OSDE releases tools to help districts in Individual Career Academic Planning
OKLAHOMA CITY (March 4, 2019) – The Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) today launched OKEdge.com, a website aimed at preparing Oklahoma students for life beyond high school, and OSDEconnect, an online learning community designed to encourage networking and collaboration among students, educators and Oklahoma business leaders.
“It’s never too early for students to begin planning for the future,” said Joy Hofmeister, State Superintendent of Public Instruction. “It is our hope that these robust resources will help prepare them for the unique challenges of the 21st-century workforce and encourage members of the community to step up and shine a light on the career opportunities available to our students right here at home.”The launch of these resources coincides with OSDE’s ongoing efforts to ensure all Oklahoma students graduate college and career ready. One of the goals in Oklahoma Edge, OSDE’s 8-year strategic plan for education, prioritizes high-quality career planning by ensuring 100 percent of students in grades 6 through 12 engage in a useful and meaningful process of Individual Career and Academic Planning, or ICAP. ICAP is collaborative, with students, families and educators working together to expose students to academic and career development activities while encouraging them to evaluate their personal interests and strengths, develop postsecondary goals and create a plan to achieve them.ICAPs will become a requirement for ninth-graders beginning in the 2019-20 school year. After full ICAP implementation, Oklahoma will join 33 states with career-planning requirements for public education students.“We know that approximately 77 percent of jobs in Oklahoma are projected to require more than a high school diploma by 2025,” said Hofmeister. “ICAP implementation, paired with the resources available on OKEdge.com and OSDEconnect, will help us bridge the gap between the needs of our future workforce and the current educational attainment of our graduates. We can help ensure that all students in Oklahoma are well prepared for the future, but we need to work together and collaborate to make that happen.”Built for students, families, educators, business and the community, the website OKEdge.com includes resources such as business and education partnership guides, best practices for creating a successful college- and career-ready culture, links to financial aid and scholarship information and local success stories. The website also includes information on how parents can encourage career exploration in their children, how educators can support their students before and during the ICAP process and how businesses can plug in to what’s happening in classrooms across the state to ensure that K-12 education is better aligned with their needs.In conjunction with the website launch, OSDE also released an ICAP Toolkit to strengthen ICAP implementation. The toolkit, which features resources written by counselors who piloted the ICAP program, walks educators through how to create a district- or school-wide ICAP action plan, including how to incorporate college and career curriculum into classroom lessons and successfully reach out to local business leaders for support. The toolkit is now available on OKEdge.com.
Also linkable through OKEdge.com, OSDEconnect allows students to engage in and explore postsecondary options while providing an online space for educators, parents and business leaders to network and build career pathway strategies related to their local workforce. The interactive platform also features industry videos that highlight high-demand careers in Oklahoma and will allow business professionals to connect virtually to Oklahoma classrooms. Other platform resources include scholarship and college/career fair information, career pathway infographics and interviews with college and CareerTech students. To access these resources, users will need to create an account. “It is imperative that students understand that postsecondary planning is a collaborative process that starts now, not after high school graduation,” said Hofmeister. “Equipped with this portfolio of career-planning tools, we are putting them on the fast-track to future success.”