Academic and Career Planning (ACP)Happy New Year! After a busy and productive fall, the Academic and Career Planning (ACP) team is looking forward to 2017 and continuing to share the message and resources needed for successful Academic and Career Planning with school leaders around the state. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction and the ACP Team recently held a very successful Academic and Career Planning (ACP) Leadership Conference in December under the theme “ACP: Equipping Today’s Students for Tomorrow’s Opportunities”. This conference was hosted to assist teams from Wisconsin school districts to learn from others and prepare for ACP implementation required to begin in fall 2017. Moreover, communications leading up to the conference challenged districts to consider how ACP can be used in their overall planning and quality improvement efforts for developing college and career ready students in their district. The two-day conference featured many inspiring speakers which served to emphasize the notion that Academic and Career Planning can be a real catalyst for system transformation. With full implementation required starting this year, school and district leaders must take the charge in leading for change and cultivating all staff support to develop a school-wide culture that values principles of ACP. In order for students and schools to realize the full benefits of ACP, districts must make a shift in thinking, approaching, and delivering career development. This shift is a strategic one, toward a holistic and student-centered approach, built on strong infrastructure, relationships, broad collaboration, and student awareness of potential in-school and out-of-school opportunities connected to student interests and future goals. ACP process plans should be part of a districts overall continuous improvement work, tying together multiple strategies for strategic planning, continuous improvement, and closing the achievement gap. Understanding your schools readiness to implement ACP, the level of commitment to that implementation, and priority in relation to other initiatives and activities will determine how successful ACP will be. Addressing these questions will require reflection and informed dialogue with all stakeholders. To foster readiness and begin the preparation process, DPI has created useful resources which can be found at: http://dpi.wi.gov/acp/implementation. The newly released Implementation Guide and Self-Assessment Rubrics will help districts assess current ACP service and delivery gaps. For additional information and support, please visit http://dpi.wi.gov/acp. For conference highlights, a brief 2 minute conference recap video can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Vqv62OsCsE. To stay current Back to Homepage |