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This brief provides an overview of the burgeoning credential marketplace for young adult talent developers--the community-based, entrepreneurial organizations that work with young people ages 16 to 24, many of whom are seeking a faster and less costly route into the labor market. These organizations play an important role in helping young people select high-quality, achievable, and affordable short-term credentials that local employers value. This brief also highlights the many states and national organizations that are taking steps to increase transparency about short-term credentials and ultimately create a more rational, coherent, and user-friendly credential marketplace.

As the economy struggles to recover from the pandemic and the ensuing volatility and labor shortages, leaders in the field of young adult talent development are seeing a need to develop approaches that equally address both the talent needs of employers and the education and training aspirations of young adults. This brief explores how personalized learning approaches can be used to support and balance the interests of the supply and demand sides in young adult talent development.

The coronavirus pandemic has been devastating to countless Americans, particularly people of color and those with low incomes. Young people from these communities have been especially hard hit. The work of organizations that foster young adult talent development, with a particular focus on youth of color and those from low-income communities, is more important than ever. This brief shares how one network of young adult leaders and youth-focused workforce development organizations have met the challenges--responding first to the worldwide health crisis and a collapsing economy, and then, reexamining their work in light of the rekindling of the Black Lives Matter movement. The insights come from both young adults and practitioners in the Young Adult Talent Development Network. Despite the formidable challenges the pandemic has presented, youth-facing community-based organizations are persevering, responding with creativity and nimbleness. As practitioners continue to adapt and innovate, the following principles and questions must be top of mind: (1) All decision-making must place young adults at the center; (2) Policy-making and collective advocacy are critical next steps; and (3) Young adults are central to an equitable recovery.

As coronavirus infections surge again across the United States, young adults living in low-income communities are experiencing a tremendous loss of educational and economic opportunity. As many high schools and colleges respond to reports of new infections by moving back and forth between in-person and virtual learning, the lack of consistency is loosening the critical bonds that link educators to young adults. Students are also connecting less with school counselors and the support programs that help them access college and persist to earn a credential. In the face of these challenges, community-based organizations that serve young adults facing barriers to education and employment are more important than ever. Since the first stay-at-home orders went into effect in March 2020, these nonprofits quickly shifted their delivery models and intensified their efforts to assist the growing number of young adults seeking training and employment. This nimbleness is exemplified by members of Jobs for the Future's (JFF's) Young Adult Talent Development (YATD) Network, a group that brings together leaders of over 35 organizations that help low-income young adults gain the skills, credentials, and connections necessary for economic mobility. In the spring of 2020, YATD Network members quickly pivoted to virtual delivery models--trading ideas on how to do so while still developing or maintaining strong relationships with participants as well as employer partners. This issue brief shares insights gleaned from three virtual "reinvention" sessions with young adult leaders and leaders of community-based organizations involved in the network. During these gatherings, participants experienced first-hand how human-centered design processes could help them draw on their existing resources, creativity, and partnerships to continue to develop innovative solutions to tough challenges at an uncertain time.

This brief reports on the first year of a promising effort in Texas to deepen the postsecondary preparation that schools and programs offer. With support from the Greater Texas Foundation (GTF) and coaching and technical assistance from Jobs for the Future (JFF), five sites have begun using JFF's Back on Track: Postsecondary Success model and JFF's Common Instructional Framework (CIF) to assess and improve upon the strategies they use to prepare participants for a successful transition to postsecondary education, training, and good jobs.

Opportunity Works is a national initiative to dramatically improve the life trajectories of low-income young people ages 16 to 24 who are not in school or working. This population, often called "opportunity youth," comprises a significant segment of America's potential workforce. Yet they are also the young men and women who face the greatest barriers to entering and advancing in the labor market. Launched in 2015, Opportunity Works has demonstrated how to make a difference in the lives of young people who find themselves without a clear path forward. Opportunity Works served more than 2,000 teens and young adults. Their successes include: (1) More than 800 individuals earned a high school credential; (2) Nearly 1,000 participants enrolled in postsecondary education or training; and (3) Almost half of all participants were young men of color. These initial results are particularly powerful for a population that has had limited access to effective programs in the past. In this report, the authors highlight lessons learned from the initiative, which was based on Jobs for the Future's (JFF) "Back on Track" model to reconnect opportunity youth and guided by JFF coaching to local anchor organizations and service providers. The authors also describe the complex nature of what it takes to reach these positive results and the many interlocking pieces that are part of the solution. [This report was produced by the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions. Additional funding was provided by the Andrus Family Fund and the Ballmer Group.]

