Program Management Colleagues,
Mike Cruse, Moderator of the Career Pathways CoP, posted the message below in that CoP today. I wonder if development of Career Pathways is on your mind, and if you have questions about this from what you are seeing in your community. Mike has posted a question at the end of his post and, naturally, I have some questions, too. I would be delighted if you could look at them and perhaps post your answer(s).
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Recently, MDRC, a nonpartisan education and social policy research organization, published the paper, New Pathways to Careers and College: Examples, Evidence, and Prospects. The paper highlights several different career pathway models and analyzes the organizational principles of these programs. The paper also includes a set of recommendations for future investment to help develop pathways programs to scale.
Below is an excerpt from the paper:
High standards, accountability systems, and data-driven decision-making. As pathway models are replicated, it is important to ensure that new sites provide all the key elements, so that a program that calls itself a career academy or Linked Learning pathway is really offering the experience intended by the National Career Academy Coalition (NCAC), National Academy Foundation (NAF), and Linked Learning. These organizations have to a great extent aligned their standards to guide implementation and ensure quality. The NAF standards also include measures of students’ performance in NAF courses and internships. The existence of these standards demonstrates that it is possible to define and monitor quality. However, the fact that the number of certified pathway programs nationwide still is under a thousand demonstrates how far there is to go to achieve large-scale implementation.
So far, pathway certification has been entirely voluntary, with no governmental rewards or sanctions attached. As states continue to modify their accountability procedures to take into consideration high school graduates’ readiness for college and careers, students’ successful completion of a certified career and college pathway can be used as an accountability measure.
Questions: This excerpt makes the case for "aligned [their] standards to guide implementation and ensure quality" of career pathways programs. If you are working with a career pathways program, how did you decide which standards to use? Furthermore, what steps have you taken to align recognized standards and with program implementation?
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More questions:
1) As a program manager, are you interested in career pathways and, if so, why?
2) Is your program or school part of a career pathway in your community? If so, what does that mean? What is your role?
3) Do you wrestle with how to both make career pathways meaningful to adult learners and also aligned with work-related standards for preparation or performance?
4) What questions do you have about career pathways?
David J. Rosen
Moderator, Program Management CoP
djrosen123@gmail.com