JAKAPA Aligns with Ohio Means Jobs

States across the country recognize the importance of college and career readiness, and they are beginning to establish methods for students to showcase skills other than technical and academic ones. The Ohio Means Jobs graduation seal requires students show competence in a number of readiness skills, including, reliability, work ethic, work punctuality, discipline, teamwork, professionalism and others.  Validating a student’s skill level, however is subjective and only requires signatures from mentors and an open ended response describing how a student demonstrated those skills. Many educators are uncomfortable with signing off on these skills, because they do not have concrete evidence to inform their support.

JAKAPA can help. We offer a validated assessment and development system that measures 32 skills in five different areas, including: self-management, innovation, social engagement, cooperation and emotional resilience. We cross walked our skills with the OMJ Readiness Seal, so educators can use our data points as objective evidence of a student’s growth. Through peer and self assessments, students can gain multiple perspectives of their skills in a variety of contexts and show growth over time, comparative data, strengths and areas for growth. Our development system collects engagement data to help students showcase their work ethic and dedication to skill development.

ACT reports that only 23 percent of Ohio graduates met all four ACT College Readiness Benchmarks and 41 percent met none. This means students are not demonstrating the academic readiness for their futures and positions the Ohio Means Jobs seal as an important data point for students to showcase readiness in other ways. Ensuring this seal is valid is critical to making the seal a useful and informative credential that employers and colleges can confidently use to judge a student’s readiness.

Contact JAKAPA today to learn more and schedule a demo, so you can ensure the graduation seals you are awarding your students can be meaningful credentials they can use to help them achieve the futures they want.