#AskExcelinEd: What is Pathways Matter?

People of all ages – including high school and college graduates – are finding themselves unprepared for the reality of today’s evolving job market. This is a challenge that plagues students, parents, teachers, principals, commissioners of education, governors, state representatives (and the list goes on). All learners MUST be set up for success in their chosen career path. But the essential question is: HOW?

We know there is not a one-size-fits-all solution in education. We know that ensuring strong education to workforce pathways takes coordination and cohesion across stakeholders and policies. But who are the stakeholders? What are the policies? Where should we start?

We have have created a new resource and tool, Pathways Matter, to help answer all these questions and more.

Pathways Matter is a comprehensive learner-centered framework for state policies to create and sustain high-quality education to workforce pathways based in three core principles:

1. Learners take different educational journeys. While some learners seamlessly transition from K-12 to postsecondary to employment, others use on-ramps and off-ramps and stackable opportunities to complete their journey. Still others need critical support to find a new occupation or advance their careers.
2. Pathways require coordinated support from all stakeholders. High-quality pathways do not operate in isolation and neither should the agencies, policymakers, education systems, intermediaries, employers and communities who support them. Stakeholders must work together to ensure that learners can earn valuable credentials and succeed in high-wage, high-skill occupations.
3. Policies must work together to maximize benefits for learners. Learners span age levels, systems of education and workforce areas. Policies that support them need to be integrated as well so that progress made at one level or system is not slowed or stopped at another.

Pathways Matter is designed to help policymakers and education advocates to:

1. Analyze their current education to workforce policy landscape.
2. Understand that K-12 education, college and the workforce all connected; not siloed.
3. Strengthen the quality in implementation and alignment.
4. Prioritize which opportunity(ies) to tackle next.

Pathways Matter provides tools and resources that help states to think through the following questions:

• What are the essential policies that my state should have to ensure all learners have on and off ramps from education to the workforce?
• What are my states’ greatest policy opportunities to strengthen?
• What would it look like to strengthen a specific policy or implementation?
• Where should my state be coordinating work across different policy areas and government agencies?
• Which states already have strong policies in place?

ExcelinEd will be continuing to release information on how to use Pathways Matter in the coming months. Have a question? Email PathwaysMatter@ExcelinEd.org. We look forward to hearing from you.