Career Pathways in Action: Case Studies from the Field

Career Pathways in Action, a companion to Learning for Careers by Nancy Hoffman and Robert B. Schwartz, offers a detailed, on-the-ground exploration of the Pathways to Prosperity Network’s efforts at state, regional, and local levels. This new book describes a strikingly wide range of systems and efforts that the Pathways Network has helped establish in recent years, and provides a clear and detailed sense of promising ways forward.

Editors Robert B. Schwartz and Amy Loyd include case studies of five different Pathways programs from different regions of the United States: Delaware, Tennessee, the Great Lakes, the rural Central Valley of California, and Marlborough, Massachusetts. The cases illustrate efforts to scale up strategic partnerships; balance state policies with particular regional needs and circumstances; ensure postsecondary success; create continuities between high schools, colleges, and workplaces; and build a STEM early college.

While the programs vary significantly from one another, all of these efforts involve cooperation between political, business, and educational institutions. As such, the portraits in this volume provide fascinating, practical models for the sorts of partnerships that can best serve both young people and the industries in which they hope to find rewarding work.
 

Robert B. Schwartz is Professor of Practice Emeritus and Senior Research Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Professor in Residence at JFF. Before joining the HGSE faculty in 1996, Schwartz served in a variety of roles in education, from high school teacher and principal to education adviser to the mayor of Boston and the governor of Massachusetts to founding president of Achieve, Inc. In 2011, he coauthored Pathways to Prosperity: Meeting the Challenge of Preparing Young Americans for the 21st Century, the report that led to the founding of the Pathways to Prosperity Network. In 2017, he coauthored with Nancy Hoffman Learning for Careers, The Pathways to Prosperity Network (Harvard Education Press).

Amy Loyd is vice president at JFF and leads the Pathways to Prosperity and college and career pathways work. In this role, she guides states and regions in developing and scaling effective policies, infrastructure, and practices to build sustainable systems of college and career pathways aligned with regional labor markets. Before joining JFF, Amy led a public-private partnership network of K–12 schools providing culturally responsive education and wraparound services to Alaska Native and American Indian students and their families.