Speaking Up for Career Pathways

On April 23rd, the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Labor issued a joint Request for Information (RFI) about the adoption of career pathway approaches.  The term “career pathways" refers to a strategy for coordinating the delivery of distinct education, workforce development, and human service programs in ways that make it easier for people to finish school and find a good job. It is an effort to provide a more holistic approach to education and employment services and to better link them to the needs of local employers and regional economies.

The purpose of this RFI is to help federal policymakers learn more about what state and local stakeholders have been doing in the area of career pathways and to connect those lessons to future federal policy development and discretionary investments. In a rare instance of substantive cross-agency collaboration, the responses to this RFI will be reviewed jointly by staff from all three agencies. It represents an excellent opportunity for everyone interested in career pathways to build the capacity of the federal government to support coordinated service delivery approaches at the state and local level.

Efforts to better articulate federal education, workforce, and human service policy have gained a lot of momentum over the last decade as the evidence base on career pathways has grown and the resources available to individual federal programs have shrunk. But building stronger linkages between education and careers is not easy. It means addressing the policy gaps that exist between federal programs aimed at increasing college access with those focused on workforce development, with those directed at helping vulnerable youth and adults transition off of public assistance. Policies that make sense when viewed through the lens of a single federal program often don’t make sense when the goal is broader. For example, the goal of the TANF program is to get folks off of public assistance and working as quickly as possible. But restrictions on enrolling TANF participants into longer-term educational programs make it difficult for local providers to put them on a path toward jobs that are secure and actually lead to economic self-sufficiency.

Community colleges, workforce investment boards, and community-based organizations across the country have been figuring out how to use career pathway approaches to build comprehensive programs and many states have been making similar efforts at the policy level.  Washington, for example, has led the way on connecting adult education with both higher education and the labor market. Arkansas has pioneered approaches to getting TANF recipients into, and through, college. Wisconsin has developed a host of alternative on-ramps to college and careers for adults, including a brand-new competency-based degree program. But in all cases, states and institutions have to do a lot time-consuming work securing approvals or waivers from different federal agencies, developing work-arounds on funding restrictions, and harmonizing different performance metrics and reporting requirements.

Policy coordination is never easy, even among programs sitting within a single federal agency. Articulating policies across federal agencies in support of a shared vision requires near herculean levels of leadership, communication, data collection, and consensus-building. It can’t happen without a big push from outside stakeholders who are directly affected by the existing policy gaps. This RFI is an opportunity to help policymakers from different agencies see how their policies and programs intersect with one another and identify opportunities for making it easier to integrate them to the benefit of all. Here's hoping they get an earful!