The National Fund for Workforce Solutions and Jobs for the Future, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, launched the Youth/Industry Partnership Initiative (YIPI), to learn how employer-led industry partnerships could addressing the crisis of youth unemployment--7 percent of American youth (age 16-24) are neither in school or working--while helping employers find skilled workers in high-demand sectors. YIPI explored how industry partnerships can be harnessed to create employment pathways aligned with employer needs that offer a clear sequence of education coursework, training credentials, and job placement in high-demand sectors to generate improved outcomes for older youth and benefits to participating employers. YIPI supported three National Fund collaboratives to investigate this work--in Boston, Hartford, and Seattle--and the key lesson that emerged is the importance of a collective, place-based effort driven by employers and industry partnerships, and also relying on community providers and education/training providers, to build high-quality employer-connected pathways. [For the executive summary, see ED560801.]

At this moment, the role of community-based organizations (CBOs) has never been more important. The country is facing a dual crisis in youth unemployment and low postsecondary completion rates. Both are especially prevalent among low-income and minority young people. Across the nation, nearly 7 million young people are neither in school nor part of the labor market--17 percent of people ages 16 to 24. This group includes both those who have a high school credential but have not continued into postsecondary education and/or the workplace, and those who have left school without a high school diploma and have few if any educational or job prospects. Federal support for local education and career-related services reaches less than 10 percent of these young people. While most young people are aware of the connection between education and employment and have aspirations to succeed in both, young people in the group described above typically find themselves with very limited opportunities. The lost potential in these young people has enormous costs to our economy and our communities for many years to come. This paper shows the vital role of community-based organizations in addressing this dual crisis. The ideas and examples presented here are based on the groundbreaking work of four community-based organizations in California that participated in Opportunity Links for Youth, an initiative supported by the James Irvine Foundation. With support from Jobs for the Future, these CBOs are tackling the essential work of helping 18 to 25 year olds develop the skills and credentials they need for entry into and advancement in growth sectors of the economy. On-ramp design diagrams are appended. [For the executive summary, see ED561288.]

Competency education is attracting significant interest as a promising way to help meet our national priority of ensuring that all young people are ready for college and careers. In competency-based schools, students advance at different rates, based on their ability to demonstrate mastery of learning objectives. Teachers provide customized supports to help propel everyone to proficiency. This is the first paper in Students at the Center's new Competency Education Research Series. It lays a foundation for assessing the potential of competency-based models, grounded in an exploration of the outcomes from previous like-minded efforts. Recent research and theory from the learning sciences shows that a personalized approach to competency education may help better prepare all students from all backgrounds for deeper learning and for life after graduation. New information technologies are making it feasible to try these strategies on a large scale. Putting in place an equitable system necessitates navigating the many--but far from insurmountable--political and implementation challenges facing personalized competency education.

Almost 7 million young Americans (age 16-24) are insufficiently attached to school or work. Based on conservative estimates, we can generate over $1 billion just by helping a mere 0.1 percent earn a high school credential and complete their first year of college through Back on Track Designs. This brief lays out the cost of setting up these GED- and diploma-granting schools and programs, and how districts, colleges, and community-based organizations can partner to sustain them. Appended are: (1) Programs Consulted; and (2) Methodology.

Solving America's dropout crisis requires immediate, drastic action. Intractable as the dropout problem may seem, recognition of its magnitude has created an environment ripe for action. Most notably, federal regulations adopted in 2008 require states to use more accurate ways of counting dropouts and holding districts and schools more accountable for improving results. In addition, encouraging developments over the past decade have put major improvement within reach: better data collection and analysis; promising research showing that a small set of school-based variables are highly effective in predicting future dropouts; and pioneering prevention and recovery strategies in cities with the highest concentrations of dropouts. Ideally, policymakers and educational leaders in every state will draw on these developments to design and implement comprehensive approaches to improving graduation rates. This paper helps states take the crucial first step: evaluating each state's dropout prevention and recovery policies to determine how well they support innovation for better student outcomes. This report identifies six model policy elements that frame a sound legislative strategy for dropout prevention and recovery, and it assesses the extent to which recent state policy aligns with these model elements. Overall, 36 states and the District of Columbia have enacted new dropout legislation since 2002. While some states have moved toward adopting comprehensive dropout prevention and recovery policies, nearly all of them have a long way to go. Nearly one-third of the nation--14 states--have enacted no new laws aimed at increasing graduation rates in the past eight years. Methodology is appended. (Contains 25 endnotes.)

