WASHINGTON – Better integration of education at all levels, eliminating the distinction between higher education and career preparation and more cooperation among local, state and federal policymakers can remove barriers and better prepare a workforce that increasingly includes individuals who don’t fit the traditional profile of college students.
Those were some of the suggestions made by two experts at a policy roundtable discussion Wednesday presented by Higher Learning Advocates, a nonprofit organization devoted to connecting federal policies with the needs of postsecondary students, employers and communities.
At the roundtable, titled “Bridging the Education-Workforce Divide: Upskilling America’s Workforce,” Dr. Aaron Thompson, president of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, and Dr. Jason Smith, partnership executive director of Bridging Richmond talent hub in Virginia, discussed challenges to bridging higher learning and the workforce and issues of access and success for students.
“The conversation itself is problematic and where to place emphasis in the pipeline,” said Smith. “We have to stop separating education and workforce preparation. We take those two parts and separate them out, and I think that’s really problematic. We need to start thinking about it all as being workforce preparation.”
Given the demographic changes and projections of postsecondary school populations in the United States, neotraditional or new traditional may be better terms for students long described as nontraditional. Through most of America’s recent history, the profile of an average college student was an unmarried middle-class White student attending full-time immediately after high school with parental financial support, living on campus and earning a bachelor’s degree in four to five years.
Today, however, only 13 percent of college students live on campus, 26 percent are parenting, 38 percent are older than 25, 40 percent attend part-time, 42 percent live at or below the federal poverty line, 47 percent are financially independent, 57 percent attend two-year colleges and 58 percent work while in school.
Add to those factors the unprecedented cultural diversity of student populations and diversity of postsecondary education options and the need to remove barriers to quality, affordability and successful outcomes for students becomes clear, said moderator and HLA deputy executive director Emily Bouck West.
A significant change in recent years, Thompson observed, is more students who perceive that they don’t have access to higher education and that they lack opportunities to succeed in that space, in spite of financial aid and other support systems designed to help students achieve both.
“Our job is to put value back in that value proposition,” said Thompson. “How do we change that? How do we talk about quality?”
A central part of the discussion should be greater alignment of educational arenas from preK-12 to two-year and four-year institutions, Thompson said. Providing quality education in a seamless continuum with career preparation as a central driver can help skeptical prospective postsecondary students – especially from underrepresented groups – see that education beyond high school is affordable and valuable, doable in a reasonable time and leads to employment, he said.
Breaking down silos between different types of postsecondary institutions can benefit students, said Smith, whether community colleges, baccalaureate programs, vocational-technical programs or online for-profit learning.
Data-sharing and articulation agreements that promote more thoughtful and efficient transfer of credit between schools can benefit students, Smith added. For example, a student may transfer from a community college to a four-year university without having earned a credential, but may find after one or two courses that those credits can be reverse-transferred to the community college and qualify the student for an associate’s degree.
Post-secondary students drop out or stop out for a range of personal issues, from financial to family concerns. Better credit-transfer rules and other such policy changes – which local, state and federal policies could promote – would increase the number of students completing a credential and help move more workers into the employment pipeline.
“One very different thing for students today is it is no longer the experience that you went to one institution and stayed there until you completed it,” said Smith. “People now are looking for learning they need for employment now. And where can I go later to add on? How can I stack into something that helps me over a long period of time?”
Smith and Thompson agreed that employers and schools must begin to work more closely together, and earlier in the formal education process, to ensure that student learning fits employer needs and expectations.
“There’s a need to get employers more involved on the front end in creating programs that matter and teach what they’re looking for,” said Thompson. “Everybody doesn’t have to go to college, but should have education post-high school that works. We need to be far more intentional in putting people on pathways, with employers engaged throughout the process for a continual-improvement model. We in higher education have to rethink how we’re doing business. And so do employers.”
