Questar III BOCES Superintendent Dr. James N. Baldwin recently participated in a panel discussion at the Educating Tomorrow’s Workforce: Preparing Students to Compete in the 21st Century Economy Conference.
Questar III BOCES Superintendent Dr. James N. Baldwin recently participated in a panel discussion.
Held at the New York State Museum, the conference was hosted by the New York State Education Department, The Business Council of New York State, Inc. and the IBM Corporation. The focus of the conference was to bring together leaders from K-12, higher education, and business to take action on developing and replicating successful educational models that better prepare students for college and career.
Baldwin discussed the success of Tech Valley High School and the strong partnerships Questar III’s career and technical education (CTE) programs have with higher education and business.
He also explained the benefits of Work Based Learning, Consultant Committees and college credits that each CTE program has in place. Work Based Learning allows students to learn relevant, real world skills and Consultant Committees advise programs on course content, equipment and current trends.
Baldwin said he was pleased to be able to give attendees examples of model programs and partnerships. “At Questar III we have made significant progress in expanding our connections with business and higher education. We believe these programs and processes can be replicated elsewhere to provide more students with the kind of learning they need to be successful after high school today,” Baldwin said.
Education Commissioner John B. King, Jr. opened the conference by stressing the necessity of preparing New York State’s future workforce for the jobs of the future. His hope for the conference was to encourage strong relationships between education and private business to build educational pathways that are consistent with the workforce demands of New York’s diverse economy.
“We see these partnerships as not only a way to tackle our state’s economic development challenges but also to tackle the achievement gap and some of the challenges we see in student performance,” said King.
Stanley Litow, vice president at IBM, discussed the importance of collaborating with high schools and colleges to create pipelines for potential employees.
“I think what we’ve got is a skills crisis and not a jobs crisis,” Litow said. “We are very interested, and we believe others are as well, in creating these new innovative collaborations to prepare larger and larger numbers of young people for the kinds of jobs that exist and that create the kind of growth opportunities to make the U.S. economy much more competitive,” he said.
In New York alone, there will be almost half a million jobs requiring science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills by 2018, and more than six million jobs requiring a postsecondary degree.
Baldwin said, “Our young people’s ability to learn is so much more critical now – because change is so rapid and most of them will have to learn throughout their careers – as most will change jobs and careers multiple times. We must work together to help students make informed decisions about their futures.”
Please visit http://totalwebcasting.com/live/nysed/20121207/ to watch a webcast of the program.
