 Hi everyone, welcome to this presentation during the 2021 illicep dual credit summit. Very excited to be bringing this to you today. If you're watching this recording, it's either because the Illinois P20 network has posted it to YouTube as a resource overview on the college and career pathway endorsements in Illinois, or it's because I was unable to present at the illicep dual credit summit as a result of vaccine dose number two. Either way, this is a really exciting and important time to be looking at the college and career pathway endorsements. Year one of the actual implementation of the college and career pathway endorsements with high school graduating 12th graders being able to earn them was this past school year at the start of the pandemic. And Richard High School did have a handful of students that earned those endorsements in year one. And now as we emerge from the pandemic with virus, excuse me, with vaccine implementation increasing on a daily and weekly basis with school activities beginning with preparations for in-person graduations underway at both the secondary and post-secondary level. Now is the time to begin planning for the future with regards to the college and career pathway endorsements in Illinois. And specifically, as we consider illicep, the dual credit has a very important feature in the overall setup of the college and career pathway endorsement. So it's really important for those of us that are involved in dual credit to understand the bigger structure of the college and career pathway endorsements as well as the rationale behind them and then how dual credit fits in, what it's going to mean for leaders in the area of dual credit at both the post-secondary and the secondary level. So with that said, let's dive in and learn a little bit more about the college and career pathway endorsements. First of all, we're obviously not going to discuss this as it's a recording, but think about your career pathway story. If you're watching this, you're probably an educator. When did you decide that you wanted to become an educator? And as you continue to think about that, think about your experience in school, particularly in high school, also in middle school, as well as beyond high school, and how that experience prepared you for the career that you're in today or didn't necessarily prepare you for the career that you're in today. So some questions that are important to think about, these questions can be very helpful for engaging our educator colleagues at all levels, as well as for engaging parents and community members, even students themselves, particularly seniors in high school, post-secondary students. Did you take aptitude tests or career interest surveys in middle school or high school? If so, were they used and how were they used? Were they meaningful and part of your ongoing process of thinking about your career? Did you have counseling opportunities to explore a range of possible careers? Did you have workplace experiences through school as a regular part of your high school experience? And finally, did your high school classes, the classes themselves, prepare you with and for the skills that you use daily in the workplace today? I thought I had great experience in high school, and yet I know what my answers are to these questions. And my high school experience was one thing, and my career experience has been something entirely different. So we're going to start with a quick overview of the PWR Act. And the PWR Act is the Post-Secondary Workforce Readiness Act. It was passed in Illinois in 2016. It was extraordinarily bipartisan and that was particularly notable given the fact that at the time, Illinois was hard getting. It was difficult, excuse me, in Illinois getting basic things like passing a budget done and this was done in an exemplary way. There are four key elements of the Post-Secondary Workforce Readiness Act. There's the PACE framework, which we're only going to talk about one of these for today, though the Illinois P-20 Network offers a wide range of supports for all of these. And the PACE framework is also supported by the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. You can go to their website to learn more about it. They also offer workshops regarding the PACE framework as does the Illinois P-20 Network. There's competency-based learning systems. Again, that's something we're not going to talk about now, but certainly you can feel free to contact us at the Illinois P-20 Network for more information on that. There's transitional instruction and that's both transitional math and transitional English as we sit here in the spring of 2021. And it's important to note that the goal of transitional instruction, the transitional classes are specifically targeted for individual 12th graders to help them avoid participating in developmental classes at the post-secondary level, developmental classes that do not count towards their degree, that do take up limited time and money with regards to financial aid. And so transitional math, transitional English are both on the books in Illinois. And we are finishing up the pilot year of transitional English during this 2020-2021 school year in Illinois. And so as we look to 21-22, both transitional math and transitional English will be fully embraced across the state. And again, if you need support with regards to those, you can contact us at the Illinois P-20 Network. We're happy to point you in the right direction. And then finally, the college and career pathway endorsements. And that's what we're going to be talking about in this presentation, because the college and career pathway endorsements do have significant connections with dual credit that are very important to their successful implementation, as we'll explain. So what are the Illinois college and career pathways? Well, first of all, we have these seven pathways. So many of you, regardless of whether you work in a school district or post-secondary institution, might be familiar with the previous career clusters, the 16 career clusters. With the college and career pathway endorsements, we have these seven Illinois career college pathways, agriculture, food and natural resources, arts and communications, finance and business services, health sciences and technology, human and public services, information technology and manufacturing, engineering, technology and trades. And so all careers fall in at least one of those pathways. There are many people's day-to-day work experiences who actually cut across multiple career pathways, two or more even. And so with that said, the idea is that students, if they go through a certain set of experiences, both in the classroom and beyond, and we'll show you those next, they can earn a college and career pathway endorsement, one of these seven areas on their transcript and their diploma. And we'll talk about what that endorsement means in just a moment, too. So first of all, what does it take for a 12th grader in the state of Illinois to earn a college and career pathway endorsement? Well, first of all, schools should have individual plans that each student works on, ideally with counselor, with their teachers, the involvement of their parents or guardians. And that plan should cover everything from career goals to financial aid to resume work to, obviously, their post-secondary planning. So that's at the top. At the bottom, I'm going to jump down to the red bar at the bottom. That is the acknowledgement that we have to have transitional instruction in place. So transitional math, transitional English courses need to be there. Now, that doesn't mean that all students who earn an endorsement are going to take those courses far from it. Many students will not need those courses and will be spending 12th grade in college level or college preparatory math or English classes that are not the transitional instruction courses. And that's great. That's wonderful. But you do have to have those so that we can ensure that when students leave high school and engage in post-secondary experiences, they're ready for them, and that's what those courses are designed to do. So then the bulk of this work is in the yellow and the green rows here, the second and third rows in this graphic. And so the second row says that there must be a sequence of courses and at least six hours of that coursework or two courses must have the potential of earning early college credit. So it could be advanced placement, it could be dual credit, could be part of an IB program. Obviously, there's a whole lot of reasons that most people that are engaged with illicep are well aware of that dual credit really shines when it comes to this, but what it's really important. Well, I'll say this again in just a minute, that those early college credit courses specifically align with the career pathway that a student is pursuing. In addition to that, we have the green bar and there must be work-based learning experiences and opportunities for students to interact with adults in the occupation, in the profession, in those workspaces, ideally. So first of all, at the very bottom of that green bar, students must participate in at least two team-based challenges with adult mentoring from an experienced individual in that field. Oftentimes, those team-based challenges are likely going to take place in the courses that fall in the sequence in that yellow second row. But those team-based challenges could take place outside of coursework. They could take place through co-curricular activities like like FFA or DECA, for example, or SkillsUSA. I mean, there's all kinds of examples that they could take place through summer camps like at NIU scheme, we have summer camps where we're aligning camp experiences with career pathway endorsement team-based challenges. So they could come from other places. And then in addition to the coursework and the team-based challenges, students need to participate in at least 60 hours of internship work. They could be delivered through two micro-internships of at least 30 hours each or one internship of at least 60 hours of a work-based learning. And those internships can be paid. That is obviously very, very important for so many reasons. So when you earn a career pathway endorsement and that's stamped onto your diploma and transcript, what that means is you have demonstrated that you have mastered a set of competencies. And so the competencies are developed within each of the college and career pathway areas. So this one on screen right now is from Finance and Business Services, and it would mean you know about financial reporting, financial statements, you know about sales and CRMs, you understand project management and principles of cash and capital, etc. And so that's really important. And that means that in those courses as well as in those work-based learning experiences, you're getting to learn about these things. And students are being assessed on these things. These become the basis for our assessments. So there are technical competencies and these technical competencies exist in each of the seven career pathway areas and in five of them, they're fully developed. The human and public services competencies that have been published represent really education competencies as educators in the K-12 or the pre-K-12 space in the school district setting. You'll see they align very closely with the Danielson framework. And currently the agriculture food natural resources competencies are being developed as I record this. So those you will not find those in the competencies document, but they are coming. And so these are the kinds of things that students will know and be able to do it. Obviously, both employers and a post-secondary faculty will be thrilled to know that students can do these things. And that's where we want students who've earned a career pathway endorsement through their high school experience to be able to leverage that knowledge and skills and either get financial support or get a new and additional opportunities to engage in authentic activities post high school as they move through their both formal educational experiences and through their early career experiences in addition to the technical competencies that exist for each of the college and career pathway areas. There are these all important cross sector essential employability competency statements. There's also the entrepreneurial competencies and these are all captured on page six of the competency document, which is linked on the PWR act.org website. And so these are these are what we've heard for decades really going back to the