Readiness for work may qualify for diploma

Members of the high school class of 2018 now have one more option toward earning a diploma: getting adults to attest that they have skills that would help in a job setting, such as leadership, punctuality, being technologically savvy and an ability to solve problems.

The new OhioMeansJobs-Readiness Seal will be available to every graduating class. But for this school year only, it can be applied toward graduation requirements.

This week, the state released details for the seal, a sticker that will go directly on a student’s transcript and diploma. For a student to qualify, at least three mentors who supervised the teen at a job or internship must sign off that he or she has gained one or more “jobready” skills.

On the list are a “commitment to being drug-free, reliability, a strong work ethic, punctuality, discipline, teamwork and collaboration, professionalism, learning agility, critical thinking and problem-solving, leadership, creativity and innovation, good oral and written communication skills, an

understanding of digital technology, global and intercultural fluency and career management,” according to the Ohio Department of Education.

The Ohio legislature created the Readiness Seal as part of the state budget bill this past summer, and the state departments of Education and Higher Education, and the Governor’s Office of Workforce Transformation, were charged with hashing out the details.

“The OhioMeansJobsReadiness Seal will equip high school students to adapt to the rapidly changing workforce and to stand out with a much-in-demand credential,” said Higher Education Chancellor John Carey in a news release.

For this year’s 12thgraders to apply the seal toward graduation, a student must also complete at least one other task on a list that includes maintaining a grade-point average of at least 2.5, attending school at least 93 percent of the year

or completing a capstone project.

That alternative route to a diploma was instituted just for the Class of 2018 because the State Board of Education and the General Assembly feared that a large group was off-track to graduate after diploma requirements were made stricter. Students can graduate by earning at least 18 of 35 points on end-ofcourse exams, earning a certain score on the SAT or ACT, or piling up industry credentials.

But the state board is asking the Ohio legislature to offer a mulligan to the classes of 2019 and 2020, too.

Tom Gunlock, who was state board president during the years that graduation requirements were toughened, seemed unimpressed by the Readiness Seal, especially as a way to get to graduation.

“I’ll just say this: Why don’t they just give everybody a diploma, and let’s not worry about it anymore?” Gunlock said. “This has gone off the deep end.”

He said the idea — and the entire alternative route to graduation — might make

adults feel better, but doesn’t do anything for students who leave school without knowledge and can’t get a job.

The situation, he said, is even worse today than it was six years ago when the board started working to raise the bar.

“At least then, you had to show you had learned eighth-grade-level material,” he said. “Now you just have to show that you went to school 93 percent of the time your senior year.”

For the 2016-17 school year, about 24.9 percent of students who took the ACT or SAT earned a score high enough to demonstrate that they don’t need any remedial courses when they go to college.

State Board of Education member Stephanie Dodd, of Hebron, emphasized more than once that the state board did not come up with this idea, but that the legislature did. She said the values that are reflected by the seal are important. Punctuality, for instance. Or reliability. “But these should be the expectations,” she said.

Also, the state isn’t providing the resources or support

to public schools to make sure students get professional opportunities.

“You can slap a seal on anything,” Dodd said. “If it doesn’t have any meaning; there isn’t much value to it.”

But Dodd hopes that the state keeps moving toward making Ohio’s graduation requirements “reflect the whole child,” she said, as opposed to relying so heavily on test scores.

The importance of emotional intelligence and of “soft skills” in careers and life — the type of non-academic traits that the seal represents — have been discussed by researchers and educators for years, but no one has definitively settled on a way to capture that in the school setting.

A group of 100 prestigious private K-12 schools across the nation has even begun a movement toward creating a “mastery transcript” that would spell out a student’s strengths and accomplishments such as leadership or persistence, instead of one made up of letter grades and courses taken.