Early in the legislative session, much of the focus on Alabama’s public education system has been on K-12 and the standards in place. With results that have left much to be desired by some legislators, Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh led an effort to repeal so-called Common Core standards.
In an appearance on Huntsville radio’s WVNN on Monday, State Sen. Terri Collins (R-Decatur), the chairwoman of the House Education Policy Committee, said not to expect any action on standards in House to be as expedited as it was in the Senate.
However, she also said there was an effort underway to improve workforce development through the public education system. That included putting an emphasis on teaching workplace skills over preparation for a four-year college degree for some students.
“I served on the governor’s attainment committee, which decided as we looked at our workforce and the growing needs we were going to have that we were going to have to add a half-million people to our workforce,” Collins said on “The Jeff Poor Show.” “And those people need to have skills. They don’t need to all have four-year or more degrees. But they may need to have an associate degree or some high-skilled credentials. And those are the things we’re trying to promote now all across our state because all of our young people are going to graduate, we hope, and we need them to be prepared with a skill that would match some of the job opportunities that are around them.”
Collins applied the term “new collar” to describe the availability of high-tech jobs as more manufacturers locate in Alabama.
“They’re great,” she said. “They’re high-paying jobs. They’re excellent jobs. They provide for families from now on. I think that we got off-track a few years ago, maybe even a decade. We started pushing four-year degrees for everybody. And I think that I’m seeing a little bit of a change in that momentum because we do have all of these high-skilled jobs. Someone even called it – instead of white-collar or blue-collar – I’m starting to hear it called new-collar because it has got a lot of high-tech training to it that you need sometimes a certification, but you don’t necessarily have to have that bachelor’s degree or that master’s degree.”
@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University, the editor of Breitbart TV and host of “The Jeff Poor Show” from 2-5 p.m. on WVNN in Huntsville.
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