Education
Finding Equitable Access to Education and the Workforce
A mother whose son has autism filed a federal civil rights complaint against a Kansas City school district. This is why and what she plans to do for other kids with disabilities.
6 Kansas City places with surprising ties to the civil rights movement
Today is a chance to reflect not just on the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and the history of civil rights in the United States but also the sometimes-forgotten role played by important places right here in Kansas City. Below are a few places to consider checking out to commemorate how far we’ve come…
Fueling the Body and Mind in the School of the Future
A healthy diet. Regular exercise. Unplugging from technology. Sound familiar? Those are all things that adults know they should do. The same goes for kids, but just like grownups, they can fall short — sometimes through no fault of their own. But schools are helping pick up the slack — providing nutritious meals, getting kids…
Educators And Execs Welcome Workforce Development Collaboration
“Our students are not widgets!” Certainly that is the sentiment of educators who see business involvement in schools as “putting in orders” for workers. Yet that refrain might be less common in an era when the whole notion of career and technical education is evolving way beyond shop class. Maybe that’s because each side understands…
Grading the Soft Skills
It’s the time-honored question from students: when are we going to use this in real life? But as we have seen in this season of Take Note, schools are increasingly focused on the “soft” skills that are relevant for the workplace, such as critical thinking and team work. That brings up another question for the…
Blue Collar Jobs Make (Lots Of) Cents
What would you say to making $18 per hour after less than half a year of postsecondary training? Or $35 an hour in a union job? Those aren’t hypotheticals. Workforce experts say those jobs exist in the Kansas City area, and workers are in demand. One of the biggest hurdles in matching people with those…
Poor Report Card
Educators from around Missouri were brutally honest when they met as a panel at Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s Conference on Economic Development. Many of the state’s schools, including the ones they lead, are not doing enough to prepare students to succeed beyond graduation. When he came to Kansas City two years ago to lead the…
Are School Buildings Obsolete?
A “school without walls” is typically a euphuism for a building that substitutes collaborative learning for the standard approach of stationing teachers in front of a classroom full of students. But the internet age has brought us to a point where walls literally are superfluous — where students do their work online as part of…
Climbing The Career Ladder
There is a lot of talk in workforce development circles about “middle skills” jobs, career opportunities that fall between minimum-wage positions and others that require at least a four-year degree. But Ryan Meador has a different phrase for that wide swath of workers in the center of those two occupational poles. He calls them the…
Zeroing In On Jobs
Tennessee has terrific country music, incredible scenery, and world-class whiskey. But that is not why Missouri Gov. Mike Parson envies our neighbor to the south and east. He’s interested in emulating more prosaic things like improved academic achievement, rising high school graduation rates — and the nearly half a million private-sector jobs created in Tennessee…