The World’s Best Workforce bill was passed in 2013 to ensure every school district in the state is making strides to increase student performance. Each district must develop a plan that addresses the following five goals:

• All children are ready for school.

• All third-graders can read at grade level.

• All racial and economic achievement gaps between students are closed.

• All students are ready for career and college.

• All students graduate from high school.

Why is Minnesota focused on this idea?

For Minnesota to be competitive, we must have students who are college and career ready, students who are poised to lead the state’s workforce. This is important for a number of reasons:

• Our population is aging.

• Seventy percent (70%) of jobs will require more than a high school diploma by 2018.

• We don’t have qualified candidates to fill many good-paying jobs.

• The fastest growing segment of our future workforce is students of color, and they currently have the state’s lowest graduation rate.

• Minnesota has one of the worst black-white achievement gaps in the country.

How will we measure progress?

Each district will create their own plan to align curriculum and instruction so that students are college and career ready. The success of each plan will be measured by:

• Closing the gap by student group

• MCA scores

• High school graduation rates

• Career and college readiness

(Excerpt from the Minnesota Department of Education “World’s Best Workforce” Web page)