The Secret Sauce of Successful Career Pathways Initiatives
Our new report from the Commission of Purposeful Pathways highlights the importance of "pathmaking teams"
Nearly every state has some group of education and workforce leaders that meet regularly to talk about career pathways for students. So why do only a few of these groups actually get stuff done?
That was one of the big topics we talked about on the Commission for Purposeful Pathways. You can find our answers in the "Enabling Conditions Action Guide," an action-oriented guide for policymakers and system leaders available here:
Here's one key idea that really resonated with me: the importance of what we called "pathmaking teams”. These are a group of mid-level leaders from K12, postsecondary, and workforce who are senior enough to make decisions but close enough to the work to be deeply knowledgeable about its progress.
When I was leading Rhode Island's career pathways initiative, PrepareRI, this pathmaking team made all the difference. We needed an executive champion to push things forward (in our case, then-Governor Gina Raimondo) and the education and workforce commissioners to mobilize resources within their agencies. But our secret sauce was the cross-agency pathmaking team that met weekly for years to solve the countless implementation challenges that make or break career pathways initiatives.
The Commission for Purposeful Pathways was facilitated by Education First and supported by the Gates Foundation.
View the full report of the Commission for Purposeful Pathways here: