A recent American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Academy) report documents American students’ struggles navigating education and workforce systems. Traditionally, education in the US has focused on preparing people to enter stable careers, but today’s workers may change jobs more frequently and need lifelong learning to adapt to economic and technological changes. In the face of these challenges, the Academy report offers a strong framework for ensuring all learners can thrive in education, work, and life after high school.

The report highlights four strategies for improving outcomes:

• building coordination across systems and sectors
• developing skills for future educational and workforce success
• clarifying and growing pathways to postsecondary opportunities to empower choice
• supporting learners’ well-being broadly

Several recommendations in the report align closely with the goals of two US Department of Education (ED) place-based grant programs that the Urban Institute and partners are supporting through training and technical assistance: Promise Neighborhoods and Full-Service Community Schools.

Promise Neighborhoods uses a “cradle-to-career” approach to create a pipeline of services that support learners from birth to employment, such as working with partners to ensure children transition from early education to kindergarten ready to learn. Full-Service Community Schools employs school coordinators who connect learners and their families with schools to help them navigate the education system and provide services such as tutoring, mentoring, and out-of-school time enrichment.

The report’s framework also represents opportunities for both programs to emphasize preparing learners for a rapidly changing economy and helping them navigate more educational and career pathways.

Preparing learners for a changing economy

The Promise Neighborhoods and Full-Service Community Schools programs can both strengthen their focus on the economy and labor market by reflecting how new technologies like artificial intelligence are transforming the very nature of learning and work. The Academy emphasizes the importance of adaptability, digital literacy, and durable skills that remain valuable in the changing economy.  

Promise Neighborhoods and Full-Service Community Schools can help school systems adopt new learning models and approaches that embed these skills through experiences in and out of the classroom. The report highlights promising practices like the QA Commons’ Essential Employability Qualities Certification, which helps learners earn employability skills badges through school or training program activities and work-based learning experiences. It also points to Nevada’s Competency-Based Learning approach, which emphasizes mastery of concepts and skills over time, place, and pace.

Clarifying and growing pathways to opportunity after high school

The Academy report focuses on learners’ unfamiliarity with the educational opportunities available to them, which makes it difficult for them to navigate those options successfully. Learners also pursue many different pathways after high school, such as pursuing employment, an associate or bachelor’s degree, military or service programs, or industry credentials. Many learners, the report notes, “begin one path, step off of it, and return later, or take steps forward on multiple paths at the same time.”

Though Promise Neighborhoods’ “cradle-to-career” approach and Full-Service Community Schools model focus on the K–12 system’s more linear pathways from early education to work, many grantees recognize the need for multiple learning pathways. They already offer opportunities such as dual enrollment, work experience, partnerships with community colleges and universities, and small business development programs.

These grantee activities could be incorporated more formally into the Promise Neighborhoods and Full-Service Community Schools program models and be used as additional measures of success. Grantees could apply lessons from several examples highlighted in the report, including the Hawai’i Community Colleges Non-Credit and Credit Alignment Lab, which supports students in earning industry-recognized certifications for in-demand jobs, and Accelerating Opportunity: Kansas, which allows adult learners to complete short-term certificate programs leading to industry-recognized credentials and immediate jobs.

Preparing learners for the future

The Academy report provides a strong framework for improving the alignment between educational systems, employment, and community services for supporting learners across their education journey. Promise Neighborhoods and Full-Service Community Schools already demonstrate many of these strategies. 

At the same time, they and other place-based initiatives focused on specific communities can build on these strengths by helping learners recognize and adapt to the changing needs of employers and the economy and by forming partnerships that help learners navigate complex education and workforce systems.