Helping all high school students achieve a common result—the skills, knowledge, and personal qualities needed to succeed in postsecondary education—can best be achieved through offering a variety of educational options, all of which feature a rigorous college preparatory curriculum, strong, supportive relationships with teachers and among peers, and a curriculum that is transparent in its relevance to hopes, dreams, and future success. This toolkit will help district reform leaders and their partners plan a portfolio of excellent schools, think through the relationship of their district to potential partners, and develop strategies for launching and sustaining new schools for the developing portfolio.

 

Download Building a Portfolio of High Schools

JFF produces a quarterly newsletter designed to help colleges, partners, state-level stakeholders, and other interested individuals stay abreast of developments in Achieving the Dream. Issue #4, published in March, features joint efforts of the states participating in Achieving the Dream and the Ford Foundation Bridges to Opportunity initiative to strengthen state data systems and establish a set of common indicators to benchmark their progress on the data front.

 

 

All of these publications are available on the new Achieving the Dream Web site. The site is designed for various audiences and stakeholders—colleges, policymakers, students, the public. Check it out.  

In February, JFF convened 50 policy analysts, practitioners, and national and local funders from the six sites participating in Investing in Workforce Intermediaries. This initiative is part of an effort by Ford Foundation and the Annie E. Casey Foundation to seed a national capacity-building infrastructure for pioneering projects that expand the ability of communities to create and operate sectorally based workforce intermediaries. Meeting in San Francisco for three days, the project sites shared best practices around financing and public policy strategies. Each site made a overview presentation with information on its goals, outcomes, funding structures and service strategies.

 

Download Investing in Workforce Intermediary Site Overviews

JFF partners with the University Park Campus School and Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in the UPCS/Clark Institute for Student Success. The institute, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, trains practitioners to implement leadership and instructional techniques that produce outstanding results for educationally underserved students. 

 

More information, including an Institute Brochure, is available on the JFF Web site and the new Institute for Student Success Web Site,  http://www.upcsinstitute.org.

 

Jobs for the Future is an endorsing partner in the Data Quality Campaign, a national, collaborative effort to encourage and support state policymakers to: improve the collection, availability, and use of high-quality education data; and implement state longitudinal data systems to improve student achievement. This campaign provides tools and resources that states can use as they develop quality longitudinal data systems. It also serves as a national forum for reducing duplication and promoting greater coordination and consensus among like-minded organizations.

 

Read about the Data Quality Campaign

Immigrants are crucial to the maintenance and growth of the U.S. workforce. In the coming decades, there will be jobs for immigrants with all levels of skills, and manufacturers, as well as other employers, will continue to need and hire immigrants. It is sound economic sense to implement strategies and models that improve the skills of immigrants entering the workforce—and that streamline their ability to keep pace with changes in industry and to succeed in higher-wage, more skilled jobs.

 

JFF and the Manufacturing Institute, National Association of Manufacturers, are partners in Educating the Immigrant Workforce, a research project to identify promising practices by manufacturing employers to train their non-English speaking workforce. According to a Manufacturing Institute report, Closing the Immigrant Skills Gap, immigrants are the fastest-growing segment of the workforce and will be in high demand as the competition for skilled workers heats up. However, 88 percent of the manufacturers responding to a national survey conducted in partnership with JFF and the Urban Institute cited poor English skills among immigrant workers.

 

 

 

The Bridge to Employment Initiative: A Decade of Promising School to Career Partnerships. This report, with a foreword by JFF co-founder Hilary Pennington, discusses the key elements of successful partnerships and documents successes and challenges experienced by Bridge to Employment sites. The report shows how effective partnerships can be created in any industry and by businesses of all sizes.

 

Ensuring Rigor in the High School Curriculum: What States are Doing. This Education Commission of the States policy brief provides an up-to-date look at state approaches to increasing the rigor of the high school curriculum. 

 

Whatever It Takes: How Twelve Communities Are Reconnecting Out-Of-School Youth. This American Youth Policy Forum report documents what committed educators, policymakers, and community leaders are doing to reconnect out-of-school youth to the social and economic mainstream. 

 

Data Don’t Drive: Building a Practitioner-Driven Culture of Inquiry to Assess Community College. This Lumina Foundation for Education report examines the practical value of data-based benchmarking practices. It assesses their capacity to inform understanding of institutional productivity and effectiveness in serving students. 

 

Strengthening Transitions By Encouraging Career Pathways: A Look at State Policies and Practice. Katherine L. Hughes and Melinda Mechur Karp from the Community College Resource Center summarize and analyze what’s known regarding high school and postsecondary career pathways that move career and technical education students toward the skills they need for work. 

 

Addressing the Needs of Adult Learners. According to the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, lifelong learning is a fact of life in today’s workplaces, and a growing number of people are turning to college to expand their skills and earning potential. A third of these students are 25 years or older, and they have a distinct set of goals, views and needs. 

 

Reconnecting Disadvantaged Young Men. In this Urban Institute action agenda, Peter Edelman, Harry J. Holzer, and Paul Offner present an array of policies to improve the educational and employment prospects of the two to three million youth ages 16 to 24 who have been out of school and the labor market for over a year.