early 1980s and the work being done at the federal level at that time. And it continues today at all levels that these are the kinds of skills that students coming out of school, whether it be high school or out of an undergraduate associate's degree or bachelor's degree or technical school experience, these are the skills that they need to have. And so we need to be explicitly teaching these skills, giving students opportunities to practice these skills, providing students with feedback on these skills and then ultimately assessing that they're competent in these skills. And these are critical across all different kinds of workplaces. So coming back to our career pathway endorsement graphic, we have this career focused instructional sequence, this set of courses, the course sequence that needs to be developed for each career pathway. These will look different from school to school and certainly from school district to school district. And this is one of the areas where school districts tend to start their work. And so remembering that students need to have the ability to earn at least six hours of early college credit or the equivalent of two early college credit classes, this is really where, well, it can be advanced placement, dual credit or IB classes. There is really a great opportunity here for dual credit classes. And as school districts engage in developing more and more different types of college and career pathway endorsements, they're going to need to implement more and more different types of early college credit classes. The majority of which are likely to be dual credit classes. So this is really, really important for ILSEP and ILSEP members to know and to lead on and to help others around the state of Illinois as we implement this. And it's really important to remember that the classes that fall into the sequence must be aligned specifically with the career pathway endorsement. So, for example, AP language while developing a set of skills that is very important across many different career pathways is not going to count as an early college credit course if for most maybe nearly all career pathway endorsements. So certainly thinking about IT, the work you do in AP language is not going to to count as one of your early credit course sequences in the IT career pathway endorsement versus a dual credit computer repair class absolutely would count as an early college credit course in that course sequence for an IT dual credit endorsement. So it's also important to remember that ISB is beginning the process now really implementing the CCRIs, the College and Career Readiness Indicators. These will be published on the report card and these will count in the summative designation formula for school districts in the ESSA designations. And it's really important to note that dual credit appears under both the academic indicators category and the career indicators category. But there's subtle and important differences. So a dual credit English or math course counts as an academic indicator, a dual credit career pathway course, which may or may not be a CTE course. It does not necessarily have to be a CTE course. It has to be a course that earns dual credit in the service of a career pathway endorsement and that will count as a career indicator. Now notice there are differences in what grade a student needs to earn as well under the academic indicators for the dual credit English, the dual credit math courses. If a student earns an A, a B or a C, those will count towards the College and Career Readiness Indicator, the CCRI. In the career indicator category, it does have to be a grade of an A or B. And of course, we would like to see all of our students performing at that really excellent level in these dual credit courses and knowing they're really excited and engaged with what they're doing and prepared for post-secondary instruction while still in high school. So this is another real benefit to quote one administrator in a school district who said, if we're fully implementing the career pathway endorsements, if we're moving down that road, I'm not worried about the College and Career Readiness Indicators as a separate thing to worry about because we're going to be checking these things off for each of our students as we take care of moving them through the career pathway endorsements. And that was a very insightful comment by that by that educator, that school administrator. It's certainly true. So remember, the College and Career Readiness Indicators will start appearing on the report card and then from there, we'll count in the summative designations. And so so those are real and important ways to also help work in dual credit into your conversations that you're having in in school districts, certainly. And for community college and other post-secondary staff members at all levels to be aware that these are important factors for school districts related to the College and Career Pathways and related to dual credit. So we do offer the Career Pathways User Group, which is not specifically related to dual credit. You certainly can email me to join that group. We have a Google group. There is information shared via the Google group. And we have monthly meetings. Today's meeting was was canceled for the Ilsep Dual Credit Summit. We also have our dual credit think tank. If you'd like to get involved with that, you can also email me at Jason.Cline at niu.edu. And if you'd like to get in touch and involve with the P20 network, you can visit our website, P20network.niu.edu, excuse me, visit us, connect with us on Twitter. Follow us there, twitter.com slash P20network. And then we have our newsletter that comes out every other Friday. And that's a longer link, but we will connect to that in the description here. I hope this has helped give you a brief interview. We offer full, lengthy, half day online workshops that meet the Illinois Administrator Academy requirements about the career pathway endorsements. We can dive much deeper with this there. We also do work individually with school districts around this. You can certainly contact us for assistance directly from the Illinois P20 network, along with our partners who've led so much of this work at Education Systems Center. Thank you so much. And if you have questions, please reach out.