The buzzword in Kentucky public education these days is transition readiness, including the preparation of students for both academic advancement and career opportunities. The Kentucky Educational Development Corporation (KEDC) has developed a program to assist schools and students to achieve these goals.
Achievement in Career Engagement (ACE) helps students develop work-based learning skills through an endorsement program which allows students to record various levels of achievement through the documentation of successful accomplishments. These accomplishments are personalized by students and confirmed and validated by KEDC.
During a session at KSBA’s Winter Symposium, KEDC Projects and Operations Director Clabe Slone explained how students can earn badges that reflect their accomplishments in five areas – soft skills, work skills, leadership skills, civic responsibilities and academics on an ACE profile page.
“Those are things (employers) want to see from students coming out of college and/or high school. We’re trying to showcase those skills,” Slone said.
KEDC began building the program in fall 2017 and initially made the program available to 10 high schools they were already working with through a Youth Career Connect (YCC) grant. Phase one included each of these 10 schools using ACE with 25 students, allowing KEDC to obtain feedback from students and career counselors. Phase two added 50 more students per school. The program has now expanded to 15 schools.
“We really listened to the kids, what they said, what appealed to them, and what kept them coming back,” Slone said. “Students found ACE easier to navigate than their current individual learning plans (ILP) and helpful when filling out job, scholarship and college applications.”
Career counselors from schools using the program told KEDC that ACE could fit into an ILP platform, but that it wasn’t the original intention, “Because if you make it an ILP platform, guess what? Nobody will want to do it,” Slone said. “ACE is a process where ALL students can achieve in areas that will prepare them to be career ready.”
The counselors suggested adding a place in ACE for students to keep a resume, transcripts, letters of recommendation and other things they’d need to access quickly. Additionally, it was suggested that parents should have access to view their children’s information in the platform. These suggestions are now a pivotal part of the program.
Starting in January the high schools currently using ACE will be able to allow every student access and use.
“At the end of that month we’ll have an idea of where it kind of stands,” Slone said. “Then we’ll make it available to any high school that wants to start that process.”
Each high school’s career counselors assist the students with the program. The ACE Career Counselor Info Guide is available at no charge on KEDC’s website.
Schools that purchase the ACE program will receive training for teams of five representing each high school with five instructional sessions throughout the first year.
After the training, KEDC plans to establish regional networks with high schools that the team members can attend once a quarter to get input from KEDC and other local agencies.
In order to be compliant with the Kentucky Department of Education, Slone said the program has to be used for grades 6-12 instead of ACE’s current 9-12 platform, so KEDC has added another platform for middle school grades called Navigator.
KEDC could take that a step further by providing a K-12 platform, but districts would have the option of choosing the age ranges they prefer
For more information on the program and its cost, go to KEDC's
website or
email Slone.