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A tale of 199,000 jobs and one very tall task
I saw some pretty
interesting figures not long
ago from the Illinois
Department of Employment
Security (IDES). It was a
report that projected almost
200,000 job openings in
Illinois through the year 2022.
With all of the media focus on
test scores, it seems to me
that many people may be
missing the larger picture
when it comes to one of the
most vital roles of public
education: workforce education.
One of our most important missions is to
make sure our focus is aligned to preparing our
students to contribute
to the economy of our
community, state and
nation. According to
the job forecast for
our state we are going
to need to fill
hundreds of jobs in
the health care field.
The report also
forecasts a need for
teachers.
Unlike the No
Child Left Behind
agenda, we cannot
abandon the
vocational trades.
There are significant
projected job
openings in the
vocational areas, and
if we don’t fill those positions with skilled workers
our state’s economy will never recover.
Don’t just take my word on this topic. Dr.
Freeman Hrabowski, president of the University
of Maryland, mentioned the need to prepare our
students not only for college but also for careers
when he spoke recently at the Joint Annual
Conference in Chicago. Dr. Hrabowski’s
credentials include being named one of
America’s 10 Best College Presidents in 2009
and one of the most influential people in the
world in 2012.
State Superintendent Dr. Tony Smith echoed
the same theme when he met recently with our
IASA Board of Directors, characterizing K-12
schools as “the primary workforce development
agency in a community,” and adding that when it
comes to our students we need to be looking at
not just a test score but also asking “What is
their life score?”
I think most of the attendees at a
Schoolmasters luncheon at John A. Logan
College recently were expecting me to discuss
the ongoing budget stalemate. But that day I
decided to take a different approach. I held up
the thick IDES report listing more than 199,000
job openings in Illinois and I posed this question
to the educators
in the room:
How are we
preparing our
students to fill
these jobs?
Steve Murphy,
superintendent
of Carbondale
District 165,
was among
those attending
the meeting and
he had this
take: “It was
amazing to hear
the answers
provided. Most
centered
around two
areas --
innovative use of technology and dual-credit
partnerships with colleges and junior colleges to
provide training or access to college curriculum.
Our own board recently approved a district goal
to increase dual credit offerings by 25 percent
next year. We are also expanding our CNA
(certified nursing assistant) program.
“The EPA has a campaign to encourage
reuse and recycling. They ask the question,
(Continued on page 4)
Message from
the Executive
Director
Dr. Brent Clark
“The EPA has a campaign to
encourage reuse and recycling.
They ask the question, ‘When
you throw something
away
,
where does it go?’ I think we
need to ask similar questions
about the students we serve.
Where are they going? That
visual representation of the stack of paper listing
the 199,000 projected job openings drove home
the point that educators need to see beyond
graduation as a destination and accept the
responsibility to provide students the skills they
need to succeed in college or the workforce.”
-- Steve Murphy, superintendent,
Carbondale District 165