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This Perspective builds on a related RAND Corporation report that describes the implementation of Findhelp at four North Carolina community colleges in 2021 and 2022. Findhelp is an online tool to connect students to resources in their communities to help meet their basic nonacademic needs. The North Carolina Community College System, with support from the John M. Belk Endowment, contracted with RAND to track the implementation and student usage of Findhelp, estimate its impacts on student success, and understand the cost-effectiveness of using the program to increase student retention. This Perspective summarizes the main findings from the longer report and then contextualizes the findings in the broader literature. While Findhelp was perceived by college staff as a low-cost and easy-to-implement tool, few students used the tool during the study period. Despite low usage rates, the study findings suggest that students who accessed Findhelp had better academic outcomes than similar students who did not access Findhelp. The broader literature suggests at least three strategies to build on lessons learned to improve support for college students' basic needs. This Perspective concludes with a discussion of these strategies to improve the uptake and effectiveness of initiatives aiming to support students' basic needs in colleges across the United States. [For the full report, "Report on the Implementation, Costs, and Impacts of the Findhelp Platform in the North Carolina Community College System. Research Report. RR-A2527-1," see ED627507.]

Stackable credential programs--that is, programs that facilitate students' ability to earn multiple postsecondary certificates or degrees--have been a priority for Ohio, which has a long history of legislation, state and regional initiatives, and institution-led efforts to build more-effective pathways to address the needs of employers and students. To assess progress and inform ongoing efforts to scale stackable credentials, the Ohio Department of Higher Education and the RAND Corporation established a research partnership. In this report, RAND researchers examine students who earned postsecondary certificates in health care, manufacturing and engineering technology (MET), or information technology (IT) fields at Ohio institutions between the 2004-2005 and 2012-2013 academic years and went on to earn (or stack) additional educational credentials. The authors descriptively examine the completion of credentials over time, the types of students who are earning certificates and going on to stack credentials, the subfields and levels of credentials earned, the types of institutions students earned credentials from, and the credit accumulation and terms of enrollment for students earning different types of credentials. The findings indicate increased numbers of students earning certificates and stacking credentials in Ohio. Certificate-earners were diverse, but rates of stacking were lower for Black students and adult learners (i.e., ages 25 and older). Most of the students who stacked credentials had earned a degree within four years, and most stacked within the same field.

Instead of enrolling for four or more years to get a bachelor's degree, what if individuals could work their way toward a degree gradually? First, they would attend college or a trade school for six months or a year and earn a certificate that prepares them for an entry-level job in various fields. Then, they would pursue additional knowledge and skills at the time they need them to advance their careers, reenrolling in college to continue progress toward a second certificate or degree. This might allow these individuals to invest their time and tuition dollars more strategically, and they might come away with training that better fits their needs. This approach to education and training is often referred to as "stackable credentials." Stackable credentials are most common in fields that offer many "middle skill" jobs--those that require some postsecondary education and training below the bachelor's degree level--such as health care and information technology. Ohio has been a leader in scaling stackable credential programs. It established statewide agreements that require credits to be awarded for certain blocks of coursework that previously were not eligible for credit, and it increased the funding allocated to certificate programs. Have institutions changed the programs that they offer? Are students stacking credentials, and, when they do, are they seeing an increase in earnings? Researchers at the RAND Corporation and the Ohio Department of Higher Education (ODHE) established a multiyear partnership to answer these questions and others. To find the answers, the team examined the state's stackable credential offerings and student outcomes in three fields: health care, manufacturing and engineering technology (MET), and information technology (IT). This brief describes work in the reports "Stacking Educational Credentials in Ohio: Pathways Through Postsecondary Education in Health Care, Manufacturing and Engineering Technology, and Information Technology" (ED613709); "Making Improvements to Stackable Credential Pipelines: A Toolkit on Using Data to Drive Improvement in Ohio Postsecondary Institutions" (ED613757); and "Stackable Credential Pipelines in Ohio: Evidence on Programs and Earnings Outcomes" (ED613593).

