| This study tested the theory that cooperation between business, government, and education can narrow the gap between manufacturing skills required in the workplace and the skills acquired by secondary students. Kentucky was one of the first states to actively pursue industry, government, and education skill standard partnerships and implement a statewide manufacturing skill standard and certification program. They created the Kentucky Manufacturing Skills Standards (KMSS), defining the 10 categories of knowledge most important to their manufacturing businesses: (a) communications and teamwork, (b) math and measurement, (c) workplace safety, (d) problem solving, (e) quality assurance, (f) blueprint reading, (g) business planning, (h) workforce issues, (i) workplace skills, and (j) learning skills. Secondary students in manufacturing majors who successfully complete the certification assessment are issued a certificate, recognized by Kentucky employers, to document their mastery of manufacturing skills. The KMSS certification program, first offered to Kentucky secondary students in the 2000--2001 school year, has accumulated 5 years of assessment results. Although overall certification results have been published demonstrating improving success rates, an assessment of KMSS results by category of manufacturing skills has not. This research evaluated the test results database in a more granular fashion to determine where the KMSS program had the greatest impact on secondary student manufacturing skills knowledge and the Kentucky manufacturing skills gap. The study compared school year 2004--2005 to school year 2000--2001 to see what categories of skills had improved and to what degree. The 10 null hypotheses utilized in this study corresponded to the 10 KMSS categories of skill standards, stating, for example, that there has been no statistically significant improvement in KMSS communications and teamwork knowledge since the assessment was implemented. The t test of two independent samples statistical technique was utilized to test the research hypotheses. The results of this study indicated the six categories of more basic knowledge improved between 2000--2001 and 2004--2005. During the same time frame, four categories of higher skills knowledge worsened. |
