The Georgia Work Ready Certificate enables individuals to demonstrate to employers a fitness for employment and increased salaries and promotions. Their success will improve their own quality of life and make their communities better places.
To assist Georgia communities in attracting new business and preserving the health of their existing economic base, Governor Sonny Perdue and the Georgia Chamber of Commerce have partnered on the Georgia Certified Work Ready Community initiative, a means of demonstrating that the community's existing labor force can fill existing job vacancies and meet changing labor needs. Under this program, counties which demonstrate a commitment to improving high school graduation rates and where specified percentages of graduates entering the workplace, current workers and the unemployed obtain a Work Ready Certificate will be designated Georgia Certified Work Ready Communities.
Although the Certified Work Ready Community program is new as a statewide effort, broadly similarly programs have met with considerable success in Grand Junction, Colorado, and Lake Havasu Unified School District, a two-county area of Arizona.
The following is excerpted from Crisis at the Core, Preparing All Students for College and Work, copyright 2006 by ACT, Inc.
Action Plan for Business and Community Leaders
As a nation, we can no longer afford to graduate high school students who are not ready for college or the workplace. A well-defined and rigorous core curriculum is needed now. In order to succeed after high school, every high school student should take the Courses for Success: Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and upper-level mathematics courses beyond Algebra II. Everyone has a critical role to play in helping to realize this goal: educational leaders and policymakers, business and community leaders, parents and students. Your assistance is necessary and important. Here are some of the ways in which you can help in this effort.
Common Focus
- Raise awareness within the business community and the broader community at large about the importance of all students being ready for college and work when they graduate from high school.
- Encourage a common understanding between K–12 and postsecondary institutions as to what students need to know to be ready for college and workplace success. Identify a common set of expectations for students.
- Establish collaborations between business and education that have a mission to promote, monitor, and support college and work readiness for all students.
High Expectations
- Raise expectations that all students can meet college and workplace readiness standards.
- Encourage educators to incorporate college and workplace readiness standards into their curricular frameworks in a coherent, focused, grade-by-grade progression.
- Encourage school boards to adopt and implement a district-wide policy that reinforces the commitment that all students be enrolled in a rigorous high school curriculum that prepares all students for college and work.
Rigorous Curriculum
- Promote a systematic evaluation of school curriculum frameworks in English/language arts, mathematics, and science to ensure that they are introducing, reaffirming, and confirming mastery of the important rigorous skills needed for college and workplace success.
- Promote a systematic evaluation of the core curriculum and the Courses for Success (Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and advanced mathematics courses beyond Algebra II) to make sure that teachers are teaching the rigorous skills that students must learn.
- Promote collaborations with postsecondary institutions and with online providers of postsecondary courses to expand course offerings to students through dual enrollment, summer enrichment programs, or distance learning.
- Commit funding to curriculum improvement initiatives.
Student Guidance
- Expand and evaluate efforts to provide career and educational planning services to all students.
- Ensure that career and educational planning activities are begun early, at least by the middle school/junior high school years.
- Through media campaigns, raise public awareness of the importance of taking an adequate number and kind of high school courses.
Measure Progress
- Provide funds to schools for assessments that identify those students who are not making adequate progress, whose aspirations are too low, or whose coursework plans do not include the critical courses necessary for college and workplace readiness.
