Career Pathways for All Youth
Lessons from the School-to-Work Movement
Stephen F. Hamilton
paper, 216 Pages
Pub. Date: February 2020
ISBN-13: 978-1-68253-444-1
Price: $34.00
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Career pathways (CP) has gained prominence as a strategy to ensure that high school students and displaced workers acquire the college and career readiness skills needed in a fast-changing, globalized economy. In an effort to ensure future success for CP, Stephen F. Hamilton examines the School-to-Work (STW) movement of the 1980s and 1990s and explores how the lessons learned from that campaign’s demise can pave the way for a CP program that endures and serves the most deserving.
Hamilton recounts the history and trajectory of STW and CP and outlines the components of a career pathways program that can stand the test of time. He recommends a plan that includes work-based learning, dual enrollment opportunities, coordination at the K-12 and post-secondary levels, private and public funding, and above all, the creation of a CP infrastructure or “system” rather than a loose collection of programs that characterized the earlier STW initiative.
Guided by the latest research, Career Pathways for All Youth features vignettes and interviews with educators, leaders, and school-to-work industry veterans, including High Tech High, YouthBuild, Linked Learning, CareerWise Colorado, and Apprenticeship Carolina. Showcasing CP’s many manifestations and possibilities, the book will help educators learn from the past and secure a more equitable future.
Praise
Stephen Hamilton’s ambitious book about career pathways will be essential for everyone interested in building an education system that can prepare all students for both careers and further education. He argues that this crucial effort requires a system based on a partnership of employers, educational systems at all levels, civic institutions, and policy makers.
— Thomas Bailey, president, Teachers College, Columbia University, and director emeritus and senior fellow, Community College Research Center
For those of us who remember the School-To-Work movement morphing into discussions about career and technical education and then essentially disappearing, Career Pathways for All Youth is a welcome continuation of career-focused education.
— School Administrator
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About the Author
Stephen F. Hamilton is Professor Emeritus of Human Development at Cornell University, where he was also Associate Director of the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research and previously Associate Provost for Outreach. He served as Dean of the High Tech High Graduate School of Education. He taught at a vocational high school in Washington, DC.
Educated at Swarthmore College and the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Hamilton studied Germany’s apprenticeship system as a Fulbright Senior Research Fellow. The book based on that research, Apprenticeship for Adulthood: Preparing Youth for the Future (Free Press), and a subsequent demonstration project helped shape the School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994. He has also engaged in action research with colleagues in Latin American youth programs and in research on work experience, service learning, mentoring, and the transition to adulthood.