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The Critical Zone Program is a career planning system for students/adults requiring the creation of a Personal Strategic Plan (PSP) to increase the likelihood of career success!
The Critical Zone program is career planning system with five core components targeted to five developmental stages of growth; elementary school, middle school, high school, college and the first 90 days upon entering the work force. The Critical Zone provides concise principles for developing a Personal Strategic Plan (PSP). The program will allow students to learn through self-discovery and to create a "planning and success culture" in a teacher-supervised learning environment with practical step-by-step instructions.
The Critical Zone has developed and published a series of books, one for each developmental stage: 1) It's Elementary School, 2) Middle School Mix, 3) From High School to Career Success, 4) The College Experience, and 5) The First 90-Days of Your Assignment. Further, accompanying these books the Critical Zone has developed workbooks, online training, workshops, curricula, motivational programs, and guest presentations for youth and young adults. These constitute the Critical Zone career planning system designed to deliver concise principles for developing a Personal Strategic Plan (PSP) for career success, and further to support, motivate and inspire students to create and maintain their Personal Strategic Plans. The Critical Zone students meet in 1-hour group sessions after school weekly, supervised by a teacher trained in administering the CZ career planning system.
All though the Critical Zone program has application for all ethnic groups and genders, the African American Male represents our primary targeted group. The 2010 Schott 50 State Report on Black Males in Public Education reveals that the overall 2007/8 graduation rate for Black males in the U.S. was only 47 percent. Half of the states have graduation rates for Black male students below the national average.
College Entrance Exams
In 2011, only 13% of students who took the SAT were African American. Regarding the ACT, only 4% of African Americans met all four benchmarks, compared with 41% for Asians, 31% for Whites, 11% for Hispanics.
College Graduation Rates
The national college graduation rate for black men is 33.1 percent compared with 44.8 percent for black women, according to the U.S. Department of Education. The total graduation rate is 57.3 percent. Black men represent 7.9 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds in America but only 2.8 percent of undergraduates at public flagship universities. This education gap virtually ensures that men of color, particularly blacks, will continue to have less earning power than their white counterparts and be underrepresented across a broad spectrum of high-paying professions.
Unemployment
(June 2011 - CBS News correspondent Michelle Miller reports that, historically, the unemployment rate for African Americans has always been higher than the national average. However, now it's at Depression-era levels. The most recent figures show African American joblessness at 16.2 percent. For black males, it's at 17.5 percent; And for black teens, it's nearly 41 percent.
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