Improving Pathways to Work
Lessons from Denver
Photo by Acton Crawford on Unsplash
Back in February of 2020, an editor asked me to write a piece about $7 million grant from JP Morgan Chase to the city of Denver to help grow their innovative program for getting its students into a good paying job quickly and easily. I interviewed a pile of people, while one of my kids was having a serious health issue, and then Covid hit. I never even bothered submitting the draft or billing the editor.
Although Denver Public Schools never had a great track record with traditional education, they worked with outside groups to create job internships and vocational training for high school students. With strong connections with the local community college, some students accumulated enough college credits to receive an high school degree and an associates degree simultaneously.
Transitioning from school to a career is never easy. Even college graduates sometimes need a year to find a good position. But that transition is even harder for those without a BA in hand. Because an entire generation of students weren’t properly educated during COVID and will struggle in college, we’re going to have build better job training models and clearer pathways to work.
Thinking about the upcoming crisis, I opened up my Denver files for the first time in three years. After dumping the paragraphs with the philanthropy people, I pulled out the essential parts of their program that could be replicated by other schools today. It’s all so timely.
A third-party organization coordinated efforts between the local colleges and the public schools in Denver.
Seamless Career Pathways
JP Morgan is working with the non-profit group, Denver Educational Attainment Network (DEAN), to distribute funding to Denver Public Schools and local higher education intuitions, including the Community College of Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver, and the University of Colorado at Denver.
DEAN’s executive director, Therese Ivancovich, said that their group regularly convenes meetings with these schools to coordinate programs, so students can move seamlessly from one school to another, while getting trained for high paying jobs in the community.
Coordinating large educational institutions, each with their own missions and expectations, so that one degree leads to another or directly to a real job, without students wasting time or credits, is an ongoing challenge across the country, Ivancovich explained. Creating seamless career pathways or “articulated pathways” is an essential part of the strategy in Denver, which requires on-going conversations with administrators at all those schools.
All this work is aimed at delivering economic security for the students in Denver; currently, only 24 percent of Denver public schools graduates obtain a post secondary credential in six years, she said. “This is about creating economic opportunity for students. This is about creating upward mobility for generations of students,” Ivancovich said.
Within the public school system, a really talented man ran a super effective internship program.
Internships and College Credits For High School Students
The largest portion of this JP Morgan grant supports Denver Public Schools (DPS), which provides the district’s 79,000 students with coursework and internships that prepares them for employment through their CareerConnect program. In 2018, 12,600 students participated in this program.
Over 1,500 students have been placed in paid internships and apprenticeships in 200 well-paid business and government sites since 2016, including engineering, banking, insurance, and airline companies, Bernard McCune, the senior executive director for DPS’s Career and College Success Office, explained. After graduation, some students later find full time employment at those companies. The district also provides those students with coursework that reinforces those work experiences and career interests.
With a growing attention on the role that guidance counselors play in supporting students’ career and higher education goals, McCune’s office provides the district’s counselors with professional development in this area. “Our counselors work very closely with students at the middle school and high school around what careers they're interested in,” McCune said. The Community College of Denver also directly trains counselors about options for post-secondary education.
McCune said that their program has a real impact on students. Students that participate in their CareerConnect internship increase their chance of graduation by 170%. Even students who take five or more of the CareerConnect courses, but don’t participate in an internship, have a 90 percent higher chance of graduating than other Denver public school students.
“As a school district, the thing I think that we should be responsible for is making sure that students have great experiences while they're with us, but even more importantly that they have great life experience and outcomes after they leave us,” McCune said. He said that schools have to support students so they thrive after they graduate. “That is what excites me about this work.” “And so I just want to make sure that we build a system that helps and propels students and not holds them back.”
Community colleges worked seamlessly with the local high schools to expand educational opportunities for students.
The Community College Nexus
Community colleges are an important component of JP Morgan Chase’s strategy for increasing work opportunities for students, Steinberg said. “They are a fulcrum in between K through 12 and the workforce and further education.”
In Denver, the Community College of Denver (CCD) works with the public schools, other higher education institutions, and the local business community to ensure that their 11,000 full time and part time students complete their studies and find employment, explained Ruthanne K. Orihuela, a provost at CCD. She said that community colleges are a nexus between the various education institutions and the business world.
“At the Community College of Denver, we work to make sure that our certificates and degrees align with workforce needs, what the industries are telling us they need in terms of students' skills,” Orihuela said. “And then we work to create short term certificates whose credits stack into degrees, so students can see early wins, graduate, and enter the workforce in their field even as they continue their education.”
The CCD creates certificate programs that feed into more advanced degrees, so students can easily continue their studies without repeating coursework, saving them time and money. A student with a Health and Nutrition certificate, for example, can later use those credits to earn an associates in Applied Science in Nutrition, Orihuela said. Students can apply those credits towards a Bachelor’s degree in nursing at one of the local four year colleges, if they chose.
This community college also places their professors directly in the Denver public schools, so nearly 2,000 students this year earned college credits, while in high school. Some students can even graduate with both a high school degree and a college credential at the same time. Last year, Orihuela said, about 70 high school students crossed their stage during college graduation.
LINKS
Boston schools lost 15,000 Black students in the past 20 years. Where did they go, and will they ever return?, Boston Globe
When Peter Schjeldahl found out he had cancer, while driving through upstate New York, he was suddenly overwhelmed by the beauty of the land. “How many times had I seen and loved the sight?” he wondered. “How many more times would I?”, New Yorker
Americans Are Losing Faith in College Education, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds: Confidence in value of a degree plummeted among women and senior citizens during pandemic, Wall Street Journal
In this week’s disability newsletter, I talk about helping my son with autism get a job at Best Buy.
Shopping: Travel pants. I have mixed feeling about the evolution of travel pants, but apparently I need them for our flight to Italy in June.
Royal Family Gossip: Check out the crowds to see King Charles in Germany. I do think that the Meghan and Harry drama helped to create a lot of sympathy for the rest of the royals. I never gave a crap about all that stuff before all this juicy drama happened. Now, I’m on Team Camilla. Who knew?
Watching: Lucky Hank, Mandalorian, Fleishman, Succession
Reading: On my list: Poverty.
Cooking: White bean and kale soup — 1. Saute carrots, onion, celery, garlic, and two chopped up sausages. 2. Add 1-1/2 boxes of good chicken broth, 1/2 can of crushed tomatoes, and a couple of cans of white beans. Salt and pepper. Cook until the carrots are soft. 3. Add parm cheese rinds and half a bag of chopped kale. 4. Top with grated Parm cheese and crumbled garlic crostini.
Home: We’ve remodeled two bathrooms this month. Here are yesterday’s pictures. It should be done very soon.