Understanding the Alignment of Arkansas College and Career Readiness Indicators with the Employability Skills Framework

The Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) is committed to ensuring that every student graduates ready for college, career, and community engagement. To enhance ADE’s understanding of the skills a student must master to demonstrate readiness and use this information to help ADE consider which of their indicators to prioritize as they support districts, REL Southwest led three training sessions to guide ADE staff in assessing the alignment of their college and career readiness indicators to the research-based Employability Skills Framework (ESF).

In the first session, REL Southwest staff introduced participants to the ESF and a matrix for documenting evidence to determine whether students are mastering specific skills outlined in the ESF. In the second session, REL Southwest staff aided participants in completing the matrix and facilitated a group discussion of alignment and gaps between state indicators and skills from the ESF. During the final session, ADE participants reviewed the results of the alignment activities, reflected on what they had learned from those activities, and identified implications for their college and career readiness work internally and with external partners.

Related research partnership: Southwest College and Career Readiness

Resources

Session 1:

Agenda (176 KB)
Slide deck (3 MB)

Session 2:

Agenda (167 KB)
Slide deck (1.2 MB)

Session 3:

Agenda (223 KB)
Slide deck (716 KB)

Handouts and Tools: