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3/11/2010
ACT and the National Center for Construction Education and Research (NCCER) announced a partnership to integrate the NCRC into the NCCER set of certificates. Read more here...
The Manufacturers' Councils and Community Colleges of West Michigan met today to plan a jointly sponsored NAM Skills Certification System event for April 20, 2010. Jennifer McNelly, senior vice president, the Manufacturing Institute, the education affiliate of NAM, previewed the NAM SCS Presentation with the planning team via conference call today. Save the morning of April 20th for our NAM SCS event. Jennifer McNelly will be here in person to tell us more about the NAM-Endorsed system. Click here for the invitation and agenda. For more information visit the NAM Skills Certification System website.
The Capital Area Michigan Works! is launching an NCRC employer outreach campaign in the Greater Lansing area in partnership with the local schools, Ingham ISD, Eaton ISD, Clinton ISD, Lansing Community College, DeLEG and the Mid-Michigan Innovation Team. Click here to visit GreaterLansingNCRC.org 2/20/2010
The NCRC and Career Ready 101 each earned a spot at the top of the list for Career Planning Tools in the Department of Labor’s Tools for America’s Job Seekers Challenge. This was the Department of Labor’s first foray into the use of crowd sourcing and other web 2.0 technologies. Over the course of the three month challenge, over 16,000 registered users cast 30,000 votes for the 634 submitted tools. The Department of Labor has examined these tools, users, and votes for fraud, abuse, and other questionable content and has posted the top tools in alphabetical order on www.careeronestop.org/jobseekertools. 2/19/2010
Soon we'll be moving to www.ncrcadvocates.org to shift to a national focus. We will offer our support to advocates in all 50 states to help our colleagues across the nation aggregate the voices of employers. By working together, we can show that there are thousands of employers using CRCs and NCRCs to improve their hiring decisions.
We just completed upgrades to the website to enable the advocates to grow into all 3099 counties in all 50 states. Views for State and County were added to the Public Contacts and Employer LOC databases. Click on the + in front of the State and County names to expand the list. Click on Sign Up to add your name to the public contacts list. Visit the Employer page to learn how to register an Employer Letter of Commitment. 2/3/2010
The National Skills Coalition released a preliminary analysis of the FY 2011 budget request to Congress and prepared a preliminary survey of programs and proposals that impact job training and education policy. Download a copy.
Steve Kneubuehl, Paul Calvagna, and Pat Hayes are working together in Illinois. They sent us a newspaper clip of the article with the title "$200K for job training; Manzullo announces plan to support WorkKeys, COE" And, a copy of the press release. 2/2/2010
The United States Manufacturing Council included the NAM-Endorsed Skills Certification System and the NCRC in its recommendations. Click here to view the Manufacturing Council website, the recommendation letter, or the background details. Look at points 4 and 5 of section 3 of the background for full details (top of page 10). Manufacturing & Technology News reported January 12, 2010 that Fred Keller, chairman of Cascade Engineering and chairman of the Manufacturing Council, discussed these recommendations in a conference call with Commerce Secretary Gary Locke. 1/30/2010
A new report "Mapping Green Career Pathways: Job Training Infrastructure and Opportunities in Michigan" was published this month by Corporation for a Skilled Workforce.
McPherson fiberglass insulation manufacturer Johns Manville has taken a difference approach to finding qualified applicants for its open positions. In June 2009, it began using the Kansas WorkReady certificate program to screen and test all of its applicants in an effort to streamline the interview and hiring process. Click here to read more. Visit our Value for Employers page for links to more employer case studies. 1/27/2010
The Employer Letter of Commitment (LOC) was revised. We added a new toll free fax number and instructions. We will post the LOCs within 24 hours. We also made a spot for our neighbors in Illinois. So when you see the county named ILLINOIS, don't be alarmed. It is just a bit of being neighborly to our friends in Illinois. 1/23/2010
The Michigan NCRC Advocates passed the following resolution "We resolve to encourage and support the Department of Education of the State of Michigan to file all appropriate documents to seek and obtain approval for the NCRC to be our statewide accountability measure for all Perkins funded programs." in the January 21, 2010 meeting. Click here to download a copy of the final resolution and the cover letter to Patty Cantu at the Michigan Office of Career and Technical Education. 1/9/2010
The board of the Michigan NCRC Advocates will consider a resolution to recognize the NCRC as Michigan's Perkins accountability measure at the January 21, 2010 board meeting. Click here to download a copy of the DRAFT resolution. If you would like to provide input on this resolution prior to our board meeting please email your suggestions to: Bill Guest, Cindy Leyrer, or Dennis Dunlap. 11/22/2009
The Michigan NCRC Conference keynote and session presentations are posted on our website. The links are on the Conferences page.
The conference was a great success this year. We had over 300 in attendance, up from last year! Yet, most impressive was the quality of the content shared by our keynote speakers and session presenters. Many thanks to the conference planning committee and all of the Michigan NCRC board members and friends that helped organize and manage the conference. And a special thanks for our speakers and presenters. The NCRC is demonstrating value as an alignment tool. The certificate has become our common definition of essential skills. It enables high schools, postsecondary, workforce development, literacy, adult education, corrections, and others to all pull in the same direction. We had representatives from every area in attendance and each area presented how they are using the NCRC to help others. We also had visitors from eleven other states. It's a lot of fun to particpate in a movement where we can all pull in the same direction: where we are focused on others; our fellow citizens that need help to get their foundation skills in order as a first step in their preparation to meet the demands of the knowledge economy.
