of all states in college completion at 22.3 percent⁽²⁾
• Nearly 1 in 4 Idaho students fails to graduate from high school with a regular diploma in 4 years⁽³⁾  

Each type of Idaho library plays various roles to support student learning, helping prepare Idaho students to succeed in college, career, and civic life. College and Career Ready is a movement to facilitate discussion and create an action plan to help libraries, along with other community partners, address one of Idaho’s gravest challenges: reducing the student dropout rate and ensuring that more students are college and career ready.

The Idaho library community has done some preliminary work through its College and Career Ready initiative and has identified three areas that will have the greatest effect on dropout rates 1) preparing more children to be school ready; 2) helping reduce the summer slide; and 3) strengthening school libraries.

The College and Career Ready concept has been presented to the Idaho Library Association (ILA) Executive Board, two ILA Divisions, and Idaho Commission for Libraries’ advisory groups. Ideas emerging from the ongoing conversation include creating an action plan that engages all types of libraries and the possibility of a 2012 summit. Watch for coming information on how your library can get involved with this urgent effort, and join the College and Career Ready discussions at any of the ILA Spring Conferences.

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Education begins at home

•  The more parents read to their young children, the better their grades in high school. Parents who did this daily had students with much higher PISA scores.
•  Simply asking (and listening attentively), "How was your day?" affected performance as much as private tutoring.
• Yes, households with higher incomes were more likely to have involved parents; however, in any socioeconomic category the first two factors above markedly increased scores.

The study also concluded that student-parent time like this more positively impacted performance than did parent involvement in PTA and board meetings or classroom volunteering. The full PISA study is called "Back to School: How parent involvement affects student achievement." Accessed at http://www.cdapress.com/columns/sholeh_patrick/article_8fe0814c-9764-5ecc-8c13-5f99b49bb4a6.html, “Education Begins at Home,” 12/21/2011

Thomas Friedman also wrote about the PISA study and one by the National School Boards Association’s Center for Public Education (The study, called “Back to School: How parent involvement affects student achievement”) last month in the NYTimes Sunday Review (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-about-better-parents.html?_r=1&ref=organizationforeconomiccooperationanddevelopment)

Both of these studies dig deeper into what “parent involvement” means and conclude that some forms are more effective than others.