Policies around financial aid also need to be revisited as both an access issue and a success issue, Thompson and Smith said. Paying for school and having the financial resources to meet human needs are concerns for traditional students as well as students from low-income and underrepresented groups, and guidelines around student loans and the Pell grant should be aligned with those needs, Thompson said.
Policymakers at the state and federal levels can play a role by incentivizing “disconnected” systems in higher ed to work better together for post-secondary students, said Smith.
Curriculum redesign informed by the employment sector as early as elementary school and wise use of outcomes data can close completion gaps and help students become culturally competent workforce participants, Thompson said.
“Schools need to align ourselves with a student success paradigm so we’re on the same page when talking about issues of quality and engagement,” he added.
Treating higher education as one system rather than multiple systems and helping students experience wrap-around services in a more integrated way “would go a long way” toward promoting the success of all students, Smith said.
“There needs to be a shift from an access-for-all mentality to a success-for-all mentality.”
LaMont Jones can be reached at ljones@diverseeducation.com. You can follow him on Twitter @DrLaMontJones.
When Harvard University students arrive for classes Aug. 15, they will return to history in the making: for the first time in the Ivy League school’s history, four of its colleges will be headed simultaneously by African-American women.
Dr. Claudine Gay’s appointment in July as the first African-American and the first woman dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences followed Dr. Bridget Terry-Long’s appointment in May as the first Black woman dean of the Graduate School of Education. They join Dr. Tomiko Brown-Nagin, the first Black woman dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and Dr. Michelle A. Williams, an epidemiologist and professor at the School of Public Health, who became the first Black person to head a faculty at Harvard and the first female dean of that school, according to a story in The Harvard Crimson.
Less than three years ago, not one of Harvard’s 14 schools was headed by a Black woman, according to the Crimson.
In an interview with the college newspaper, Gay said: “If my presence in this role affirms someone’s sense of belonging and ownership, the same way [former president Dr. Drew G. Faust’s] appointment affirmed my own sense of belonging, then I think that’s great. And for people who are sort of beyond our gates, if this prompts them to look again and look anew at Harvard and imagine new possibilities for themselves, I think that’s great, as well.”
The advances in diversifying the ranks of administrators have elicited praise on campus. They signal “that Harvard is getting ready for a new future for itself and for the country and for the world,” said John S. Wilson, a key leader in the university’s diversity and inclusion initiatives.
Dr. Danielle S. Allen – a government professor who spearheaded a Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging that issued a final report in March calling for more faculty diversity – said it’s “great to see such wonderful, talented individuals in leadership posts and to see the university diversifying its leadership ranks.”
Sybella Inman, 8, who is on the honor roll at Birmingham’s EPIC Elementary, appears about 30 minutes into the film in a scene where T’Challa, the main character, is lying in the dirt. Sybella known as Bella, said she was excited about securing the role of an orphan in the movie.
“I think acting is fun and cool and awesome,” Sybella told ABC 33/40 TV.
“She thought it was pretty cool to talk to (main character) Chadwick Boseman and work with Forest Whitaker,” said K’la, Inman’s mother.
When Sybella was six, her mom had professional headshots taken. “We’ve done some workshops that she’s done really, really well in,” K’la said. “She did a workshop with Alpha Tyler, one of Tyler Perry’s casting agents.”
K’la, who has done some acting, almost missed an opportunity to cast her daughter for the film. Kl’a has casting calls come to her phone and when she saw one for “Black Panther” she almost discarded it until saw the movie was casting for Bella’s age range.
As the family arrived at church that particular day for Sunday morning service “my husband, Kalep, asked what I was doing because I had my head in my phone, and I told him ‘I was trying to apply for casting for some movie named Black Panther’ and he says, ‘Oh, that’s a black superhero, a Marvel character, you should finish that.’
Two weeks later K’la received an email while renting a car. “[I] was talking to the clerk, and looked down at the email and started screaming . . . I dropped my phone.”
Last March, Sybella and mom set out for Pinewood Studios, in Atlanta, GA to film her scenes.
