Student Leadership Network is thrilled to join the Expanding Pathways Collaborative, an initiative bringing together high school counselors, education network leaders, and career training staff to identify and address challenges within the transition from high school to career. Organized by longtime educator Jeremy Greenfield of Shared Lanes, the cross-industry group launched with a month-long exchange of expertise and resources, culminating in a day of in-person learning, visionary thinking, and ultimately putting ideas to paper for next steps.
The significance of this effort lies in its potential to evolve the future of educational and career pathways for students. A recent YouthTruth survey from the Shared Lane working group showed “66% of students report no career counseling before high school graduation,” and a Gallup poll showed that “45% of families want more postsecondary options for their children.” How do we begin to address this evolving landscape in the perception of education and workforce opportunities?
A key thought partner is Rob Robinson, Student Leadership’s Senior Managing Director of the CollegeBound Initiative (CBI). He emphasizes the importance of developing comprehensive support for students exploring alternative pathways. While nearly nine in ten CBI students intend to pursue college after high school, those who do not tend to have less consistent guidance and awareness of their options.
“If a student comes to us for college counseling, I can pull up a stack of CUNY, SUNY, or private college opportunity programs and guide them through the process, check out graduation rates and earnings outcomes, and work on common applications and financial aid,” said Rob. “There’s no equivalent level of transparency in outcomes or standardized application criteria for career training programs. We want to ensure that for those students who want to start careers after high school, we are equipped to offer comprehensive guidance for them to make informed choices.”
Identifying Key Areas for Developing Strong Support Systems
The collaborative identified six key areas that need to be addressed to develop strong systems to support students’ transition from high school to quality career training programs.
- Learner readiness: Students have real and perceived gaps in communication skills, math and literacy proficiencies, and maturity needed to secure employment.
- Community skepticism: School leaders and families are skeptical of workforce pathways and perceive some programs as maintaining inequality compared to college.
- Counselor knowledge and perception of programs: Counselors’ perceptions of quality of workforce programs hinders their promotion of them, combined with misunderstandings about qualifications needed to apply.
- Workforce provider enrollment and retention: Mismatch between timing of opportunities and high school timelines combined with ineffective marketing strategies lead to fewer effective touchpoints with students.
- Inadequate resources and data availability: Absence of centralized information hub, application systems, and transparent data makes it difficult to apply to and assess program quality.
- Lack of coordination/Absence of a system: Lack of common application and referral systems negatively impacts ability to apply or share information.
Takeaways and Applications to Current Programs
Acknowledging the commendable efforts of staff and peers in the education space who already go above and beyond as counselors and connectors, Rob underscores the need for a centralized and systematic approach to support diverse pathways. Evolving from the piecemeal nature of sharing information in the current landscape, the Expanding Pathways Collaborative envisions creating an informed, replicable framework to guide counselors and other school staff in supporting students and families citywide.
Nicole Meyer, Student Leadership’s Alumni Engagement Manager, is already generating ideas for how to apply some of these learnings to the programs she hosts for high school seniors and alumni. She shared, “This is a great step to building out my team’s network to support alumni. I’ve connected with a lot of career program peers here, which expands the range of resources we can share at our Young Professionals Career Expo where our students hear directly from alternative pathway providers.”
The Expanding Pathways Collaborative developed some change ideas and charted out changes at the high school, workforce, and system level to make these ideas a reality. Some of the actionable steps we can take to evolve our counseling services to match the demonstrated interest in career pathways on the rise among high school students, families, and educators include:
- Spotlight workforce training programs at school community & family events
- Include workforce training options in postsecondary planning timelines
- Be intentional when preparing for career fairs
Next Steps
This partnership approach is another building block in Student Leadership Network’s mission to advance educational equity. Building upon the momentum of the launch event, the Expanding Pathways Collaborative will next develop and test action plans to create more effective systems to navigate diverse career pathways. From contributing to recent NYC Public Schools task forces on alternative pathways to sharing expertise at a US Department of Education learning series, Student Leadership’s team is committed to sharing knowledge and practices that will help expand educational and career opportunities for many more students across the nation.
Photos and diagram courtesy of Jeremy Greenfield and Shared Lanes
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