Employers tell state’s education leader about need for more workforce skills

Incoming Kansas Education Commissioner Randy Watson speaks Wednesday, June 17, 2015, at the Bioscience and Technology Business Center on Kansas University's West Campus.

Real World 101 might be the most needed class in middle schools and high schools across the state, Kansas education officials learned Wednesday as they talked with Lawrence area employers about the quality of students graduating from the state’s school system.

“There needs to be a new curriculum that focuses a little more on life skills versus just what you learn from a book,” Stacey Kehoe, a human resources specialist with Lawrence-based Grandstand Glassware & Apparel, said at a listening session on Kansas University’s West Campus.

Randy Watson, who will start his job as the Kansas commissioner of education on July 1, told the audience that he’s heard that from employers across the state.

“None of us would say that academic skills aren’t important,” said Watson, who has been a longtime superintendent for the McPherson school district. “But we’re hearing that is just a subset of what makes for a successful employee.”

Employers at Wednesday’s listening session listed skills such as punctuality, work ethic, problem solving, adaptability and communication skills as areas where they see recent graduates needing improvement.

Some employers suggested programs that would periodically bring middle school students to places of work so they can start to see how a normal workday is structured and what is expected of employees.

Wednesday’s listening session was the last of eight such sessions the Kansas Department of Education held in conjunction with chambers of commerce across the state. In addition, the department hosted 20 listening sessions of a general nature to get feedback on issues the Kansas Board of Education should consider as it creates a new strategic plan for K-12 education in the state.

Watson said input from the listening sessions will be incorporated into the board’s planning. He hopes to have a draft document to share with the public in October. Watson said it is clear some shifts need to be made in how the state focuses its K-12 education efforts. Placing a greater emphasis on vocational education and degrees of less than four years will be important to meeting the future demand of employees, he said.

“We have a lot of kids trotting off to KU who honestly don’t need to be there,” Watson said. “We still have a mentality that if you don’t do a four-year degree that it isn’t as valuable as other types of degrees. We need to change that.”

Watson said the state is making progress in the area of promoting vocational and technical training. A state program that allows high school juniors and seniors to attend vocational education classes without paying tuition is serving more students. About 5,800 students took advantage of the program during the first year of the program in 2013. In 2014, the numbers had grown to just over 8,500, and preliminary numbers for 2015 show the totals are slightly above 10,000 students.