NEWS: New WWC Practice Guide and Webinar: Designing and Delivering Career Pathways at Community Colleges

The What Works Clearinghouse has released a new practice guide that focuses on guidance for implementing career pathways at community colleges associated with improving postsecondary student learning and labor market outcomes. Designing and Delivering Career Pathways at Community Colleges will help administrators, staff, and faculty at community colleges effectively develop and implement career pathways or career technical education initiatives.

Compiled by a panel of national experts and practitioners, the practice guide offers five evidence-based recommendations:

  • Intentionally design and structure career pathways to enable students to further their education, secure a job, and advance in employment.
  • Deliver contextualized or integrated basic skills instruction to accelerate students’ entry into and successful completion of career pathways.
  • Offer flexible instructional delivery schedules and models to improve credit accumulation and completion of non-degree credentials along career pathways.
  • Provide coordinated comprehensive student supports to improve credit accumulation and completion of non-degree credentials along career pathways.
  • Develop and continuously leverage partnerships to prepare students and advance their labor market success.

Each recommendation includes research-based strategies and examples for implementing these recommendations at community colleges. Download the guide for free from the What Works Clearinghouse website. We will provide additional resources to help with implementation in the coming months.

Register for a webinar here that will introduce the evidence-based recommendations and strategies for applying the recommendations from the practice guide on Tuesday, April 6, 2021 from 3:30–4:30 PM Eastern. Participants will hear from the six expert panelists that shaped the guide.

Designing and Delivering Career Pathways at Community Colleges is one of more than 20 Educator’s Practice Guides published by the WWC. To view these guides and learn about other resources, visit whatworks.ed.gov.

The Institute of Education Sciences, a part of the U.S. Department of Education, is the nation’s leading source for rigorous, independent education research, evaluation and statistics.