Arizona State University president Michael Crow, Aimée Eubanks Davis of Braven, and John White of Propel America join Carnegie Corporation of New York and Gallup to discuss survey findings on how well parents think we are preparing young people for life after high school
On April 7, 2021, Carnegie Corporation of New York and Gallup cohosted a webinar that explored key findings of their joint survey Family Voices: Building Pathways from Learning to Meaningful Work.
The results of the survey, which focused on how well parents think our education system is preparing young people for life after high school, the barriers they face, and the need for more postsecondary pathways, were discussed by the Corporation’s LaVerne Evans Srinivasan, vice president of the National Program and program director for Education; Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University; Aimée Eubanks Davis, founder and CEO of Braven; John White, cofounder and board chair at Propel America and former Louisiana state superintendent; and Mohamed Younis, editor-in-chief at Gallup.
The conversation offered insights into how we can expand and strengthen postsecondary pathways so that young people are exposed to the world of work before graduating from high school and have access to a robust array of career-related learning opportunities afterward. According to the survey, sixty-five percent of parents say their child faced one or more barriers to a preferred postsecondary pathway. While cost is a major hurdle, absent other barriers, families often manage to overcome it. Nonfinancial barriers, such as a lack of information about available programs or local access to a desired program, are more often insurmountable.
“How do we bring down all the walls around universities, and take every asset that we have and make them available to any learner in the society?” asked Crow, explaining his mission at ASU, which is to prioritize access and student success. “If you are a student-centric institution with community impact assessment as your ultimate goal, you rethink everything. For example: How many people did we graduate? How did they do in the economy? Did we transform K—12? Are we are helping to produce more high school graduates? Are we taking all of our assets and making things happen?”
According to White, inverting the traditional model of a college education first, and a job second, is one way to expand postsecondary pathways, and is also Propel America’s focus. “We have a ‘job-first model’,” he said, “where immediately following high school, students do study, they do get higher education, but they also get credentials that allow them a good first job, and that good first job can be the vehicle for stability that they need to further advance toward associate or bachelor's degrees.”
At Braven, Davis and her team partner with colleges to integrate career learning into students’ academic programs while also creating bridges between employers and first-generation students, low-income students, and students of color. “Employers provide us with folks who can coach teams of five to eight students through the Braven experience, allowing students to really get an opportunity to network and get to know a person who is in the professional world. Because many of our students just do not know anyone in the professional workforce and that really puts them at a disadvantage when it's time to get internships or jobs.”
According to Srinivasan, the Family Voices data, and the conversations created around it, can help education leaders and policymakers understand the demand for expanded and strengthened postsecondary options. “Parents are very practical,” Srinivasan said. “They know what they want and need for their children, and it aligns beautifully with what we as a country need in order to progress.”
TOP: A student works at her Construction Technology class at Blue Hills Regional Technical School in Canton, MA on Sept. 18, 2020. (Credit: Jonathan Wiggs/the Boston Globe via Getty Image)
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