Remixing Education: Innovations in Blending K12, College, and Career Pathways

EDU BA100 Subject & Catalog Number

*Only Offered for Online Ed.M. Students* Despite decades of defining K12's North Star role as “college and career readiness” and a college degree being seen as a passport to economic opportunity, data shows that large shares of today’s graduates fall woefully short of these goals. Across the nation, many innovations in policy and practice are aimed at bridging the traditionally siloed fields of K12, higher education and workforce in order to prepare students better. One promising group of efforts has worked to hybridize high school and college into “early college high schools.” More recently, a growing group of efforts have focused on “career pathways” through "modern youth apprenticeships" based on the world-leading Swiss model as well as other approaches such as next generation Career and Technical Education (CTE), internships, work-based learning, and career exploration. Finally, for more than a century, many colleges have offered "co-op education" programs helping place students into six-month stints of full-time, paid employment at intervals in their college progression. A leading think tank in this space calls these emerging efforts to integrate K12, college and career The Big Blur. This course will address both the policy and practice dimensions of these efforts through a set of case studies surveying a handful of the most exciting and promising efforts. We will look at how current policies generally reinforce silos and how innovative ones can transcend them. We will look at how on-the-ground efforts work to make these goals real. Each case study will include a guest lecture from a policymaker, institutional leader, teacher and/or student to bring us as proximate as we can be to the work. The course Lecturer is a direct participant in this field as well. The course is designed to be of interest to students with a focus on any or all of K12, higher ed or workforce and is especially intended for those who seek to lead on local, state and even national policy to drive to better outcomes and greater equity.