JPMorgan Chase’s significant $7 million investment in each participating city underscores a powerful commitment to fostering equitable and demand-driven career pathways. This global initiative aims to empower underserved students by providing access to higher education and invaluable real-world work experiences, ultimately leading them towards high-wage, in-demand careers. Education Strategy Group (ESG), a key partner in this groundbreaking endeavor, collaborates with Advance CTE to orchestrate the New Skills network, offering expert coaching and technical assistance to the six selected sites. ESG’s deep involvement ensures these sites possess the necessary support to effectively scale their career pathways and work-based learning programs, facilitating seamless transitions into postsecondary education and the workforce.
In today’s dynamic environment, providing students and families with robust career options is more critical than ever. To address this need, innovative approaches have been developed to assist participating sites in thoroughly evaluating their current status, pinpointing areas for enhancement, and formulating actionable plans to achieve tangible impact.
Deep Dive Assessment: Starting Points for Growth
The selection of the six participating sites was deliberate, recognizing their dedication to bridging equity gaps and their demonstrated history of innovation in forging pathways to both college and careers. Earlier this year, each site assembled teams comprising leaders from K-12 education, community and technical colleges, four-year universities, business and industry sectors, state education agencies, and community organizations. This diverse group embarked on a rigorous assessment of the quality, accessibility, and overall effectiveness of their existing career pathways.
Central to this assessment were three novel tools designed to provide a comprehensive understanding of current career pathway programs and to uncover systemic inequities. These tools collectively form a robust Career Pathways Readiness Assessment Tool framework, enabling sites to gain actionable insights.
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The data capacity tool focused on the infrastructure for data collection, sharing, and public reporting among partners. It examined the utilization of data in decision-making processes. Key data points included critical pathway metrics such as enrollment, persistence, and completion rates, alongside FAFSA completion, attainment of industry-recognized credentials, ACT/SAT benchmark achievements, participation in dual enrollment and work-based learning, articulated credit, apprenticeships, and successful transitions to postsecondary education and employment.
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The equity analysis tool utilized dashboards, populated with the same data points as the data capacity tool, to provide a clear visualization of student participation and success within pathways. This tool enabled sites to compare the representation of different student groups within pathways to their overall student population. Furthermore, it analyzed the alignment of pathways with high-demand industry sectors and scrutinized participation and success rates in work-based learning, early postsecondary opportunities, credential attainment, and placement outcomes for community college and university partners. This granular analysis is crucial for identifying and addressing equity gaps within career pathway programs.
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The cross-sector self-assessment tool offered a platform for stakeholders from diverse backgrounds to share their perspectives on the progress of building and scaling career pathways, work-based learning initiatives, seamless postsecondary transitions, and equity-focused practices. Designed to capture insights across different partner organizations, this tool provided a holistic view of the implementation, quality, and scale of career pathways. It was instrumental in helping sites pinpoint their key strengths and prioritize areas requiring the most urgent attention and improvement.
Illuminating Findings: Needs Assessment Results
The needs assessment process yielded insightful results. Across the participating sites, data revealed that approximately one in thirteen high school students are currently enrolled in career pathways. However, significant challenges related to persistence and completion emerged. Alarmingly, only 39 percent of enrolled students successfully complete their chosen pathways. This completion rate is even more concerning for students of color, with the average completion rate for Black students lagging at just 29 percent. These figures highlight a critical need for intervention and targeted support to improve pathway completion rates, particularly for underrepresented student populations.
These challenges persist into higher education settings. The needs assessments revealed that a mere 16 percent of Black students and 19 percent of students overall who enroll in postsecondary career pathways successfully complete them. Considering that 73 percent of students enrolled at postsecondary institutions within the participating sites are economically disadvantaged, the urgency of addressing these low completion rates becomes even more pronounced. Successful completion of high-quality career pathways is a vital stepping stone towards economic mobility and opportunity, making the improvement of these rates a critical imperative.
Driven by these needs assessment findings, participating sites embarked on creating ambitious action plans focused on expanding equitable access to and successful completion of high-quality career pathways, spanning from K-12 through postsecondary education and into the workforce. These plans leverage identified strengths and directly address the inequities uncovered through the self-assessment process. Sites will utilize these action plans as a roadmap for implementation throughout the five-year grant period, ensuring sustained progress and impact.
Charting the Course: Shared Goals and Challenges
While each site is tailoring its approach to address the unique needs of its community and partners, several common goals and challenges have emerged across the network. Collaboration within the network will be essential for sharing resources, tackling shared obstacles, and disseminating best practices.
A prominent shared priority is shifting from an access-focused agenda to one centered on completion and attainment. While ensuring access to high-quality pathways is fundamental, it is insufficient to fully realize the promise of economic mobility. Partners across the K-12 and postsecondary spectrum must collectively take ownership of the imperative to increase successful pathway completion rates. Furthermore, career pathways should be designed to be expansive, incorporating stackable credentials and clear routes to bachelor’s degrees, accompanied by robust support systems to facilitate students’ pursuit of these higher education goals. The active involvement of four-year institutions in the New Skills network ensures that pathways are not solely direct routes to community colleges but rather integrated frameworks offering multiple entry and exit points throughout a student’s educational journey.
Participating sites have consistently emphasized the paramount importance of data. A significant portion of the network’s work in the coming years will focus on resolving systems-level challenges to enhance the collection, sharing, interpretation, and application of data. This includes crucial information on job placement rates, pathway-specific persistence and completion metrics, and tracking student progress from K-12 through postsecondary education. Improving data infrastructure and utilization is essential for data-driven decision-making and continuous program improvement.
Another area requiring enhanced cross-sector coordination is advising. Frequently, K-12 and postsecondary advising systems operate in silos, creating navigational complexities for students. New Skills sites are committed to addressing the need for a seamless transition in advising support as students move from high school to their chosen postsecondary institutions. Proactive advising, starting as early as middle school, can play a transformative role in equipping students with the information and guidance they need to succeed in navigating career pathways.
Finally, the network recognizes that advancing equity is both a fundamental imperative and a complex undertaking. Participating sites have made a collective commitment to ongoing vision-setting, comprehensive training, and continuous dialogue, alongside implementing concrete, data-driven strategies to improve outcomes for specific student subgroups. Sites also acknowledge the significant influence of social capital and personal and professional networks on student success, and how these factors can inadvertently perpetuate equity gaps. The COVID-19 pandemic has further complicated the landscape by making in-person opportunities for students to build networks, such as through work-based learning experiences, significantly more challenging. The network will collaboratively develop innovative strategies to bridge these gaps and foster equitable opportunity, particularly within the current unique and challenging environment.
Network’s Future Impact and Scalability
Collectively, the states participating in the New Skills Ready Network represent a substantial 20 percent of the nation’s GDP and 4.3 percent of the student population within the nation’s 100 largest districts. The potential for positive impact of this initiative on individual lives and local economies is immense, amplified by the network’s collective capacity to accelerate progress and broaden reach. Furthermore, the active engagement of state leaders and the compelling early proof points from initial efforts demonstrate the potential to scale effective strategies beyond the participating sites. The New Skills network is pioneering a transformative path for others to follow in strengthening career pathways and promoting student success.
ESG expresses enthusiasm for the collaborative work ahead and is optimistic about the potential of this initiative to generate widespread positive impacts for districts, schools, students, and families across the nation, ultimately contributing to a more skilled and equitable workforce.
