YouthBuild programs are being offered access to two courses: Core Strategies for Mathematics (CSM) and Career Strategies. These courses will be free to YouthBuild programs through next summer, along with professional development of coaches, and unlimited support.
CSM and Career Strategies are an entirely new approach to academic preparedness and career development.
CSM is a self-paced, online program that develops a broad range of competencies to build personal agency -- a person's ability to be resilient in the face of setbacks and to have the knowledge, mindsets and confidence to grasp opportunities. CSM delivers:
In YouthBuild contexts, CSM has application as GED prep, as part of pre-apprenticeship training, and as a transition to other postsecondary training. With deep remediation to 4th grade math skills, CSM has shown high success rates with students who have struggled with math.
The self-paced, online Career Strategies course creates an internal career coach by teaching career decision-making as a skill. Lessons include:
Pepco/Exelon (the Washington, DC electric utility) was struggling with low passing rates on the CAST (Construction And Skills Trades) test in their pre-apprenticeship program with the District of Columbia's Infrastructure Academy. To remedy this, participants earned their CSM Certificates before progressing to other pre-apprenticeship training.
PEPCO found that:
“I was very pleased with the results of the CSM pilot program. We observed that individuals that progressed to the Pathway to Energy training (only those who earned their CSM High Performance Certificates), were better prepared and had an extra boost of confidence.”
The CSM Course is highly personalized and can fill in math and literacy gaps as low as 4th grade skills. Every answer is evaluated formatively to determine the path through the skills that will keep learning efficient, effective, and enjoyable.
The CSM Course is also unique in its focus on self-efficacy, especially in math. Many student have never done well in school, and approach high stakes testing with fear. The CSM Course can boost both their skills and their confidence, leading to success.
Half of adults don't think that they have the skills for postsecondary success (Strada-Gallup, 2020), and this lack of confidence is a huge impediment to college access. The largest hurdle to college completion is math requirements, which many people attempt many times before dropping out.
CSM builds deep math skills, and is often accepted by colleges as math credit that fulfills graduation requirements through a recommendation from the American Council on Education. If desired, SeeMore will work with you to connect with local colleges to attempt to gain college math credit.
In summary, CSM builds college-level math skills, often earning college math credit, builds general academic success skills, and college-going self-efficacy.
The CSM Course builds employability skills in workforce programs and (pre-)apprenticeships, which are generally focused mostly on industry- and job-specific skills. The CSM Course also builds learning agility to allow participants to dig deeper into their other coursework.
While employers highly value these High Performance employability skills, they don't know how to assess them, hire for, or train for the skills.
Workforce development often ends when a client gets a stable job, but the true measure of success is when the client earns a promotion, setting them on a career trajectory. The CSM Course builds the transferable skills that place a person on that path: the math, literacy and problem-solving skills to interpret and make decisions from memos and data; the ability to "learn from a firehose" during training for new positions; and the attention to detail and intention to excel that characterizes good managers.
Career guidance tends to focus on career exploration and selection, but many students lack a clear understanding of what a career is, how it fits with larger life goals, and how to pick a career in the absence of strong passions, interests and skills. Moreover, many may feel that their choice is one of the most important decisions of their life, leading to failure if it doesn't succeed. Career Strategies provides a practical, low-pressure introduction to careers, how to choose one, and what to do if it doesn't work out (which it very often won't). After having completed Career Strategies, career guidance activities will be more effective.
An evaluation by SRI compared CSM to ALEKS (McGraw-Hill), MyFoundationsLab (Pearson), and GED Academy (Essential Education). SRI found that CSM had the highest math and literacy gains relative to classroom learning, as well as the highest student engagement.
In an program for primarily opportunity youth to earn high school diplomas, Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C), in Cleveland, was surprised to find that:
To build High Performance & Lifelong Learning skills, we needed to create new technology that also addresses how a student learns, feels and acts, how they deal with frustrations, how to improve their focus, and how to encourage them to strive for excellence.
CSM guides students on a personalized path through math and literacy skills using the Goldilocks principle - they always work on skills that are not too hard or easy for them at the moment but are "just right", where they have to work hard, persevere through frustration, and can be rewarded with success. CSM identifies specific student thinking errors for efficient, effective learning.
Most educational technology is "competency-based", correlating to a passing score of 50-70% right on a multiple-choice test. The only passing score on CSM is 100% correct with mainly fill-in-the-blank problems. This helps students learn the mindsets required, that they are capable of excelling, and how good the joy of mastery feels.
CSM measures frustration by analyzing behavioral data, and guides students through converting their frustration into persistence using behavioral interventions and by informing their coach.
The "secret sauce" of success is self-efficacy - the deeply held belief that you can succeed, which is earned by students seeing themselves be successful in challenging learning situations. This is reinforced by informing students of the percentage (often large) of college graduates and all adults who couldn't do the skills they just completed.
The back of the CSM Certificate lays out what a person has demonstrated by completing CSM-- these are the characteristics that employers value in all their employees. We encourage you to view the sections About the CSM Certificate and High Performance, and imagine a YouthBuild member as a potential job candidate presenting their CSM Certificate to an employer. This candidate had earned practical, college-level math on their own, indicating how well they could learn other skills on the job. The employer might imagine how the attention to detail needed to complete every lesson with100% on mainly fill-in-the-blank questions would help in their workplace.
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The following is a video that can be shown to students before they start CSM, and gives you an idea of how students may think about CSM.
If you'd like to join the pilot or to schedule a presentation with more details, or have questions, please email David Goldberg (david(at)smilabs.org with the following information:
We're excited to be working with YouthBuild, and look forward to meeting you!
