Partnerships Erase the False-Choice of ‘College or Career’

Kayla DeLeon says she wouldn’t be the person she is today if she hadn’t participated in a pathways in technology early college high school (P-TECH) program.

She’s a 2018 graduate of the P-TECH program at Newburgh Free Academy (NFA) in Newburgh, New York, where she had the opportunity to gain real-world work experience through an internship at a hospital while earning a high school diploma from NFA and an associate’s degree from nearby SUNY Orange, a community college in the State University of New York system.

DeLeon believes so strongly in the value of a P-TECH education that she now supports students on their own P-TECH journeys as the P-TECH coordinator at SUNY Orange, a role in which she works to smooth students’ transitions from high school to college settings and maintain the strong partnership between NFA and SUNY Orange.

Based on a model introduced in 2011 by a partnership between the New York City Department of Education, the City University of New York, and IBM, programs like the one at Newburgh Free Academy are built on collaboration between high schools, colleges, and industry partners. The model is designed to enable students to complete their high school requirements, gain practical work experience, and earn an associate’s degree in four to six years. There are now hundreds of P-TECH-inspired schools in the United States and around the world.

Since 2022, Jobs for the Future (JFF) has been working with a small cohort of P-TECH school leaders to identify common challenges, promising practices, and key factors that drive success. Located across the United States and Canada, from Colorado to Nova Scotia, the schools all started with the same blueprint and industry partner—IBM—but each is its own experiment, and they have grown and evolved in their own ways, influenced by local circumstances, the unique visions of their individual leaders, and, most important, partnerships with a range of employers. (To learn more about how P-TECH has evolved and how these programs are implementing the P-TECH model, read “P-TECH 101” below.)

Our work with these institutions is driven by our vision of what we call the Big Blur, a model of learning and skill-building for older adolescents and young adults. We imagine a new type of institution that better prepares people for lifelong journeys of work and learning by erasing the boundaries between high school, college, and careers—which most students currently experience as three separate and often disconnected systems. In this new model, the false choice of “college or career” simply disappears when students can pursue learning journeys that include both.

The P-TECH model prominently features two key strategies that are essential to the “blurred” education-to-career pathways that we envision: dual enrollment and work-based learning. Neither of these is possible without intentional collaboration among partners representing high schools, postsecondary institutions, and industry—and successful collaboration can yield valuable lessons for all stakeholders.

P-TECH’s Lessons for Other ‘Blurred’ Programs

As part of the Big Blur initiative, which we launched in 2021, JFF has identified Big Blur Criteria that are key to the success of “blurred” programs in five key areas: program design, student learning experience, student supports, career navigation, and employer collaboration. In this blog, we offer examples of tactics and strategies P-TECH programs have adopted in each of those areas that have enabled them to successfully offer students more seamless experiences. We believe these examples can help create a road map of best practices that can foster blurring at scale throughout the work and learning ecosystems.

Blur Area 1: Program Design

The Big Blur vision calls for a model in which students experience grades 11-14 as a series of choices they make on their own, not as a menu of requirements. In blurred programs, learners pursue a path of increasingly challenging learning experiences aligned to the skills and knowledge they need for career advancement.

Lessons from P-TECH: It’s essential for high schools and postsecondary institutions to establish and maintain genuine two-way partnerships. Rather than simply offering early access to college courses, the partners should work together as equals to align their curricula and build coherent pathways that foster student success. Here are three ways to do that:

