Kate Kreamer has watched high school juniors and seniors decide they want to be architects, only then to run into a familiar problem.
They haven’t taken physics, Algebra 2, or other high school courses that are “actually going to set them up to be able to get into an architecture program,” said Kreamer, the executive director of Advance CTE, an organization that advocates for career-focused education.
That type of disconnect is one reason why it’s important to begin nurturing students’ thinking about potential careers earlier, such as in middle school, she said.
A national report released this week makes a similar case, on a larger scale. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Commission on Opportunities After High School says the United States gives students plenty of choices but too little direction in exploring education and workforce options, post-high school, offering them “hundreds of doors without clear labels.”
The report, “Thriving After High School,” calls on government officials, K-12 and college leaders, employers, nonprofits, and philanthropists to help every learner succeed, which the commission defines as encouraging them to develop the skills, connections to the workforce and community, and financial stability to make smart decisions about post-high school options.
One of the goals, said commission co-chair Bridget Terry Long, is to help high school students explore their career options with confidence, rather than coming from a place where they are “scared and uncertain.”
The report recommends that policymakers, educators, and employers take a number of steps, including:
- Working to break down silos and build shared responsibility across education and workforce systems;
- Encouraging policymakers, educators, and students to tap into existing programs and funding that support career exploration;
- Improving collection and sharing of education and labor market data at all levels;
- Promoting durable skills, such as communication and problem-solving, from preschool through college;
- Expanding overall awareness of and participation in career, college, and service opportunities; and
- Improving and expanding access to financial aid that supports students’ career and college ambitions.
Members of the commission included school superintendents, college presidents, employers, and service organization leaders. Its members spent nearly three years on the work, including staging 30 listening sessions with students, educators, and employers, according to Long, a professor of education and economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Many states are trying to encourage school districts to allow earlier career exploration among students—and that can be a powerful lever to help them research their options in more depth, Kreamer said. But she also says much more work needs to be done, particularly in creating more opportunities to help students make informed choices through high school counseling.
Counseling has been underfunded for years in schools, which means schools have lacked the capacity to help students weigh post-high school options, she said.
The advice that counselors provide is “critical to empowering learners and families,” said Kreamer, and to helping students grasp the options “available to them in their schools and communities.”
Shaun M. Dougherty, a professor of education and policy at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development, said he agreed with the report’s recommendations on the importance of breaking down silos across data systems and among policymakers.
The report describes agencies that fund education, service, and workforce programs as having separate funding streams, separate eligibility rules, separate accountability standards, and separate measures of success.
A student may be enrolled in more than one program, or eligible for money from more than one source, without those systems sharing data or applications.
Ultimately, those silos complicate learners’ experiences and waste public money, the authors of the report say.
Dougherty called dismantling those barriers “the single most important recommendation of the report and “the hardest to do.”
Tapping into existing funding streams, not looking for new ones
The report’s authors also recommend that policymakers expand targeted forms of financial aid for college, increase students’ financial literacy, and streamline the process of applying for postsecondary aid.
The report notes that cost is one of the largest barriers to finishing a degree, and first-generation students in particular “may not think college is an option if they believe they cannot afford it.”
The net price students actually pay has come down in recent years, but students and families may not be able to get past the sticker shock in considering college options, which may in turn discourage them from taking part in career-focused postsecondary programs, the report says.
Much of the work in explaining college options currently falls on school counselors, who each serve 376 students on average, well above the recommended 250, the report’s authors say.
Policymakers have “really underinvested in [forms of] counseling and advising,” Kreamer said.
Education and labor data systems are disconnected from each other
The report describes the misalignment of data systems across K-12, college, and the workforce as a prime barrier to helping students make smart choices and giving them more options.
Effective data sharing and analysis is “the backbone of any functioning accountability system,” the report says. It calls for states to link labor market records to education and occupation data so students, schools, and employers can see which programs lead to careers. More than 40 states have or are building longitudinal data systems, but education and workforce records often sit in separate ones.
“A lot of the best evidence we’ve generated in the last 20 years has come through enhanced data-sharing and data-linking,” Dougherty said.
There’s value in students developing “durable” skills
The report echoes the predictions of some economists in saying that AI could replace entry-level workers in white-collar jobs. It also says that recent graduates already face rising unemployment and underemployment.
Schools can take steps to help insulate students from those forces, the report says. Durable skills can help learners become more “AI-proof” in their career paths, the authors say. They recommend that all K-12 and college students develop digital and AI literacy.
“We can’t promise you if you learn this skill, this one profession or occupation, that [it] is going to be around,” Long said. Employers told the commission they can teach students technical skills needed for the workforce, she said, but “they aren’t good at teaching the durable skills.”
Dougherty said schools should “scaffold the use of different AI capabilities into the learning process rather than banning them.”
Kreamer said states and districts should settle on a single list of durable skills, validated by employers and the community, so core academic teachers, CTE teachers, and advisers are “using that same language,” and so students learn to describe those skills in job interviews.
Will career awareness in middle school pay dividends?
Federal law allows school districts to spend federal money devoted to career-technical education on efforts to support students as early as 5th grade, Kreamer said. States are moving in that direction, pulling individual learning plans focused on career options down from high school into middle school.
By middle school, research has shown that students begin to form an “occupational identity,” said Kreamer.
“That is the age where they essentially determine what they think they can do when they grow up,” she said. If that identity rests only on a student’s community, social media, or a parent’s job, “that is very limiting” she said, especially for rural students and those from marginalized communities.
