If your school is committed to making students career ready as well as college ready, there are twelve data questions that teachers and administrators need to be prepared to answer. Most decisions about measures of career readiness are best defined at the district or school level rather than state level. Simple state accountability measures grossly overlook  many of the nuances of student career readiness, the personalization that needs to take place and the process of instructional improvement. The Career Readiness Institute has developed a handbook, Career Readiness Data Handbook: Measuring What Matters, for career readiness to assist teachers and administrators to answer these questions. This handbook takes a unique approach to presenting recommendations for the use of data in schools and poses twelve questions related to improving student learning and career readiness.

This publication is considered a work in progress. Interested educators are invited to share their thoughts and ideas in making this data handbook a useful resource. Over the next several weeks, a separate blog posting will be prepared for each of the twelve data questions to facilitate multiple discussions. Copies of each chapter can be downloaded to review and react. Educators are encouraged to give reactions, share suggestions and post new questions around each of these data topics.

Each chapter offers recommendations for collecting and using appropriate data to answer one of these questions:

1. How well do you really know your students?
2. Are you measuring what matters?
3. How can you tell what your students aren’t learning and what do you do when you know that?
4. Once you know who’s not learning, how can you help individual students?
5. How do you “grade” student work on performance assessments?
6. How can you teach students who read at very different grade levels?
7. Are you preparing students for future viable careers?
8. How do you know if instructional changes are making a difference in student learning?
9. What are your students’ perceptions about school?
10. Does your instruction help make students career ready?
11. Are your students successful in career and technical education?
12. How do you know your students are career ready?

To start the discussion, reply below – Are there questions missing?  Which questions do educators need ideas and resources to be able to answer? What resources are available to help answer these questions?

I hope you will find this a thought-provoking and interesting journey of sharing ideas on this important topic related to career readiness.