Preparing Wyoming Students for Life After High School

The Wyoming Department of Education is working with stakeholders to make sure students are college, career and military ready.

"We will focus on college, career, and military readiness by 2020 and will track progress using the Wyoming Measures Up website," said Superintendent Jillian Balow.

Balow says her department is currently working at the program level to determine what action steps need to be taken.

"Whatever we do it has to transcend politics and elected terms," said Balow. "It really has to be something that no matter whether you are a parent, a student, a state board, a principal or a school district, you can figure out where you fit into that."

Balow hopes that the formula and steps will serve as a scoreboard of sorts for Wyoming education.

"We're the first state in the nation that's included military readiness as a path to career readiness or higher education and we're the first state that has really put strong metrics to that," said Balow. "Every student in Wyoming should be ready for career, college and military and that means they're graduating from high school, that means they're taking the ACT and we're improving those scores statewide, and that means that we increase the number of career pathways for students to explore in high school."