Career pathways

Career Pathways is a workforce development strategy used in the United States to support workers’ transitions from education into and through the workforce. This strategy has been adopted at the federal, state and local levels in order to increase education, training and learning opportunities for America’s current and emerging workforce.

Career pathways are an integrated collection of programs and services intended to develop students’ core academic, technical and employability skills; provide them with continuous education, training; and place them in high-demand, high-opportunity jobs.

A career pathways initiative consists of a partnership among community colleges, primary and secondary schools, workforce and economic development agencies, employers, labor groups and social service providers.

Community colleges coordinate occupational training, remediation, academic credentialing, and transfer preparation for career pathways initiatives.

Career pathways models have been adopted at the federal, state and local levels. Given their cross-system nature, states often combine multiple federal streams to fund different elements of career pathways models.

The US Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration had advocated for career pathways to fill the need for more highly trained and skilled workers.

The US Department of Education’s Office of Vocational and Adult Education has also supported career pathways initiatives to provide students with postsecondary education and training to improve their skills to advance in the workplace.[1] and recently selected five sites as recipients of grants to strengthen their career pathways efforts.[2]

In addition, the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE), the nation’s largest not-for-profit education association dedicated to the advancement of education that prepares youth and adults for successful careers, representing approximately 30,000 educators, administrators and others involved in CTE, supports career pathways and Career Clusters. ACTE has resources on career pathways in its online Research Clearinghouse ([3]).

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