An increasing number of state leaders have begun to grapple with one of the significant challenges of K-12 reform: how to substantially increase the percentage of young people graduating from high school while also continuing to bring academic standards into alignment with the skills and knowledge required for success in higher education and employment. Addressing this challenge requires a new level of attention to the graduation and achievement gaps among different income and racial groups. This report calls upon state policymakers to commit to five key outcomes and suggests strategies and action steps they can take to focus high school reform efforts on ensuring that these commitments are met. By building on and complementing ongoing systemic educational reform efforts, states can improve the educational outcomes of and options for high school-aged students, especially low-income and struggling students. (Contains 14 endnotes and 1 figure.)

One of the major barriers to making good on this promise is the broad set of misconceptions framing most discussions of the dropout issue. Too often, both public perception and public policy seem based on the notion that dropping out is confined to a small--and particularly unmotivated--group of young people. A related assumption, although rarely voiced, is that dropping out is primarily a problem of disaffected black and Hispanic central city youth who have rejected mainstream values, including the importance of education. Such views have reinforced a third widespread misconception: that there is little anyone can do to get most young people who leave school back on track--earning a high school degree and advancing to higher education. Making Good on a Promise challenges those beliefs. It paints a new, more accurate picture of the dropout problem facing the nation today, with a detailed look at who dropped out and how much education they had completed by their early adulthood. It analyzes data from the first major national study to follow a representative group of young people over time: the National Educational Longitudinal Study, which tracked the educational progress of approximately 25,000 eighth-graders in 1988 over 12 years, to 2000. Methodology is appended. (Contains 14 figures and 11 endnotes.)

A growing number of school districts around the country are using small school development as a central strategy for improving high schools and overhauling the way the district itself does business. Driven by an increasing sense of urgency and frustration with reforms that fail to fundamentally change the quality of instruction or the nature of student-teacher relationships, they are transforming large, under-performing high schools into "education complexes" made up of multiple autonomous small schools under one roof. For school districts, this conversion process offers a potentially powerful opportunity for a "defining moment" of change--an opportunity to provide the most fertile conditions for excellent teaching and learning. A small schools strategy provides educational leaders with an opportunity to fundamentally rethink such key areas as administrative structures, staff roles, student/teacher relationships, course sequences, subject matter, the use of time, community partnerships, and parent engagement. Communities undertaking a small schools strategy are developing answers to two basic issues: (1) how quickly to proceed; and (2) what process to undertake in developing and managing small schools. This report examines a range of strategies being undertaken by districts across the country to plan and launch multiple small schools within the walls of large high schools. It also explores implementation issues that arise concerning school-level autonomies, governance, and leadership of high school reform at the district level, and it delves into the challenges for "central office" leaders of managing a system of learning options that offers a broader range of choices for students and parents. (Contains 15 endnotes.)

The number of high school age students who do not complete high school is receiving increased attention as a serious challenge facing the educational system. This is happening for several reasons. New research estimates that about 30 percent of high school students fail to earn a diploma in the standard number of years, a higher figure than state and local education officials typically cite. In many states, barely half of African-Americans and Latinos graduate from high school. The magnitude of the challenge is becoming clear at the same time that a consensus is emerging that education beyond high school is critical to economic self-sufficiency and success in today's knowledge-intensive economy. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that 60 percent of jobs created between now and 2010 will require at least some postsecondary education. In the emerging economy, a high school dropout or a young person who earns a GED, but no further postsecondary credential, has extremely few opportunities for a family-supporting career. Addressing the dropout crisis will require responding to a dual challenge: state education systems must promote and support both dropout prevention strategies and dropout recovery efforts. This brief describes current practice in both prevention and recovery, highlighting promising approaches in each area that can help reduce stubbornly high dropout rates. It concludes with several suggestions for how state policymakers can help promote a more systemic approach to the dropout crisis. (Contains 23 endnotes.)

Many young people learn a discouraging set of lessons between the ages of 16 and 24. They come to see secondary school as irrelevant, available jobs as demeaning, and their prospects and choices as diminishing. Some continue to "drop in" to school long enough to get a diploma, but leave lacking the skills or interest to pursue further education. Others drop out of school altogether. Seen in this context, the ambitious promise implied in the federal law to "leave no child behind" will require moving expeditiously beyond the "one-size-fits-all," factory-model high school to a far richer diversity of learning environments. This paper focuses on four types of learning environments that appear to hold particular promise for vulnerable and potentially disconnected youth: reinvented high schools, secondary/postsecondary blends, education/employment blends, and extended learning opportunities beyond the school day, year, and building. The first section paints a statistical portrait of the substantial number of urban youth who could potentially benefit from these new programmatic options. The second section describes the authors' process for identifying and investigating emerging, powerful learning environments, then profiles four programs that show evidence of effectiveness. The report concludes with a discussion of the policy opportunities today for creating multiple avenues for young people to achieve to higher standards, along with four specific policy recommendations to meet this goal. (Contains 11 endnotes.)

