RICHMOND, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--After months of gathering data from students, educators, and K-12 district leaders across 28 states, MajorClarity has released the 2022 K-12 Career and College Readiness (CCR) Benchmark Report—the culmination of an industry initiative to align K-12 school districts around a common set of national best practices for career readiness.
The CCR Benchmark Report synthesizes data covering five pillars of career and college readiness: A: Providing a Variety of Postsecondary Options; B: Data and Key Metrics; C: Support and Expectations; D: Stakeholder Participation and Engagement; and E: Tools and Resources.
“States and school districts have been deepening investment in college and career readiness for a decade and as a result, CCR has become complex. District leaders are inundated with—sometimes mixed—messaging about what the best practices are,” said Joe Belsterling, Founder and CEO of MajorClarity. “We partnered with other organizations in the space to identify a common set of CCR standards and gather data from real district leaders about the state of their CCR efforts.”
The Report breaks down the results from 140+ responses from students, teachers, counselors, principals and central office leadership.
Key findings include:
- Only 39% of respondents graded their school districts’ CCR efforts above a C (70%).
- The greatest area of struggle was around “Stakeholder Participation and Engagement”, specifically around building a network of CCR champions from parents, educators, and community workforce leaders.
- District and school leadership consistently ranked their CCR efforts higher than students and teachers did—with a difference as great as 19 percentage points in one domain average.
- Students continue to have greater access to college preparation information and experiences than they do to the same resources for alternative postsecondary options (e.g. career, military, advanced certifications).
- “Efficiently managing the annual student academic planning process” was the most frequently cited district priority, selected by 43% of respondents.
The K-12 2022 CCR Benchmark Report offers clear trends and takeaways as well as measurable baseline data for districts interested in benchmarking their own CCR efforts.
“The CCR Benchmark Report offers new, critical data for district leaders working to prepare more students for postsecondary success,” said Belsterling. “We’ve seen many of these trends play out in our partner districts, but having the data to measure your own efforts can be the difference between acknowledging challenges and overcoming them.”
The CCR Benchmark Report is available for download here. There will also be a free virtual event “Benchmarking your CCR Efforts” on March 8th at 2pm ET to break down trends, takeaways, and key data points from the report.
About MajorClarity
MajorClarity Inc., is an educational software company providing career exploration and academic-planning services to thousands of schools nationwide. The MajorClarity platform leverages interactive career test-drives and experiential content to connect the dots between career exploration and academic and postsecondary planning—then help students take action to get there.
About the CCR Benchmarking Initiative
The Career and College Readiness Benchmark Initiative was created by a coalition of leading education organizations to provide school and district leaders with transparent data on how they stack up. Learn more: https://www.ccrbenchmarks.com
