Education
Quality education is essential to a skilled and competitive workforce. Access to education, coupled with reliable, quality childcare is key for improving economic opportunities for all Americans.
Our education system is failing many students as shown by data that reveals two-thirds of our fourth and eighth graders are unable to read or do math at their grade level. And the United States ranks below a number of other countries in reading and math proficiency. Recognizing the importance of childcare as a key component of the education system is crucial to addressing the current challenges and ensuring that every child has the support they need to thrive.
- 6th in ReadingGlobal Ranking for U.S. Students
- 10th in ScienceGlobal Ranking for U.S. Students
- 26th in MathGlobal Ranking for U.S. Students
Introducing Commerce Meets Classroom, a new series from our K-12 education Senior Manager, Kyle Butler, featuring the business perspective on pressing education issues.
Stories of Education and Workforce in Action
Across our nation’s talent pipeline, we explore the stories of employers investing in the workforce of today and tomorrow to close the skills gap.
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Programs and Initiatives
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With a strong commitment to invest in the resources that will ensure success, Collins Aerospace has partnered strategically in Iowa to grow a grassroots early childhood education initiative over time into the Collins Aerospace Day Academy, providing high-quality childcare and early education support to its employees and, when possible, the broader community.
Each year, as the Chamber Foundation hosts the Talent Forward national workforce conference, we focus on talent—educating and training, talent tech and data, recruiting, hiring, and upskilling. With no shortage of talent challenges, the opportunities for informative discussion are endless. While a day devoted to dissecting talent-related topics could focus solely on the problems, Talent Forward is all about the solutions.
As the labor market tightens and the pace of technological change continues to accelerate, it’s becoming an increasingly common theme that the traditional “one-and-done” model of education is over. As a result, employers, policymakers, and analysts alike are increasingly calling for new approaches to lifelong learning that will help upskill and re-skill individuals to compete and succeed in a fast-changing economy. In this shifting landscape education and workforce organizations are joining forces to experiment with new models with the potential to create pathways to opportunity and economic mobility.
With nearly 8,000 open positions, Arizona faces a growing shortage of cybersecurity professionals. In order to address this growing shortage, businesses must accept a stronger role engaging with education and training providers to build the region’s talent pipeline. Three years ago, the Greater Phoenix Chamber Foundation launched a Cybersecurity Workforce Collaborative comprised of employers who have cybersecurity as a key function of their business.
Finding the right childcare provider for your family is a personal choice, and not one that can be outsourced very easily. Child Care Aware® of America Executive Director Lynette Fraga, PhD, spoke with Scott MacFarlane of NBC Washington about some specific questions parents can ask, ways to assess your unique family needs, and how to understand and develop an ongoing relationship with your childcare provider.
In the United States, 44 million adults lack basic educational and workforce readiness skills, and 28 million do not have the basic digital skills needed for our ever-growing. digitally-enhanced workforce. For these people, getting on track for a job that comes with a livable wage starts with adult education.
For many looking to join the American workforce today, the chance to start working towards “the magic number of greatness” is out there, it’s just a matter of finding that opportunity.
To inspire other companies to create STEM career pathways for young girls, Abbott has implemented a successful high school STEM internship program and published the key to it, a detailed blueprint, so any company in any STEM industry can recreate the model.
In this country, the early childhood education system is in market failure. In recent years we have seen the greatest federal funding increases for early childhood education in history, and yet those significant investments just barely make a dent to tackle the need. In 2018, NASEM studied “how to fund early care and education for children…that is accessible, affordable to families, and of high quality, including a well-qualified and adequately supported workforce.” The report concluded that a financial windfall of around $54 billion would be required.
The lack of access to affordable, high-quality childcare isn’t just a problem for families. A new report found that it’s costing Washington businesses more than $2 billion per year in employee turnover or missed work, and the total cost to the state economy tops more than $6.5 billion per year.
