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- Survey reveals
- County grads can't read, write, do simple math,and get along at work
- SUNNYSIDE (Wednesday, 2-02-00)---A Yakima County development group indicates county schools--and their graduates--are in world of hurt these days.
- Washington Governor Gary Locke is proposing a $3.6-million statewide program to pay businesses to take over for public schools in providing "basic skills" for high school graduates unfit to take on entry level jobs.
- Businesses say public school graduates increasingly lack four basic skills--the ability to read, write, do simple arithmetic, and work smoothly with fellow employees. Traditionally, at least the first three skills are provided by public schools.
- Locke's program would provide $1.2 million for a "Skills Gap Fund", and $2.4 million for state colleges and universities to provide technology training. Locke would also give businesses a tax break if they contract with community colleges and private schools to provide tech training.
- Meanwhile Yakima County manufacturing firms--which provide good entry-level jobs and on-the-job training--indicate Locke might simply be flinging tax money in the air and ignoring a more basic problem.
- Today's public school graduates in Yakima County apparently aren't intellectually fit to take on entry level jobs in Yakima County's manufacturing firms.
- That's because local grads can't read, can't write, can't do simple arithmetic and can't get along with fellow workers. Yet indications are it's these basic skills kids desparately need, if one listens to the Yakima County business community.
- A 1999 survey report by the Yakima County Development Association said Yakima County employers are "...finding more and more applicants for entry level positions lack the basic skills needed to make it worth (the businesses') investment in training."
- YCDA Director David McFadden defines those basic skills as the ability to "adequately read, write, do basic arithmetic, and work smoothly with fellow employees."
- Meanwhile, the state doesn't make it mandatory that high school grads master these basic skills until 2008, when a "certificate of competancy" will be required of all grads--today's fourth graders.