• Empower a college liaison with decision-making authority: Successful P-TECH programs identify or create designated liaison positions at the college level with authority to make program administration decisions, facilitate pathway discussions, and serve as a central point of contact for students, high school and college faculty, and administrators. The liaison’s role addresses challenges some blurred programs may experience, including lack of communication and administrative alignment between secondary and postsecondary partners. An effective college liaison increases coordination between the institutional partners, helps high school students navigate the college experience and use college resources effectively, and creates opportunities for pathway development and curriculum alignment.
• Identify college leadership champions as program advocates: P-TECH programs can face skepticism from college faculty and administrators who may question whether high school age students belong in college classes or view the P-TECH program as “second tier” because it’s a nontraditional model. Addressing this challenge requires identifying and cultivating champions among college leadership who can advocate for the program with their colleagues. These advocates can help recruit and develop faculty who are aligned with and engaged in the program while providing top-down support that positions P-TECH as a valued college offering. This influence can help shift an institution’s culture toward greater acceptance of innovative models that blur traditional boundaries between high school and college.
• Establish pathways with stackable credentials: P-TECH programs are increasingly developing skill-building experiences that lead to a variety of credentials, including stackable credentials. These innovative approaches offer students several benefits: opportunities to earn recognized credentials earlier in their pathways and opportunities to work while continuing their studies; more accessible on-ramps and off-ramps between education and employment; and coursework that aligns with employers’ specific needs. By incorporating these flexible approaches, P-TECH programs increase their responsiveness to both student academic progression and employer needs.

Blur Areas 2 and 3: Student Learning Experience and Student Supports

In JFF’s vision of the Big Blur, students acknowledge their own assets and learn and practice self-advocacy and networking skills to secure the resources, supports, and connections they need to succeed in their chosen careers.

Lessons from P-TECH: Programs should offer students a wide range of supports so they can effectively navigate their high school, college, and workplace experiences while also tending to their personal responsibilities.

The three sectors of strong P-TECH models—high schools, colleges, and the workplace—each have different structures, systems, and expectations that students must understand and function within. Many students will need robust supports to successfully navigate among and between these three environments. Institutions must take comprehensive approaches to meeting those needs. Here are three ways to do that:

• Help students build strong connections with others in their cohorts: Cohort-based models create natural peer support networks that complement formal support structures. By intentionally fostering connections among students in the same educational journey, P-TECH programs can supplement traditional support systems provided by the high school and college. These peer relationships yield multiple benefits, including helping students build professional networks that will remain in place after graduation, engage more deeply with program activities, and perhaps become program advocates as alumni. For her part, DeLeon says the NFA P-TECH program’s emphasis on community helped her build networking skills that have led to lifelong connections. (To learn more about DeLeon’s P-TECH journey, read “Meet Kayla DeLeon” below.)

• Enhance the role of high school teachers as student advocates: P-TECH programs reimagine the role of high school teachers, positioning them as mentors and advisors who maintain connections with students throughout their entire pathways. These expanded responsibilities include regularly checking in with students, conducting real-time progress monitoring across both high school and college courses, and providing early interventions when challenges emerge. This approach addresses several common challenges high school students may experience in P-TECH programs, including difficulties navigating unfamiliar college systems, delays in receiving performance notifications from postsecondary institutions, and gaps in guidance once they begin college coursework. By maintaining ongoing relationships between students and their high schools through teacher connections, programs can identify academic issues early enough for effective intervention.
• Implement robust data-sharing between secondary and postsecondary partners: Well-structured memoranda of understanding (MOU) can address any collaboration challenges that may arise between partners, so secondary and postsecondary institutions must regularly revisit and strengthen their MOUs. This is particularly important for provisions relating to data-sharing because systems that facilitate the flow of information while respecting privacy considerations enable P-TECH programs to create seamless experiences for students crossing institutional boundaries. MOUs can include provisions ensuring that high schools have insight into student performance in college courses; they can also ensure that college personnel clearly understand students’ readiness profiles. Well-structured data-sharing agreements included in MOUs can enhance collaboration between partners, establish clear expectations around desired outcomes and student milestones, and enable high schools to provide timely support interventions.

Blur Areas 4 and 5: Career Navigation and Preparation and Employer Collaboration

Our vision of the Big Blur is to create an environment in which students can build the knowledge and networks they need to identify good jobs and good employers. It also calls for employers to have an impact at all points in the students’ learning journeys—which not only benefits the students but also employers themselves by enabling them to ensure that students are well prepared for their roles and giving them access to a strong pipeline of qualified job candidates while creating a working environment that’s welcoming to everyone.