As the demand for workers with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) skills grows ever higher, employers face stiff competition for qualified employees--and with retirements, the pool of employees grows ever smaller. Meanwhile, U.S. education and workforce systems could be failing to keep pace with the needs of the STEM economy, leaving talented people out of the running for STEM jobs because they lack the proper training or credentials. Researchers examined the fast-growing oil and natural gas field in three states to understand how educators and employers are working together to meet demand for workers in STEM fields, as well as how both can improve collaboration. The study focused on well-paying "middle-skills" jobs, which require specialized education beyond high school but not a four-year college degree. The research team conducted surveys and held interviews with employers, STEM field college department heads, and instructors from four- and two-year colleges. The study resulted in a deeper understanding of the challenges preventing full collaboration between educators and employers seeking to build a strong middle-skills STEM workforce, as well as ways in which employers, colleges, and instructors can overcome these challenges. [This brief describes work done in "Developing a Skilled Workforce for the Oil and Natural Gas Industry: An Analysis of Employers and Colleges in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia" (ED595005) and "Supporting Middle-Skills STEM Workforce Development: Analysis of Workplace Skills in Demand and Education Institutions' Curricular Offerings in the Oil and Gas Sector" (ED594789).]

"Middle-skills" jobs require more education and training than that provided by a high school diploma but less education and training than a four-year college degree. Employers struggle to find workers with the needed combination of knowledge and skills to fill middle-skills jobs; this search for workers is particularly pertinent to the tri-state region of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, where the boom from new oil and natural gas technologies related to extraction has propelled the region economically. In this report, researchers surveyed instructional staff at five colleges with training partnerships with oil and gas industry companies in the tri-state region to examine whether these colleges' science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education programs emphasize the skills and knowledge areas that employers need. In addition, researchers examined which knowledge areas and skills might need more support by asking instructional staff about areas in which students had difficulty and if more resources (and if so, which ones) were needed. [To view the brief, "How Educators and Employers Can Align Efforts to Fill Middle-Skills STEM Jobs," see ED594813.]

As the New York City economy becomes increasingly reliant on workers who have some postsecondary education or training in a specialized field, there is a growing need for local policymakers and educators to identify the most efficient ways to prepare high school students to take on these "middle-skill jobs." These needs are particularly acute in the transportation and manufacturing industries. To address these needs, the New York City Department of Small Business Services (SBS) and Department of Education (DOE) created Scholars at Work (SAW), a program available to an eligible subset of New York City high school students enrolled in Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs. The goal of the SAW program is to expose students to career opportunities, to provide them with real-life work experience alongside adults, and to develop their workplace skills. This report presents findings from the RAND Corporation's evaluation of the SAW program. The evaluation has two components: an implementation study that examines and describes SAW's activities and processes, to understand the extent to which those are functioning as the designers and implementers of the program expect, and an outcomes study, which analyzes how SAW participants are faring in the labor market compared to comparable NYC public school graduates. [This report was supported by the New York City's Mayor's Office for Economic Opportunity.]

This report examines the role of career and technical education (CTE) for assessing students in learning mathematics and preventing students from dropping out of high school. CTE is a wide field of educational practice that includes occupational training and career preparation offered in formats ranging from individual courses to comprehensive programs at the secondary and postsecondary levels. Recent changes in the policy environment emphasizing academic progress for CTE students have made proper evaluation of the influence of CTE on outcomes such as mathematics learning and dropping out of high school increasingly important. This report uses data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002), a recently completed national-level study of high school students. ELS:2002 began with a nationally representative sample of 10th-graders in public and private schools in the United States in 2002. Sample members were surveyed again in the spring of 2004, when most were high school seniors. In the spring of 2005, transcripts were collected from these students' high schools. Using these data with methods that correct for common challenges in determining the influence of CTE, this report contrasts the effects of academic courses and occupational courses on mathematics learning and dropping out of high school for students in the ELS:2002 sample who attended public schools. Key student subgroups defined by the No Child Left Behind Act are examined closely, and attention is paid to alternative ways of defining and analyzing occupational coursetaking. The following are appended: (1) Technical Description of Data and Methods; (2) Classification of Courses; and (3) Parameter Estimates for Control Variables from the Multivariate Regression Models. [This report was prepared as a background report for the National Assessment of Career and Technical Education (NACTE) and submitted to the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Under Secretary, Policy and Program Studies Service. The report was funded under ED Contract No. ED-04-CO-0030/0002: Analytic, Evaluation, and Policy Support for the Policy and Program Studies Service.] (Contains 25 tables, 3 figures, and 30 footnotes.)

