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K–12 Education and Out-of-School Learning

The second lightning round, on the potential of K–12 education and out-of-school learning to enhance adaptability, was moderated by Betsy Brand, executive director of the American Youth Policy Forum.

FLEX FACTOR

NextFlex is a program to inspire young people to go into advanced manufacturing and higher-technology jobs in a way that resonates with them, with their parents, and with their schools. Based in Silicon Valley, it began as a small pilot with just eight students and now serves more than 2,000.

Brynt Parmeter, director of workforce development at NextFlex, spent almost 25 years in the army and noted that the business environment has some parallels with combat. Combat is an unforgiving and difficult environment. To prepare new soldiers for live fire, trainees first do a dry run of the situation, then they walk through it with blank rounds, and then they do it with live fire. All this is still not a good indicator of what combat will be like, with its many unknowns.

Flex Factor immerses high school students in the world of advanced manufacturing and entrepreneurship through project-based learning activities. Students come up with a problem, think of a product that solves the problem, form product development teams, and then pitch their ideas to a panel of judges. “By not giving them the problem, you plant deeper roots in the brain of that young person,” Parmeter said.

He noted that the approach has proven especially effective with women and minority students “because they think of a problem that is important to them.” They gain confidence and experience, and young women in high school serve as recruiters and mentors for the program so that participants have opportunities to see themselves in the future. “I love one of the sayings we heard,” said Parmeter: “‘If you can’t see it, you can’t be it.’”

The need for the program to generate its own revenue has advantages, he explained, “because then you listen to your customer and you’ll do what both your client and customer want you to do instead of what you think is necessary.” The program has been in communication with companies to export and replicate it elsewhere.

MADE RIGHT HERE

When startup companies begin to succeed in the United States, they typically move to China to begin manufacturing the product. Made Right Here is seeking to change that dynamic, said Bernie Lynch, the organization’s chief executive officer.

To develop a systemic framework for startups’ local and domestic manufacturing, a group of partners, with funding from the US Department of Labor’s Workforce Innovation Fund, created an innovative apprenticeship model that featured front-loaded training. Breadth of knowledge was emphasized, not only depth. About 200 unemployed adults of all ages were involved in the training and were teamed up with startup founders. Training was project based, with a feedback loop to enhance learning. The learning modules were not stackable but modular, with an emphasis on iteration, innovation, and creativity.

Made Right Here asks the people with whom it works what they want to do with their life and then works with them to explore how they might achieve their goal. “What would that pathway look like, what are the steps, how do you get there?” The focus is on each individual’s economic value proposition. “How can you provide an economic value proposition in a society that will pay you to do what you want to do?”

One important decision was not to use the term apprenticeship, said Lynch. Apprenticeships imply blue-collar jobs, while internships imply white-collar jobs. Making the products of the future requires very diverse skills, including expertise with software, hardware, creative thinking, and prototyping. To reflect these sophisticated skills, the partnership uses the term makership. The experiences are “not secondary work [but those of] a profession.”

P-TECH SCHOOLS

In 2011, IBM started the P-TECH program (Pathways in Technology Early College High Schools) as part of its commitment to education, said Grace Suh, director of education and corporate citizenship at IBM. The program partners with K–12 schools and community colleges to build not just academic and technical skills but also professional skills, “because those are the kinds of skills that we hire for in IBM.”

The company calls jobs that require a high school diploma but not necessarily a four-year college degree new-collar jobs. By 2024, she said, an estimated 16 million such jobs will be created in the United States, whereas from 2008 to 2016 the US economy lost 7 million jobs for those with only a high school diploma.

The P-TECH program emphasizes problem solving, critical thinking, communication, leadership, and adaptability. “Those are the kinds of skills we’re trying to foster in these young people so that when they graduate they are ready for jobs.” Graduates of the program have both

a high school diploma and a two-year industry-recognized postsecondary degree.

P-TECH schools are open enrollment. Some students might enter reading at a fifth-grade level, but they are nevertheless expected to get a postsecondary degree. Most students are the first in their family to graduate from college and are earning their degree for free. Students receive the supports they need to get a degree, including cultural support—“at IBM, we say that culture is everything,” said Suh. They also develop skills that can be applied in many different professions, so if they decide they want to be a lawyer or human resources professional, they have the skills to go in those directions.

The program annually reviews a map of academic, technical, and professional skills and compares it with the curriculum to identify gaps where the curriculum can be enriched. Students have mentors from IBM and other industry partners who model both technical and professional skills. They go to worksites, do job shadowing, and engage in a skills-based paid internship.

The program went from one school in Brooklyn in 2011 to 70 schools at the time of the workshop. IBM leads in eight of the schools; the rest are led by 400 other business partners, many working in consortiums with single schools.

Suh affirmed that “businesses want to get involved once they know how. They’re looking for talent, and rather than waiting at the end of the talent pipeline they want to reach in and help develop that talent.” IBM helps businesses learn about the program through meetings, online guides, and other resources so that businesses can get a high return on investment from their involvement.

The program is active in six states, soon to be eight, “and we’re hoping to be in more.” The program works with governors in each state to ensure the funding and policies required for long-term sustainability.

The first cohort of students had a 56 percent graduation rate, more than four times the on-time national community college graduation rate of 13 percent, Suh reported.

Graduates are the first in line for jobs at IBM, “because that’s a promise we make to the young people, and it would be hollow if they weren’t graduating with skills that industry actually needed.” Of 100 graduates to date, IBM has hired 11, some of whom have already received promotions. “It’s been an incredibly rewarding opportunity for us and one that we want to see across the United States.”

