Alliance for Quality Career Pathways Launches
Joyce grantee announces ten state alliance to provide quality benchmarks and measures of success for career pathway initiative
Ten states, in conjunction CLASP (Center for Law and Social Policy), launched the Alliance for Quality Career Pathways, a national effort to create a framework of benchmarks and measures of success for career pathway initiatives. The Joyce Foundation supports the Alliance, along with other funders, through the Employment Program, which aims to improve workforce development and education systems to help underprepared adults learn important skills, earn credentials and pursue jobs in their communities.
Alliance state participants are Arkansas, California, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oregon, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. These states are national leaders in the design and implementation of career pathways.
“The national framework produced by the Alliance for Quality Career Pathways will help existing career pathway initiatives ratchet up quality and help accelerate the development of new career pathway initiatives for individuals who need postsecondary training and credentials,” said Whitney Smith, Employment Program Manager of the Joyce Foundation. “We are pleased to be supporting this groundbreaking initiative as part of our strategy to improve systems and support opportunities for lower-skilled adults to gain the skills needed to advance in their careers and obtain good-paying jobs.”
Career pathways are a coordinated sequence of education and training services that enable students, often while they are working, to advance over time to successively higher levels of education and employment in a given industry or occupational sector. They are well suited to meet the needs of low-skilled adults and out-of-school youth to help them earn the postsecondary credentials they need to compete for higher-skilled jobs.
This approach has been gaining popularity across the country for a number of years, but until now, there has been little research on what constitutes a high quality initiative and how to best measure program successes. The Alliance will identify benchmarks that signal high-quality systems and programs.
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