Academic math and science courses have been long shown to increase learning and educational attainment, but are they sufficient on their own to prepare youth for the challenges and rigor of the STEM workforce? Or, are there distinctive benefits to complementing these traditional academic courses with applied ones? Answers to these questions are particularly critical as schools try to balance the competing demands of providing youth with the applied skills and knowledge to thrive in the adult labor force while at the same time ensuring they are meeting high standards of academic competency that are required for college. With respect to the latter, the emphasis on standardized testing has exacerbated these concerns, and in some cases, test preparation and an over emphasis on academic subjects has "crowded out" other components of the curriculum. With these competing demands and faced with limited resources, education policy makers must make informed choices regarding how to best structure their curriculum to meet the needs of a diverse student population. To this end, the proposed project will address three research questions: (1) What applied STEM courses are most commonly taken by high school students?; (2) To what extent are high school students taking both academic and applied STEM courses?; and (3) Do applied STEM courses in high school improve achievement in math? (Contains 2 tables and 3 footnotes.)

This report describes career academies in 12 Florida school districts in the 2006/07 school year. It examines their structure and career clusters, the high schools offering them, and the students enrolled. This study is one of the first to investigate both career academy structure and clusters using multiple data sources. It provides state education leaders and other stakeholders with baseline trends and patterns to use in tracking and evaluating Florida career academy development. [For the full report, see ED518283.]

This report describes career academies in 12 Florida school districts in the 2006/07 school year. It examines their structure and career clusters, the high schools offering them, and the students enrolled. This study is driven by three research questions: (1) How many career academies were there, and of what types? (2) What were the characteristics of high schools offering career academies? and (3) How many students were enrolled in career academies, and what were their characteristics? This study is one of the first to investigate both career academy structure and clusters using multiple data sources. The findings reveal substantial career academy activity across the 12 Florida school districts in 2006/07. Almost 80 percent of schools had at least one career academy, and there were 596 distinct career academies across the 145 schools offering them. Of those, most operated as school-within-a-school career academies embedded in a larger high school, with most students not participating. Fewer schools reported wall-to-wall academies, where all students participate, and these were primarily in Miami-Dade. Of the 332,010 sample high school students, 49,795 (15 percent) were identified as academy participants. Schools with wall-to-wall academies tended to be larger, and their academies served a more disadvantaged student population (as proxied by the percentage of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch), on average. Wall-to-wall academies also tended to address more general career clusters, such as arts, audiovisual technology, and communication, and human services. By contrast, school-within-a-school career academies tended to be in smaller schools and serve more advantaged students. School-within-a-school academies also tended to address more specific career clusters, such as hospitality and tourism. (Contains 3 boxes, 4 figures, and 12 tables.)[For "Characteristics of Career Academies in 12 Florida School Districts. Summary. Issues & Answers. REL 2011-No. 106," see ED518374.]

In this paper, I use a nationally representative sample of American high school seniors in 1992 to examine change and stability in the employment patterns of youth as they make the transition from high school to college. Students with weak attachments to the labor force in high school tend to remain unemployed during the first year of college. Conversely, students who work in moderation while in high school have the highest odds of enrolling in college and working while doing so. Compared with their nonworking peers, student workers enter college with lower grades and test scores but are equally engaged in school. Socioeconomic factors have little bearing on high school employment, but they are strongly related to postsecondary employment: students who work during the first year of college have fewer socioeconomic resources than nonworking students. The findings highlight the intersection of school and work in young adulthood and its importance when studying the transition from high school to college among contemporary American youth.

Recent research shows that U.S. 15-year-olds are behind their international counterparts in problem solving and mathematics literacy, ranking 24th of 29 nations (Lemke et al. 2004). Therefore, a key concern among policymakers and educators is improving the quantitative and analytical skills of American youth, who face job prospects in an economy that increasingly values a strong foundation in mathematics and science. As a means to improve proficiency in this area, many states have increased their course requirements for graduation. This study, which uses data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002), improves upon past research by using information from high school transcripts to identify the exact course sequences students take and links them with achievement test scores that have been scaled to indicate different levels of mathematics proficiency. This linkage provides a more detailed understanding of the curricular pathways students travel and the types of proficiencies they acquire along the way. Chapter 1 provides a brief background description of the pattern of mathematics coursetaking in the United States and lists the research questions. Chapter 2 describes the ELS:2002 data and the measures used in the analysis. Chapter 3 provides the results of the analysis. Chapter 4 concludes with a discussion of the findings and their limitations. Appended are: (1) Technical Notes and Glossary; and (2) Standard Error Tables for Estimated Means and Proportions, with Weighted Standard Deviations and Raw Sample Sizes for Means. (Contains 32 tables.)

