Resource Library

As a hub for the Linked Learning movement, the Alliance offers research, stories, and tools that help people understand the impact of Linked Learning and implement this approach at high levels of quality.

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Pathways to Postsecondary

Stories of Linked Learning Alumni

This research report, conducted by UCLA Center for Community Schooling, illuminates the voices of Linked Learning alumni as they reflect upon their high school and postsecondary experiences. Based on interviews with Linked Learning high school graduates, this report sheds light on how students experience the transition to postsecondary education and careers, and how their Linked Learning experience influenced postsecondary trajectories. Alumni also describe how the barriers they experience, both within postsecondary institutions and in their personal lives, undermine the intentions of students who identify as well-prepared for postsecondary education.

Research, Stories, College & Career Readiness, Equity, Lessons Learned, Outcomes, Postsecondary, Postsecondary Transitions

Linked Learning Student Outcomes

Summary of Effects on High School and Early Postsecondary Education
March 2021 | SRI Education

This research brief summarizes student outcome findings from SRI International’s evaluation of the California Linked Learning District Initiative, an effort to build robust district-level systems to sustain high school career pathways in nine school districts in the state. The current brief summarizes, at the conclusion of the evaluation, these final high school and postsecondary findings; it also for the first time provides findings from an analysis of community college on-track indicators for Linked Learning students. The brief concludes with implications from our findings for policy, practice, and future research.

Research, College & Career Readiness, Equity, Lessons Learned, Outcomes, Postsecondary, Postsecondary Transitions

Linked Learning and Community Schools

Preparing all Students for College, Career, and Civic Life

This brief provides an overview of these two approaches and describe a framework for bringing the Linked Learning and community schools together at the high school level so that all students, particularly those in communities that have been historically marginalized, are on a path to postsecondary success.

Curriculum & Instruction, Research, Equity, General, Partnerships, Rigorous Academics, Student Supports, Getting Started

Using Performance Assessments to Support Student Learning

How District Initiatives Can Make a Difference
November 2020 | Learning Policy Institute

A new analysis from The Linked Learning Alliance and The Alliance for Excellent Education shows that the students who could benefit the most from Linked Learning are also the least likely to have the internet & devices needed to experience it from home.

Research, COVID19, Equity, Outcomes, Partnerships, Policy, Student Supports

July 2020

Survey results from the Spring 2020 survey of juniors and seniors in seven key Linked Learning districts on the impacts of COVID-19 on students.

Research, College & Career Readiness, COVID19, Equity, Lessons Learned, Outcomes, Postsecondary, Student Supports

Student Experiences in Health Pathways

Findings from an Evaluation of Oakland Health Pathways
September 2019 | SRI International

This brief presents findings from the Oakland Health Pathways Project (OHPP), a joint initiative of Oakland Unified School District, Alameda Health System, and Alameda County Health Care Services Agency. The initiative is designed to improve educational and long-term employment outcomes for youth of color in Oakland (Alameda County), California, while expanding and diversifying the local health care workforce. It applies Linked Learning, an approach to college and career preparation that combines classroom learning with real-world work experiences. This brief draws on interviews with key school and pathway personnel, as well as focus groups and surveys of participating students in their senior year, to describe the experiences of being enrolled in health pathways and the perceived impact of participation on college and career readiness.

Research, College & Career Readiness, Lessons Learned, Partnerships, Workforce Development, Continuous Improvement

May 2019 | JFF

This case study details how the four communities of the Great Lakes College and Career Pathways Partnership are working to systematically move the needle to ensure that all young people are prepared to not only meet the current and emerging needs of the workplace, but to also find value and meaning in their working lives, and fully realize their best possible futures.

Research, Equity, Partnerships, Workforce Development, Continuous Improvement

March 2019 | John W. Gardner Center

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