This year we had the help of four Gratiot-Isabella RESD ARRA summer youth students for our media needs. The students: Cassondra Marytn, Victoria Rodriguez, Charleigh Poindexter, and Adam Austin did a great job. Thanks to each of you for your service to our conference. And thanks to Dennis Dunlap, Ph.D., Associate Superintendent for CTE, for the idea of including students. 11/14/2009
The advocates have been busy finding a way to claim first place in something. Michigan leads the nation in the number and the percentage of Gold and Platinum certificates. We have 20,309 certificates at Gold and above. That is 25% of our total. Michigan workers have higher skills; and we have the certificates to prove it! 11/13/2009
Conference registration is up this year! We have 290 registrations as of Friday at noon and they keep rolling in. Thank you to Karen Woolman and the team at Macomb Community College for coordinating registrations for us. Looking forward to meeting you all on Monday. 11/12/2009
Good News - Bad News - The good news is that NCRC movement nationwide is alive and well. The NCRC map was updated 11/10/2009. There were significant increases among the top states resulting in: #1 South Carolina with 99,245, #2 Georgia with 93,090, #3 Michigan with 81,240 and #4 Florida with 66,572. The bad news is we dropped back to third place. It's time to pick up the pace. Links to graphics below. 10/30/2009
The Economic Mobility Project published a new report Strengthening Community Colleges' Influence on Economic Mobility this month. One of the key recommendations is: Provide career counseling and assessmment to ensure students understand the full range of job options open to them. Take a look at the highly-structured 4-step career coaching process based on the NCRC and WorkKeys Personal Skills Assessments (PSAs) on our Career Coaching page.
As we head into our conference we have much to celebrate and share. Last year we were third in terms of “certificates earned.” We did a lot of work to collect data and track progress so that we could compare our progress relative to the other states via an objective national benchmarking process. Thanks to each of you for your hard work. Michigan has moved up to the #2 position! View the ACT Map Here.
The Michigan NCRC Website continues to attract new visitors and provide useful information all around the world. The Website Analytics Report indicates 3000 new unique visitors in the last nine months for a total of 7,831 visitors from 77 countries since the site was launched. Our USA Visitor Analysis indicates over 4,000 visits from individuals outside of Michigan. We had visits from every state and Washington DC.
The annual Michigan NCRC Conference (formerly WorkKeys Conference) will be held in Lansing this year. Keynote speakers:
- Andy Levin, Deputy Director, DELEG
- Dr. Keith Bird, Corporation for a Skilled workforce
- Martin Scaglione, President and COO, ACT Workforce Division
ACT lauched a new national certificate map. This map provides data on "registered certificates." The map only includes certificates that have an ACT registration number. Click on the states to view Michigan's progress relative to other states. The other leading states are: South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. ACT announced at the National WorkKeys conference the addition of the Platinum level. More here.
The Council for Labor and Economic Growth, our state workforce board, published the report Transforming Michigan's Adult Learning Infrastructure. This report provides a wealth of data on the challenges facing adult learners and provides a path for Michigan to transform to meet these needs. The report also clearly articulates the positive impacts these investments would have on our state. 5/29/2009
ACT announced that four new talent indices have been added to the twelve attributes that the assessment currently measures. The four new indicies are: Work Discipline, Teamwork, Customer Service Orientation, and Managerial Potential. Click here for more. 3/17/2009
INSIDE HIGHER ED - March 5, 2009
WASHINGTON -- The National Association of Manufacturing is hoping it can play matchmaker to millions of workers seeking employment and thousands of companies demanding skilled laborers by endorsing a set of skills credentials. Leaders of the largest industrial trade association in the United States, along with four industry groups, announced Wednesday their support for more ... 3/1/2009We revised the map for 2009 to align with the regions of our 25 Michigan Works! Agencies. Last year our boundaries were aligned with the WIRED regions. Going forward, our work needs to align with and support DELEG, Michigan Works! Agencies, and our high schools as they help workers and students earn certificates. 2/27/2009
The West Michigan Regional Skills Alliance held a strategic planning session on Monday, February 23, 2009. The top priority selected by the team was "Foundational skills and soft skills together with structured career coaching." Click here to download the Regional Priorities Report or to visit the Regional Skills Alliance page to learn more about the session. 2/7/2009
We recently completed a survey of the most compelling literature with regard to the status and challenges facing our schools and our workforce development system. This survey has been published under the title: Skills Now! - A Case for Urgent Action to Build the Skills of America's Workers. (10.5 MB) This is an excellent source of key statistics and diagrams that demonstrate the need for the NCRC.
Seniors all across Michigan were provided an opportunity to take the Locating Information test last month. This, combined with the Reading for Information and Applid Mathematics scores from their Junior year, will enable them to earn an NCRC. Thirty-eight schools beyond the core funded areas offered LI to their seniors. Thanks to Jim Balland and ACT for extraordinary support of the Michigan NCRC Advocates to promote this program.
Rachael and I attended the Southeast WorkKeys Conference this week. It is amazing to see the progress being made in states all across the nation. The conference attacts from well beyond the southeast. Teams were here from as far away as Maine and Oregon. We provided an update on the Michigan NCRC movement and presented our First Choice Career Coaching (FC3) model. 2/3/2009
The 2009 series of Regional Team meetings begins this month. Check the calendar on the Resources page for details. If you click on the calendar entry it will display the details of the meeting. Click here for the 2009 schedule of meetings. Call or email Rachael Jungblut, 616.234.3623, for more information. 1/29/2009The Coming to Michigan presentation has be revised to include year-end numbers. We also added a slide to clarify why Locating Information, Reading for Information, and Applied Mathematics are the three skills that power the NCRC.
We reached a milestone at the end of December - 500 Employers have signed a Letter of Commitment. Look at Metric 3 and Chart 4 to see details. 12/20/2008
Listen to the podcast of Paul Bergan, Regional Director for Career Technical Education at the Berrien County RESA on Inside Michigan Education. Paul discusses the role of CTE and the NCRC in education today. |
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