About the Wyoming P-16 Education Council

-Background

-Vision, Mission,
Goals, Values

-Members

-Meetings/Minutes

-Current Work

-Past Projects

About the P-16 Education Council

Executive Director Kelley Pelissier

Kelley Pelissier joined the Council as Executive Director in November 2009. She came to the Council via the Legislative Service Office, where she worked 13 years as a program evaluator, researching and writing program evaluation reports on all aspects of state government. She also has experience working in both state and city government, as well as the non-profit sector (Wyoming Council for the Humanities).

She says that her best qualification for the P-16 Council position (and her greatest achievement) is being the mother of a daughter graduating in the class of 2011 - the first class for which the Hathaway Success Curriculum has been fully implemented. As a parent, she also sees the P-16 mission of ensuring a seamless transition between high school and postsecondary education as critical.

The Wyoming Department of Education is providing office space for the Council in Room 280 of Cheyenne's Hathaway Building - where Kelley invites you to stop in when you are in Cheyenne. She can be reached at 307-340-2431 or p-16wyo(at)live.com.

The Backstory

Policymakers across the U.S. are increasingly looking for ways to raise student achievement from kindergarten through high school, and improve college access and success. To do this, states seek to create integrated systems of education in which all levels of education – pre-kindergarten through college – coordinate, communicate and educate as one holistic system instead of several. These efforts are commonly called K-16, P-16 and P-20.

For example, according to an Education Commission of the States’ report, ABCs of Investing in Student Performance (1996),

Children who attend a quality preschool program experience higher rates of graduation and enrollment in postsecondary institutions.
Yet there is little coordinated effort to link preschool instruction to elementary school instruction.

Additionally, at the elementary and middle school levels, the U.S. Department of Education’s Mathematics Equals Opportunity (1997) reported that,

“students who take rigorous mathematics and science courses are much more likely to go to college than those who do not.”
Despite this information, college-preparation programs often begin as late as 9th grade.

Regardless of the type of system a state chooses, the goal is the same: to link and coordinate each education level into a seamless system guided by the principle that success in college begins in pre-kindergarten.

Enter Wyoming P-16 Education Council

Efforts to establish a P-16 Council in Wyoming were tentative until the University of Wyoming’s associate vice president for academic affairs, Rollin Abernethy, joined by Charlie Ware, head of the Wyoming Contractors Association, and Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction Joe Simpson in 2006 formed and served as executive officers for a nonprofit, non-governmental council. The council then received a two-year, $300,000 federal State Scholars Initiative grant issued through the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, or WICHE, to support the council’s work in developing a seamless statewide education system.

The grant stipulated that the money be used to partner with businesses. Regardless of grant requirements, the private sector is viewed as integral to the discussion of ways to improve education, and at least three business people have been appointed to an expanded version of the council. This is a partnership that the P-16 Council values and continues today.

The P-16 Council’s work priorities are to encourage students to take more rigorous courses, support the full implementation of the Wyoming Transcript Center, and facilitate common course taxonomy to ensure each school district is teaching the same material in classes that have the same name.