This report profiles the American high school senior of 2004 using data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002), the most recent secondary school longitudinal study conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). ELS:2002 began with a nationally representative sample of 10th-graders in public and private schools in the United States in 2002. The 2002 sophomore cohort was surveyed again in the spring of 2004 when most of the sample members were high school seniors. This sample was "freshened" with a sample of spring 2004 seniors who were not high school sophomores or were not in the United States in the spring of 2002. This population provides a nationally representative sample of the 2004 senior class, which is the focus of this report. This report is the third in a series of reports profiling contemporary American high school students. The following are appended: (1) Technical Notes and Glossary; and (2) Standard Error Tables. (Contains 22 tables & 3 figures.)

A longitudinal study examined the college and career transitions of graduates of the Lansing Area Manufacturing Partnership (LAMP) program, which is a school-to-career (STC) program sponsored by the United Auto Workers, General Motors Corporation, and Michigan's Ingham County Intermediate School District. The progress of three cohorts of LAMP students20 graduates of the class of 1998, 54 graduates of the class of 1999, and 54 graduates of the class of 2000was compared to that of groups of students who graduated from the same high schools. Data were collected through mail surveys administered every 6 months and a round of qualitative interviews with a selective sample of LAMP graduates in spring 2002. Compared with the comparison group members, the LAMP graduates pursued postsecondary education at higher rates and they had a higher level of persistence in higher education. LAMP graduates pursued a wide variety of fields of study, not limited to manufacturing or other technical careers. Compared with the comparison group members, more LAMP graduates were enrolled and working at the same time. Despite their higher rates of employment, the LAMP graduates' cumulative grade-point averages were comparable to those of the comparison group. The LAMP program has proven effective in helping students make successful school-to-work transitions and school-to-college transitions. (Contains 13 figures.) (MN)

The effects of participation in school-to-career (STC) on subsequent educational and career opportunities were examined in a longitudinal study of 1999 and 2000 graduates of the Lansing Area Manufacturing Partnership (LAMP), which is an STC program sponsored by the United Auto Workers, General Motors Corporation, and Michigan's Ingham County Intermediate School District. Mail surveys and telephone interviews were administered to 208 students (104 in the STC sample and 104 in the non-STC sample). A total of 195 students (101 STC-sample members and 94 non-STC sample members) completed the first-round and follow-up interviews, resulting in a response rate of 93.8%. Participation in the LAMP STC did not appear to limit the respondents' career or educational aspirations. Two-year colleges were the destination of choice for most graduates from both groups, and similar proportions of both groups were enrolled in four-year colleges. The STC participants were nearly four times as likely as the nonparticipants to have career goals relating to the automotive industry, although most graduates from both samples aspired to become professionals. Only 13% of the STC sample members were employed at the sponsoring company after graduation. Regardless of whether the STC graduates pursued further education or entered the world of work, they considered the STC program beneficial in making their postgraduation transitions and decisions. (Contains 30 references.) (MN)

The challenge of connecting employers and educators to collaboratively plan for training future workers is an enduring one -- particularly for jobs that are rapidly changing because of technological advancements. This report addresses this challenge as it pertains to employers and educators in the oil and natural gas industry located in and around the Utica and Marcellus shales. The combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to tap natural gas has resulted in the Utica and Marcellus shales becoming major sources of natural gas supply within the United States and are predicted to bring significant long-term economic benefits to the tristate region of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. To inform policy decisions on how best to expand and sustain the pool of workers with knowledge and skills needed by oil and natural gas employers in the tristate region, this report summarizes the findings from surveys administered to the region's oil and gas employers and education providers. We found that basic cross-cutting skills -- such as time management, speaking, and writing -- and knowledge of business operations (including sales and marketing) are reported by employers as essential for their workers to competently perform in high-priority occupations. However, these basic skills tend not to be emphasized in local postsecondary degree programs that support the oil and natural gas industry. We also found a clear lack of collaboration and partnerships between oil and gas companies and education providers across the region, with colleges and employers each pointing to the other's unwillingness as the source for lack of partnerships or collaboration. [To view the brief, "How Educators and Employers Can Align Efforts to Fill Middle-Skills STEM Jobs," see ED594813.]