Resource Library

Linked Learning Middle School Standards represent an extension of the evidence-based Linked Learning standards for high-quality college and career preparation. Designed to engage students in real-world learning experiences connecting core academics to career awareness and exploration, the Linked Learning Middle School Standards will prepare students to succeed in high school and beyond.

The standards provide educators with a framework for middle school college and career preparation aligned to high school Linked Learning pathways and the rigorous academic expectations of a college prep curriculum, setting the stage for high school and postsecondary success.

Pathway Improvement, Certification

Equitable access to high quality career-themed high school pathways requires that school staff and all pathway partners work in concert to address each student’s developmental needs, skills, strengths, interests, and aspirations. To this end, effective student supports are designed to reach beyond the academic domain, to meet all students where they are, scaffold their engagement with a standards-based curriculum, and address their learning and personal youth development needs. This guidebook continues an exploration of integrated student supports for universal college and career readiness that we began in Equitable Access by Design (2016). That report introduced a conceptual framework for implementing a system of comprehensive and integrated student supports that provides equitable access to a coherent, student-centered program of learning via Linked Learning pathways in high schools. This work is intended as a companion to Marisa Saunders’ Linked Learning: A Guide for Making High School Work, published by the University of California, Los Angeles in 2013. The chapters in this guidebook offer seven illustrative profiles of educators and their partners in California high schools who are working collaboratively to develop comprehensive student supports that “link together” a rigorous academic curriculum, technical education, and workplace opportunities into a coherent learning experience for every youth in their school.

Research, Equity, Lessons Learned, Student Supports, Getting Started, Steps to Silver, Going for Gold, Continuous Improvement

This sixth-year evaluation of the California Linked Learning District Initiative offers findings on student high school graduation and college eligibility. It also examines districts’ progress in expanding pathway access and ensuring equity, looking at patterns in student enrollment and persistence in pathways. Finally, it explores the influence of regional expansion efforts on districts’ progress in developing work-based learning systems, their relationships with postsecondary institutions, and their plans for expanding and sustaining Linked Learning while maintaining pathway quality and fidelity. Lessons gained from the experiences of the nine initiative districts are highly instructive for new regional collaborations that are just beginning to engage with or scale up Linked Learning.

Research, Lessons Learned, Outcomes

America’s Edge is a membership organization of business leaders who work to strengthen businesses and the economy through proven investments in children and youth. They “educate policymakers and the public about research-based investments that will enable their businesses to compete in today’s competitive global marketplace, build a foundation for lasting economic security and help our nation’s children get on the right track.” This fact sheet summarizes the findings from an America’s Edge report, Can California Compete? Reducing the Skills Gap and Creating a Skilled Workforce through Linked Learning.

Research, Workforce Development

SRI’s fifth annual evaluation report on the progress of the California Linked Learning District Initiative offers updated findings on student engagement and achievement outcomes from the nine districts participating in the initiative. Additionally, for the first time, our report takes an in-depth look at the issue of student equity and access to pathways through an analysis of student enrollment patterns across pathway career themes and of pathway retention among student subgroup populations. Finally, it assesses pathway students’ experiences with academic and technical curriculum and work-based learning, their perceptions of the skills they are gaining as a result of their pathway experiences, and their plans for the future.

Research, Equity, Lessons Learned, Outcomes

What Works Clearinghouse, an investment of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) within the U.S. Department of Education, has released a new practice guide to provide educators and administrators with evidence-based recommendations for reducing dropout rates in middle and high schools and improving high school graduation rates. The practice guide cites Linked Learning as a strategy to prevent drop outs. The practice guide provides school and district administrators, as well as members of student-support teams including school counselors, social workers, psychologists, and teachers with the best available evidence and expertise on current challenges in education, and how the recommendations can be implemented in their schools and districts.

Research, Student Supports

Rigorous academics integrated with career-based learning can lead to higher wages after high school. This study examines the outcomes of 1,700 students enrolled in career academies that offered the Linked Learning approach to predominantly minority students. The study showed that four years after graduation from high school, career academy graduates were earning more than their traditionally educated counterparts. While this was true for both men and women, the result was statistically significant for men in a Linked Learning pathway, who earned 18 percent ($10,000) more over the four-year period after high school.

The findings demonstrate the feasibility of improving labor market preparation and successful school-to-work transitions without compromising academic goals and preparation for college. Investments in career-related experiences during high school can produce substantial and sustained improvements in the labor market prospects and transitions to adulthood of youth. In fact, Career Academies are one of the few youth-focused interventions that have been found to improve the labor market prospects of young men. At the same time, Career Academies have proven to be challenging to implement on a large scale with high levels of fidelity, and the evidence from this evaluation may not apply to programs that are partially implemented or that use only selected features of the Academy approach. Further research should be conducted to determine the effects of key Academy components.

Research, Career-Technical Education, Outcomes, Rigorous Academics