Classifying Community College Programs by Post-completion Success in Transfer and Workforce: The Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University, alongside the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program, released a guidebook and several other resources on how community college leaders can understand and classify programs based on student success transitioning to the workforce or transferring to further education. This includes a guide instructing leaders on the taxonomy
surrounding the classification of programs, an Excel-based tool that allows community colleges to produce visualizations on their programs’ post-completion success, and another guide for reviewing data from the Excel-based tool. The goal of these resources is to allow community college leaders to identify strategies to ensure that more students are able to either continue their education or attain a high-paying job after program completion.
Education and Workforce Data Legislation Review: What Happened in 2024: The Data Quality Campaign (DQC) released a report detailing the strides states have made within the past year regarding data governance, access and usage across the educational and workforce landscapes. With hundreds of bills introduced in the past year across states that would affect these data processes, DQC analyzed the trends and described future legislative work needed in maintaining such data systems. For instance, Colorado legislators established the Colorado Statewide Longitudinal Data System – connecting education and workforce-related datasets – and Vermont created a new Office of Workplace Expansion and Development, tasked with collecting data from various agencies and formulating recommendations on workforce education and training programs. ACTE and Advance CTE produce a similar resource annually – our state CTE policy reviews – that analyzes and summarizes trends from state-level bills targeted toward CTE and workforce development, including bills that address CTE and workforce data. The 2023 report can be found here along with the state CTE policy tracker.
Keys to Scale: How to Grow the Impact of Education-to-career Pathway Intermediaries: Education Strategy Group (ESG) released a report on the roles pathway intermediary organizations take when promoting educational and workforce opportunities to students. As these organizations grow across the nation – often with commitments to bringing about equitable economic opportunities to the most marginalized student groups – barriers remain in place that prevent these organizations from reaching scale. The report released by ESG discusses what these organizations are, what their impact is, why they are impactful, and what could be done to increase their influence. ESG also released separate reports on five specific organizations doing this type of work across the nation.
Breaking Barriers, Building Futures: Expanding Access to High-quality Career Pathways: Advance CTE and ESG released the Year 4 Annual Review of JPMorgan Chase’s New Skills ready network, a five-year program across six U.S. cities with the purpose of developing equitable career pathways and policy solutions that provide underserved students with opportunities to access postsecondary education and high-wage jobs. The annual review describes how the six sites of the network – Boston, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Indianapolis and Nashville – are working to expand, implement and sustain pathways, advising and related supports. For example, the Denver site has established an annual Learner Voice Symposium, where educators, policymakers and other stakeholders hear directly from learners about their experiences and what they seek in career pathways.
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