Nonprofit, For-profit To Collaborate on Digital Career Readiness Curriculum
A non-profit and for-profit company that both
supply digital
tools to help students and schools with educational resources will team up
to
create a curriculum intended to help at-risk students prepare for careers.
The
partnership has been created in conjunction with the Clinton
Global Initiative
America, a branch of the Clinton Foundation.
Roadtrip
Nation, a non-profit that prepares career
exploration resources, and Hobsons,
which creates digital tools to help schools
with personalized learning, academic planning and post-secondary
enrollment
tracking, will launch the curriculum via a digital platform for students in grades 6-12,
targeting communities with large numbers of at-risk, low-income, minority
populations that have historically high dropout rates.
Called the Naviance
College and Career Readiness Curriculum,
it is a blended learning program that is intended to help students build
non-cognitive skills, college knowledge and the confidence to persevere in
working toward long-term academic and career goals.

The curriculum will be distributed to 50 counselors in
school districts with unusually high student-to-counselor ratios. The hope
is
that 30,000 students will be able to participate.
"Schools often do not have sufficient resources to meet
every student's individual needs," said Roadtrip Nation Co-founder Mike
Marriner. "This addresses this challenge by providing a personalized
student-driven tool that covers a range of critical topics."
Among those topics, Marriner said, are goal setting,
self-confidence
and planning for college. Along with a number of self-directed exercises,
there
will also be a series of video interviews with professionals and college
students, all intended to offer real-world advice about overcoming life
challenges. Different components of the curriculum will be tailored for
each
grade level.
The program, which the two entities will collaborate to
design, is a program of the Clinton Global Initiative Commitment to
Action,
which has as its goal the promotion of economic recovery in the United
States.
About the Author
Michael Hart is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and the former executive editor of THE Journal.