Connected Learning Communities: A Toolkit for Reinventing High SchoolToolkit grows out of
JFF's ongoing efforts to develop language, protocols, templates,
and examples to help practitioners with the challenging task of
implementing community-connected learning on a local basis. The
Toolkit is a project of JFF's Connected Learning Communities Network,
which engages school districts around the country interested in
community-connected learning, especially as a key aspect of reforming
their high schools. In partnership with the U.S. Department of
Education's New American High Schools Initiative, JFF has collaborated
with 12 communities to support their high schools in adopting
key practices identified by NAHS as central to improving the performance
of high school students.
In June 2000, 43 young people received diplomas from the Metropolitan
Career and Technical Center-the first graduating class of a unique,
state-funded high school in Providence, RI. Although 70 percent
of the students are children of parents whose education didn't
extend beyond high school, every Met graduate was accepted to
college, and many received substantial financial aid. During their
years at the Met, each student had met with a team-including a
teacher-advisor and a parent-to decide how he or she would achieve
the school's learning goals. Instead of classes, they had fashioned
independent projects for exploring interests. And instead of tests,
they had exhibited their work each quarter and accumulated a four-year
portfolio. In Forty-Three Valedictorians, JFF's Adria Steinberg
looks at this success-story-in-the-making through the voices of
Met students.
For the role of intermediary organizations in community-connected
learning, check out the redesigned Web site of the School-to-Work
Intermediary Project. Go to www.intermediarynetwork.org.
Jobs for the Future and its partner, New Ways to Work, direct
the School-to-Work Intermediary Project, which seeks to strengthen
and raise the profile of local organizations that connect schools,
workplaces, and other community resources to improve pathways
for youth into postsecondary learning and careers.
4JFF's Pennington on Technology and Education—And Priorities for the Bush Administration
In a January 2001 speech given to educators in Mamaroneck, New
York, JFF founder and CEO Hilary Pennington looked at the rapidly
developing world of "e-learning" and assessed its potential impact
on education and the critical work of preparing America's children
for the twenty-first century. Drawing on her work as co-chair
of President Clinton's Advisory Committee on Expanding Training
Opportunities, Pennington asked: "Will technology be a force for
incremental change in education, or will it be transformative?"
"How technology unfolds-and who will benefit from it-is not a
foregone conclusion," Pennington said. "Making sure that its power
is used for the highest good for the greatest number of people
will require leadership and stewardship-and you are at the forefront
of that battle."
Origin LLC is a social-business venture that will deliver a scalable
business model for placing and supporting low-income adults in
entry-level and mid-range information technology jobs. It brings
Jobs for the Future together with Jeff Jablow, a pioneering social
entrepreneur. In a unique melding of marketplace orientation and
social mission, Origin is designed to:
Provide a route out of poverty
and into family-supporting careers for thousands of low-income
adults;
Create a widely applicable, highly
effective business model that demonstrates the feasibility
of its career-ladder program for the unemployed and working
poor;
Establish new standards and working
methods that assist the human resources departments of
major employers to become more productive; and
Create a laboratory that Jobs
for the Future will use to influence national and state
policy and offer real-world learning venues for the workforce
development industry.
6Promising Workforce Practices of Inner-City Companies The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, aided by Jobs for
the Future, is analyzing the human resource practices of ICIC/Inc.
Magazine Inner City 100 companies, the fastest-growing, privately
held companies in American inner cities. This two-year collaboration
is identifying and documenting the most innovative practices for
enhancing employment opportunities for entry-level and low-skill
workers. It will make those innovations widely available to the
human resource field through a user-friendly Web site featuring
case studies and implementation tools. As a group, the Inc. Magazine
Inner City 100 have been innovative in attracting and promoting
a workforce to fuel their rapid growth. In the process, entry-level
workers have risen to management positions, employees have become
shareholders in the companies that employ them, and the workplace
has given rise to a number of entrepreneurs.
For more information on the Initiative for a Competitive InnerCity,
go to www.icic.org.
7Workforce Development and Community-Based Organizations The Annie E. Casey Foundation Jobs Initiative brought together
about 25 workforce development organizations to explore concerns
about community-based organizations and potential responses to
the challenges CBOs face in today's changing labor market. In
a policy research brief for the Jobs Initiative, Judith Combes
Taylor of Jobs for the Future and Pete Plastrik of Integral Assets,
Inc., look at these challenges-and some promising ways that CBOs
are responding. Launched in 1995, the Jobs Initiative supports
initiatives in six cities to help young, low-income workers find
meaningful jobs and to identify national employment and training
models. Jobs for the Future coordinates and delivers technical
assistance to the sites around systems reform.
8Adult Literacy: Assessing the Need in New England
Jobs for the Future is preparing comprehensive profiles of the
adult- and family- literacy services and needs in five New England
states. Such services are critical to the social and economic
fortunes of adults and children from many backgrounds: immigrant
and native born; workers, homemakers, and inmates. In a preliminary
survey, as many as two in five adults need literacy services to
succeed in today's economy. Yet in these five states, only 1 out
of 43 adults needing literacy services received them last year.
JFF's research will help the funder, the Nellie Mae Foundation,
deepen its understanding of the region's adult basic education
field. The foundation will use this to develop an effective and
high-leverage grantmaking strategy for adult literacy initiatives
and to identify policy issues upon which it might have a significant
impact.
Toolkit for Community-Connected Learning
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