PROJECT LEAD THE WAY

David Greer, senior vice president and chief programs officer for Project Lead The Way, made the case that, while not every company is a technology company, every company is a technology-enabled company and all companies need a workforce that can rise to that challenge. “We shouldn’t focus just on engineers,” he said. “We need to focus on digital citizens and how we can create productive workers and citizens throughout our educational programs,” from prekindergarten through college and beyond. “You don’t just start at the end of the pipeline; you start at the very beginning.”

Project Lead The Way started two decades ago with one school and has grown to 11,000 schools in all 50 states. It has approximately 3 million students and has trained more than 55,000 teachers at all levels on problem-based, hands-on learning. Greer framed the program’s motivation: “This generation wants to solve problems that will impact their community and the world. How can we tie education into that?”

The program seeks to engage students with relevant content and provides them with foundational knowledge that they need to be successful while they work on open-ended projects and problems. Exposing them to career opportunities often and at every educational level, it sets high expectations and inspires students to rise to the challenge. They collaborate, learn from each other, and dig into real-world scenarios.

Students can explore three pathways: computer science, engineering, and biomedical science, with activities at all educational levels. When students begin in kindergarten, this approach becomes the new normal for them (and for the teachers). In this way, students have a conveyor belt of opportunities throughout their schooling with support at all stages, including higher education.

The program represents a long-term investment, but early involvement is critical, since research shows that girls and minorities begin opting out of mathematics and science as early as second grade because they find these subjects “too hard.” “There’s no reason [they have] to be too hard. If we can provide these pathways and expectations for our students, they can succeed.”

Project Lead The Way also conducts professional development for teachers, because they “make everything happen,” said Greer. The teacher training emphasizes student engagement through open-ended projects and problems, flipping the usual approach of lecturing and memorization. “Can you imagine if we treated patients the same way we

treated them in hospitals 100 years ago?” Greer asked. “But somehow we’re educating our students the same way we educated them 100 years ago. Why is that okay? It’s not, and I think we can do better.”

BOSTON AFTER SCHOOL & BEYOND

Schools are critical in building the skills associated with adaptability, but school-aged children spend 80 percent of their waking hours outside of school, noted Chris Smith, executive director of Boston After School & Beyond. After-school and summer programs therefore provide a tremendous opportunity to foster adaptability, although they tend to be fragmented—Boston alone has more than 1,000 summer programs. “They have different governance models, they have different fundraising strategies, they have different measures of success,” he said. “But it’s still fertile ground for these skills.” Boston’s efforts at harnessing these programs serve as one model.

After-school and summer programs often have fewer constraints and are more flexible than school programs. And because they are voluntary, they can tap young people’s intrinsic motivation, making learning and skill development immediately relevant. They also can promote diversity, of approaches as well as participants.

Boston After School & Beyond focuses on developing the skills that young people will need throughout their lives. These skills need to be taught, learned, practiced, and measured, Smith said. “You can’t merely hear about them and get better at them; they require real experiences.”

Summer and after-school programs can make the community a classroom for students. In Boston, programs take advantage of museums, colleges, workplaces, nature preserves, and many other settings to develop skills. In the process, program participants develop dynamic peer learning networks in which they learn from each other as well as from adults. At the same time, the programs offer an opportunity to engage with the business community to foster the skills they will need.

Effective youth development results in college and career readiness, said Smith. “You might ask, ‘Aren’t these programs supposed to be fun? Should they really be about workforce development? Can workforce development be fun?’ We think the answer is ‘yes!’ Challenge and support are two sides of the same coin, as are rigor and engagement, and this is what we’re working on.”

One relative shortcoming observed in these programs is that they are not particularly good at leaving time for reflection. Smith also noted that

he would welcome research on the transferability and portability of the skills developed in after-school programs. When you “develop them in these settings, can you apply them in another setting when it’s needed?”

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Working in teams, the workshop participants articulated takeaways from the lightning round¹:

• With more respect, attention, and resources, two-year colleges could have higher expectations for themselves and their students.
• Much learning takes place outside formal educational environments, and social support systems could strengthen such out-of-the-classroom learning.
• New terms such as maker professionals and new-collar jobs can reflect the sense of agency and identity that supports adaptability.
• Resilience and empowerment help create the confidence and flexibility that underlie adaptability.
• Sharing examples of best practices and successful activities from schools and businesses will accelerate the changes that are needed.
• A resilient system has layers of support and supporters so that no one institution or person acts as a gatekeeper.
• A better societal support system, such as a better healthcare system, could support flexibility and creativity in the workplace.
• The development of confidence can enhance an employee’s ability to adapt.

In this lightning round, the panelists also reflected on what they had heard, both from each other and the various participants:

• An overemphasis on testing can teach students that the exploration and flexibility needed for adaptability are a liability.

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¹ The following lists are the rapporteurs’ summary of the main points made by individual speakers during the general discussion. Given the unstructured nature of the discussion, it was not possible to clearly identify every speaker or attribute every comment or idea. The statements have not been endorsed or verified by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

• Giving students the opportunity to work in teams can provide them with the confidence and inspiration they need to excel as individuals.
• Public-private partnerships can break down silos and make use of differing expertise.
• Meaningful exposure to workplace settings, not just touring a plant or facility, can help students develop the skills they will need in those settings.
• No one program or approach can meet the need for adaptability, though there may be common elements to programs that are successful.