Lessons from P-TECH: Robust industry partnerships are essential to the success of any program that incorporates work-based learning. The original P-TECH model featured a single major employer partner. But subsequent successful P-TECH initiatives have demonstrated the value of diversifying industry relationships across multiple employers.

Industry partnerships should go beyond providing access to work-based learning opportunities; they should create dynamic feedback loops that continually align educational experiences with evolving workforce needs, creating more relevant and effective pathways for students.

Here are three examples:

• Pursue relationships with multiple partners: Reaching out to small and medium-size businesses alongside larger corporations expands work-based learning opportunities for students and strengthens a program’s long-term viability. By working with a number of employers, rather than just one big one, P-TECH programs can avoid a challenge that many work-based learning programs have faced: limited opportunities for students to participate in internships and similar on-the-job experiences. Moreover, by cultivating relationships with multiple employers, P-TECH programs can expose students to a broader array of career pathways and create more local employment opportunities for graduates. This approach benefitted DeLeon. While studying NFA’s P-TECH program, she realized she wasn’t interested in a career in IT, but the school’s industry liaison was able to help her find an internship in the human resources department of a health care company.
• Engage with chambers of commerce and industry associations: P-TECH programs can look beyond individual employers and engage with chambers of commerce and industry associations that have local presence. These organizations serve as valuable intermediaries that can help schools build connections to a broad array of employers that might otherwise be difficult to reach. Some chambers of commerce focus on specific industries or demographic groups, and they can provide students with nuanced insights into the local economy, helping them learn about career opportunities they may not have been aware of or explore pathways that are popular among people with backgrounds similar to theirs.
• Bring industry partners into curriculum conversations: One of the most powerful aspects of P-TECH programs is that employers can be directly involved in curriculum development. This collaboration addresses a persistent challenge: misalignment of coursework and learning outcomes with the talent needs of local businesses. When employers participate in curriculum conversations, they help shape learning experiences to ensure that students will acquire in-demand skills, which is especially important if students will be participating in work-based learning experiences. For their part, chambers of commerce often have unique knowledge about the broader workforce needs within the regional economy, along with insights into skills gaps in the labor market and the challenges employers face in recruiting and retaining talent. This information can help education providers develop coursework and pathway experiences that keep pace with emerging needs for new skills. Employer involvement often leads to the development of bridge programs and boot camps that fill skills gaps that current classroom-based programs aren’t addressing.

What’s Next for P-TECH?

At 15 years old, the P-TECH model remains notably relevant to the conversation about how to reimagine high school learning and pathways programs for young people. At the same time, P-TECH programs are held back by many of the same challenges facing other high schools, including inadequate funding, teacher and counselor shortages, and lack of access to counseling and financial assistance programs for students.

Nonetheless, leading P-TECH programs have demonstrated the powerful impact of blurring boundaries by deepening cross-sector partnerships. Going further will require stakeholders throughout the ecosystem—leaders like you from education, private industry, and government—to come together to create environments where grade levels disappear into a series of student choices; where students learn in a wide range of settings, including the classroom and the workplace; where support systems enable students to recognize and build on their strengths while developing self-advocacy and networking skills; where career navigation is embedded throughout the learning experience; and where employers meaningfully shape learning and career advancement opportunities, from curriculum design to recruiting and hiring.

If your community or organization is ready to make an earnest attempt at blurring the arbitrary boundaries between high school, college, and career, we encourage you to consider lessons learned from the P-TECH model and similar approaches. As you’ll see in Kayla DeLeon’s story below, the strongest pathways approaches create multiple entry points for career exploration, not a prescribed destination. Building the capacity of cross-sector partners to collaborate isn’t merely about improving coordination; it’s about co-creating new institutional models that fundamentally reimagine how young people transition through education and into careers.

Join Us!

If this sounds like the work you’re ready to lead, we invite you to enhance or begin designing your own model using these field-informed criteria for developing programs and models that help make our Big Blur vision a reality. And as you dive into this work, feel free to contact us at blurinfo@jff.org to let us know about your successes, or to discuss any challenges you may be facing.