CCR Profile Planning Guide Announcement

The College and Career Readiness Profile Planning Guide is an interactive tool to help schools and districts comprehensively approach student college and career readiness. It was developed through a partnership of Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) with Region XIII Education Service Center (ESC) and Austin Community College.

The guide was designed to:
•Prepare teachers and students for STAAR and EOC
•Bring focus and build upon current college and career readiness efforts
•Engage all staff for all students
•provide the tools and resources to develop a college and career readiness culture
•Create the state-required campus improvement plan
Out of 20 regions in the state, 17 have been trained to offer the guide to districts and schools through a training of trainers program. Using and implementing the guide is organized into six stages and can be integrated into leadership meetings easily.

ESC 13 College and Career Readiness Specialist Steve Frank works closely with the guide, and sees its foundational understanding of college and career readiness to be a necessary culture shift to seeing readiness on a more comprehensive scope than simply Mathematics, English and Language Arts, Science and Social Sciences

"What we see as college and career ready is implementation of the four content areas, absolutely, but it's also fine arts, physical education, world language and career/technical education," Frank said.

A campus using the guide will begin by the leadership team getting acquainted with the research and data the guide is founded on. Next, the leadership team will gather their own data, locally as well as campus-wide. This includes seeking feedback from faculty and staff through already-written surveys (called campus data gathering prompts) that assess student performance. The team will then gain insight into faculty and staff perceptions when reviewing the responses and will begin to address those perceptions as necessary.

"What we're trying to do is create ownership throughout the entire campus," Frank said. "Every teacher is responsible to build college and career readiness, not just the four core-content area teachers." 

Finally, the team will then identify and prioritize the areas of focus, and decide how to take action, given the local data they have collected in the previous steps and suggested strategies geared toward their specific situation.

Frank explained, "The objective here is by grade 12 all Texas students will be ready to pursue further studies or whatever occupational outcome they have interest in. By going through the Profile Planning Guide, we have a framework the schools can work within to actually realize that potential in students."

After exploring the interactive guide, it may be impressive that one 19-member task force developed it in less than two years. Though its intended purpose may sound daunting (to provide a campus improvement plan tailored to the needs of each campus), its straightforward design breaks the process down into easy-to-digest steps, making it ideal for systemwide use in school districts.

"This is really a P-16 initiative," Frank said. "I want schools to come back and say they'd love to have something specific like this for their middle schools and elementary schools so that they can build capacity like this all along the way."

For more information about the guide, or to contact the specialist serving your area, visit txccrsc.org.