Closing the Skills and Interest Gaps: ACT® WorkKeys® Measures Pitsco Expeditions on Growth of Employability Skills

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Feb 16, 2018, 08:30 ET

PITTSBURG, Kan., Feb. 16, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The skills gap is a well-documented failure to prepare workers for available jobs. But the lesser-known interest gap can be an equally significant problem found at the root of the employability issue.

Pitsco Education has developed hands-on, career-centric STEM Expeditions^® that address both gaps, and ACT^® WorkKeys^® has documented the exact levels of growth students can achieve as they figure out their career interests and aptitudes while exploring the Expeditions.

Students control movement of the Pitsco Education Backhoe during an experiment in the Mining Mechanics STEM Expedition.

Students build and control a robot that delivers goods in the Transportation Stations STEM Expedition.

"The curriculum is a combination of getting someone excited about a career and exposing them to the academic side of that career. So, it's addressing the interest gap and the skills gap," said ACT certified profiler Mary Paramore, who analyzed every aspect of the STEM Expeditions to determine how well they could grow students' skills in the areas of applied math, workplace documents, and graphic literacy.

Pitsco has created 37 STEM Expeditions with topics ranging from Artificial Ecosystems to Flight Dynamics to Urban Wind Farm. In addition, eight Career Expeditions tied to the National Career Clusters – including Architecture & Construction; Manufacturing; Health Science; and Transportation, Distribution, & Logistics – are in beta testing this spring semester and will be available in summer 2018.

The Expeditions have been developed to introduce and teach some of the most common skills deemed necessary for multiple occupations. ACT WorkKeys assessments that lead to the National Career Readiness Certificates (NCRC) are the standard to which Expeditions have been measured. Nearly four million NCRCs have been issued across the US, and several states now require high school graduates to take the assessments to determine qualifications or weaknesses before heading off to college or a career.

Paramore reviewed every activity in every STEM Expedition to determine the skill level students should have when they start an Expedition and the level to which they can grow if they successfully complete all activities and knowledge acquisition.

"I think they're going to enter high school with a sense of direction," Paramore said of students who complete a middle school STEM Expeditions course. "Each Expedition really does touch on a cluster or a variety of careers. So, I think they're going to enter high school much more motivated."

Pitsco Education Curriculum Specialist David Meador said a main goal when developing Expeditions was to focus on improving students' real-world skills in specific areas so that they could perform at their highest possible level. "You constantly have to be thinking about what will be advantageous for the student when they go into the workplace."

ACT WorkKeys' expertise stemming from decades of researching workplace job skills is what led Pitsco Education to connect its curriculum with the company's assessments.

"We want to align our curriculum with the top assessments of career and life skills," said Pitsco Vice President of Education Matt Frankenbery. "And we want to develop curriculum that is relevant not only to today's technology and workforce but also to that which will come along five, 10, 20 years from now."

Click to Tweet: STEM Expeditions^® from @pitscoed address students' skills and interest gaps, and @ACT #WorkKeys has documented the exact levels of growth students can achieve with the curriculum. www.pitsco.com/STEMExpeditions
Learn more about Pitsco's Expeditions: www.pitsco.com/STEMExpeditions
Learn more about ACT WorkKeys: www.act.org

Pitsco Education is the leading provider of K-12 STEM solutions. STEM education prepares learners for the future through the integration of science, technology, engineering, and math concepts using relevant hands-on applications to connect school, community, and work.

Contact: Communications Manager Tom Farmer
800-828-5787, [email protected]

SOURCE Pitsco Education