Around 160,000 high school seniors graduated in Florida last year. But how many of them were ready for college or a career? One state lawmaker has filed a bill he’s hoping will give Florida graduates a fighting chance in the post-high school world.
College and career readiness has a different definition depending whom you ask, but most use standardized test scores as a helpful rubric. Last year’s ACT scores suggest fewer than one-in-five Florida grads is college-ready. West Park Democratic State Representative Shevrin Jones said his bill would create a blueprint for career-readiness courses that include job placement testing, resume writing and financial management components.
“The school is the child’s second – second place of learning, home first and then the school second. Where we shouldn’t just be teaching them curriculum, we should also be teaching them how to live,” Jones explained in a phone interview Tuesday. “So, the first thing I said was that we just can’t teach them – just show them how to graduate from college but after you graduate, how do you survive?”
Jones, a former educator, added teachers can become overwhelmed with teaching for standardized tests, to the point they often don’t have time to prepare kids for a career. He says by requiring schools to make a readiness course available, teachers could do more to prepare their students for the real world.