Sybella’s painted face is the only orphan to be shown close up in the scene. “She actually got to film with Chadwick Boseman [Black Panther] and Forest Whitaker [Zuri] in the scene where they were doing the burial rite,” her mom said.
Sybella learned about hard work early. “They shot both her scenes the same day. Including hair and makeup, she had an 11-hour day,” K’la said.
K’la had her brush with A-list actor Forest Whitaker, as well. “I was actually sitting right next to him for a while before noticing I was barely two feet away from him,” K’la said. “That was pretty cool.”
Asked what Sybella was most excited about on set, her mom said, “food.”
“She was … hungry” K’la laughed. “On movie sets they always have what they call a ‘crafting table’, and their spread was pretty impressive. They actually gave us lobster … which is unheard of. But, I guess with a budget that big ($200 million). She was running over there for cakes and cookies, juices, and whatnot every chance she could.”
While Bella doesn’t talk in the movie, she loves the Hollywood glitz and glam.
“It got to be different and I like makeup being on my face,” Bella said. “It makes your face all shiny and glittery.”
Bella has been acting since the age of 6, but this is her first film role. Bella’s mom submitted her daughter for the role after learning about the opportunity in a casting email. “She really can act,” her mother said. “She can cry on demand.”
Along with working with other new actors, she also met the lead actor, Chadwick Boseman. He plays the comic book character her mother knew little about.
The Inman family is proud to have their daughter appear with a cast that looks like her. “I think it’s important,” K’la said. “Typically that doesn’t happen. I mean you look at Disney princesses, Barbie dolls, it’s not always representing everyone across the board.”
The film has a black director and an all-black cast and is set in Africa.
Word spread quickly in school that Bella was in the movie. “It was crazy at school – I had to do this,” that’s when she puts her fingers in her ears and laughs. “At P.E., I had to run away.”
Besides acting Bella likes to do everything – play soccer, model and being creative,” said her mother. “She likes to make her own makeup. She paints. She dances. And she likes to make slime.”
Like everyone else, the Inman family was blown away by the film’s debut. “She was pretty impressed by how it all came together,” Kl’a said of her daughter. She knew she was . . . inside a studio with a ton of graphs and stuff all over the floor, and the way the graphics brought it all together was amazing to her.”
During the Birmingham City Council meeting on Tuesday Mayor Randall L. Woodfin congratulated Bella for her role.
“The City of Birmingham family is very proud of your accomplishments, and we celebrate your success,” Woodfin said. “Continue to pursue your dreams and strive for ambitious goals.”
Gabrielle Johnson, a junior at Briarwood Christian School, served as tour guide for Wednesday’s teen summit at the Birmingham Civil Rights Intitute. (Erica Wright, The Birmingham Times)
Gabrielle Johnson, a junior at Briarwood Christian School, is part of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute’s Youth Leadership program.
On Wednesday, she was at the Institute for another occasion: tour guide for a teen summit sponsored by The Birmingham Pledge Foundation in partnership with the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and the Davis Matthews Center for Civic Life.
“I decided to attend the summit because I realized there is such a need for these racial dialogues to go on, especially with the state that our country is in right now,” said Johnson.
Some area teens got a chance during a summit at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute to gain perspective of what others who are different from them go through. (Erica Wright, The Birmingham Times)
After Johnson led Birmingham-area high school students on the tour the teens heard from the Reverend Gwendolyn Webb, who marched as a child in the Civil Rights Movement. Webb recalled meeting with Rev. James Bevel, one of the march organizers.
“I was the head of my cheerleading squad in high school and so Dr. Bevel went to every school and he set up boundaries . . . if you were head of the student government, he needed you; if you were head of the booster club, he needed you; if you were head of the football team or track, he needed you. Whatever you were a leader in, he needed you,” she said.
The philosophy, Webb said, was that “leaders beget followers, followers beget other followers and that’s how the children’s movement was formed.”
After Webb’s speech, students participated in forums and workshops on issues such as diversity, how to find common ground and ways to maintain a balanced perspective in conversations about public issues.
The Birmingham Pledge was written 20 years ago and the foundation has worked to eliminate prejudice and racism throughout the world through their pledge drives and other programs.
Misty Tipler, Birmingham Pledge Foundation executive director, said she was pleased to see the diverse group of students engaging in dialogue.
“I think that any time students get together and hear opinions that are similar to theirs or even different to theirs, they gain perspective on what other people are going through, what people feel about certain subjects and how they’re affected,” said Tipler. “I believe today’s group of kids do represent different areas and different socioeconomic backgrounds so I think they will be able to kind of gain some insight from each other.”
Wednesday’s summit was the first after a three-year hiatus. It was originally a yearly event.
“What we want to do is consolidate everything into a short period of time so it’s an easy commitment for students to make,” Tipler said. “We want them to be able to come here and spend some time and feel like they’ve gained some skills and learned a little bit and that they walk away knowing a little bit more than they did before.”
By Je’Don Holloway Talley, For the Birmingham Times
For educators at the Black Star Academy Home School Co-Op in Forestdale, there is the holistic and then there is the “Whole”-listic. Their goal is to offer both.
“We believe in ‘Whole’-listic education, meaning we focus on the whole child—mind, body, and spirit,” said Tremon Muhammad, creator and founder of the Black Star Academy (BSA), believed to be one of the first culturally centered home schooling collectives in the state. “Our educational program deals with the whole human being. We are big on academics, but we also deal with character and moral development.”
Part of the holistic curriculum means students participate in morning exercises, which can include yoga and meditation.
“On Monday mornings, we start our day with Kemetic Yoga and meditate on African proverbs … because you never know,” said April Muhammad, Tremon’s wife, who is director of the BSA. “Sometimes people have crazy weekends, or the children may come in with attitudes, so you want to make sure you check their spirits so that they can decompress before going into the classroom.”
More African-American families have embraced home schooling and are choosing it as an alternative for their children. An estimated 220,000 African-American children are currently being home schooled, according to the National Home Education Research Institute. Black families have become one of the fastest-growing demographics in home schooling, with their children making up an estimated 10 percent of the home schooling population, according to a 2015 article in The Atlantic magazine.
“A lot of people are having trouble with many of the changes in the public-school system,” Tremon Muhammad said.
Foreign Languages
Tremon and April Muhammad founded Birmingham’s BSA in 2015 to “give parents an alternative outside of the current educational system.”
The academy’s broad curriculum includes “cultural heritage, which incorporates geography, world history, and U.S. history,” said Tremon Muhammad. “… We also have foreign language. Our students have been learning Swahili for two years, and we are definitely looking into other foreign languages, such as Spanish, and French, because as we’ve networked with the African continent, we noticed these languages to be prominent in those countries.”
The goal is for students to master theses languages, so they are able to interact and participate in worldwide trade and commerce, the Muhammads said.
Beekeeping and More
Another part of the curriculum is beekeeping, a key part of the BSA’s Agriculture-Science program. This is the second year the course is being offered.
“Our teen students attend this class once a week,” said April Muhammad. “We have bees that produce honey, which will produce money for the school. We will be selling lip balm made from our bee hive during Kwanzaa, and we plan to have honey for sale in the spring.”
Other courses include Intro to Auto Care and Home Construction.
“We don’t see those as electives,” she said. “We see them as necessities because if you can’t feed or house yourself, what is your purpose on the planet? We want our children to have those things as they’re growing toward becoming productive, global citizens.”
Expanding the Curriculum
The BSA is open Monday through Wednesday, from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. It is on a semester system that follows the traditional school calendar. And it averages 35 enrolled students, from kindergarten through 12th grade, per semester.
“We are quickly approaching a school-based level,” the Muhammads said. “Parents are showing demand for a full-time school-based curriculum, but right now we are functioning very well as a home schooling collective.”
April Muhammad, former director of the local and home schooling branch of the Muhammad University of Islam (MUI), said the initial success led the BSA to expand beyond the walls of a “faith-based” institution.
“We were attracting so many non-Muslim children to our program, and [parents] were kind of put off by the religious connotation [behind the institution], so my husband and I started a nonprofit [to expand the mission and curriculum],” she said.
Tremon Muhammad added, “Our initial mission was to be a relief source for people that were supplementing their child’s public-school education with home schooling.”
Shared Vision
Reverend James Ephraim of First United Presbyterian Church in Forestdale has opened up his church for a home school Co-op. Students enrolled in Black Star Academy use space in the church 3 days a week. (Frank Couch Photography)
Others in the community felt the same way.
In November 2014, the Muhammads were invited to an “interest meeting” at Forestdale’s First United Presbyterian Church, where its pastor, the Rev. James Ephraim, shared a desire to see children in his community educated independently of the public-school system.
“My husband and I went to the interest meeting to see what their home schooling idea was about,” April Muhammad recalled. “When I looked at the curriculum they submitted to us, it was almost the exact curriculum we had already been working with for 10 years.”
The Muhammads learned that Ephraim and community activists Thomas “Divine Mind” Davis and Bennie Holmes were in the early phases of creating a similar alternative-education program, called a Freedom School.
Tremon Muhammad said that once the group saw the similarities in vision and curriculum, they decided to collaborate. April Muhammad remembers that parents and educators at the interest meeting all agreed to support the BSA.
“We started off strong,” April Muhammad said. “Immediately, we had 25 students in our physical home five days a week, with the parents coming in to help and to learn, as well. But I have to say, it’s been the best experience because my husband pushed it. He pushed me and his vision for a community-based institution, and we’re a success.”
‘Laying the Foundation’
Reverend James Ephraim of First United Presbyterian Church in Forestdale has opened up his church for a home school Co-op. Students enrolled in Black Star Academy use space in the church 3 days a week. (Frank Couch Photography)
By the fall of 2016, the BSA was offered use of the First United Presbyterian Church.
“We realized that we needed a place where kids, parents, and the community could come and learn as a collective,” Ephraim said. “We are laying the foundation for building communities and working with the African concept that it takes a village to raise a child, and we realized we don’t have the village. In order to create the village, the parents and the community need to be involved.”
Parental Involvement
Erycka Birchfield with her family (from left) Edyn Moss, 6; Essix Jones, 14; and Essac Jones 12. (Ariel Worthy/The Birmingham Times)
Many parents were willing to assist, April Muhammad said: “We differ because we have the autonomy to bring the parents into the child’s curriculum. [The BSA] has heavy parent involvement and is able to give more individual attention to students and cater to different learning styles.”
Erycka Birchfield, the BSA’s first parent volunteer educator, said home schooling is ideal for the black community because it teaches everyone involved a greater awareness and sense of self.
“Unity is severely lacking among my people,” she said. “I wanted to have a full-time, all-inclusive role in my children’s education. When I first called [April Muhammad] and inquired about her program, our hour-long conversation included discussions about the current curriculum and the school-to-prison pipeline for our [African-American] boys.”
Giving students that sense of self is what makes the BSA distinctive.
“We equip [students] with knowledge of themselves and equip them with the elements they need not just to survive but to thrive in the elements of life, and to be builders of their own communities,” April Muhammad said.
Another quality that sets BSA apart: “Everyone does not learn the same way, so there shouldn’t be a cookie-cutter approach to education,” she said. “Most importantly, we teach [our students] that they are math, they are science, they are history. Subjects are easier to grasp when they are learned from the inside out rather than from the outside in.”
By LaMont Jones, Diverse Education
By Je’Don Holloway Talley
By Je’Don Holloway Talley, For the Birmingham Times