As Boston and other cities across the nation enter a second decade of education reform, the attention of school and community leaders, as well as of parents, is turning to the learning potential provided by after-school hours. This paper explores the potential role of project-based and experiential learning in transforming the learning opportunities in the after-school setting. Section 1 of the paper reviews current debates over the "what" and "how" of learning in the after-school hours and describes project-based learning and why it is desirable from the point of view of children, their teachers, mentors, and parents, as well as from the perspective of learning theorists and researchers. Section 2 focuses on effective practices, providing snapshots of several after-school projects nationwide and in Boston and unpacking these to arrive at "symptoms" or criteria of effective projects. Section 3 takes up the challenges of incorporating these learning strategies successfully into the after-school hours, in particular examining what it will take to help Boston after-school staff in this effort. The paper points out that the conceptual and practical challenges involved in moving Boston's after-school settings toward a culture of learning and a sustained curriculum of "project-like" experiences for children from 5 years to adolescence are formidable. The paper concludes with recommendations for action and for further study within the next 2 years in Boston. Seven appendices include a list of individuals interviewed; a list of relevant publications, Web sites, and videos; and a 14-item bibliography. (KB)

This paper describes the experiences of five high schools in Boston, Massachusetts, a district with a successful history of career pathways and academies that, in the last 3 years, has encouraged schools to restructure entirely into smaller learning communities. The schools work to benchmark curriculum to high standards, ensure effective instructional practice, implement multiple and ongoing assessments, create small learning communities, reduce student-teacher ratios, create respectful learning environments, and build partnerships with families, communities, businesses, and higher education. Data from interviews and document reviews at these schools indicate that a strong curricular leader is essential to developing a strong, effective learning community; tensions result from decisions regarding how to fully cluster students and teachers into small learning communities; it is difficult to maintain basic services for bilingual students; it is difficult to balance the desire of teachers for input into staffing decisions with the need to ensure that students have equal access to a range of pathways; and it is challenging to focus simultaneously on implementing new district initiatives directed at preparing students for high stakes tests and on restructuring schools into small learning communities using inquiry-based, contextual learning strategies. The research methodology is appended. (Contains 18 references.) (SM)

This document presents the lessons of Jobs for the Future's Benchmark Communities Initiative (BCI), a 5-year systemic educational reform initiative launched in 1994 in five communities. Before joining the BCI, the five Benchmark communities had each begun a school-to-career effort. Five key findings from the BCI are outlined: (1) students engaged in intensive school-to-career experiences that have strong work-based learning components compare favorably to peers on a number of key academic achievement indicators; (2) for school-to-career efforts to affect overall student outcomes significantly, specific program activities and components must be defined as core elements of the district's overall reform strategy; (3) enabling conditions that make a systemic reform agenda possible are a high-level leadership group bridging all partners and institutions that convene and connect those partners; (4) districts and their partners can enhance the educational value of students' work-based learning experiences in spite of serious barriers; and (5) data can be a powerful driver for reform when communities create a process for measuring the right things at the right time. Performance measurement was central to the BCI effort, helping partners to hold one another accountable for progress toward agreed-on goals. (SLD)

The National Fund for Workforce Solutions and Jobs for the Future, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, launched the Youth/Industry Partnership Initiative (YIPI), to learn how employer-led industry partnerships could addressing the crisis of youth unemployment--7 percent of American youth (age 16-24) are neither in school or working--while helping employers find skilled workers in high-demand sectors. YIPI explored how industry partnerships can be harnessed to create employment pathways aligned with employer needs that offer a clear sequence of education coursework, training credentials, and job placement in high-demand sectors to generate improved outcomes for older youth and benefits to participating employers. YIPI supported three National Fund collaboratives to investigate this work--in Boston, Hartford, and Seattle--and the key lesson that emerged is the importance of a collective, place-based effort driven by employers and industry partnerships, and also relying on community providers and education/training providers, to build high-quality employer-connected pathways. [For the executive summary, see ED560800.]