Early College and Career Pathways

Creating and codifying policies and practices that blend high school, college, and career, preparing students to thrive in higher education and excel in the workforce.

Remixing High School, College and Career

Robust research demonstrates that demographics play a large role in determining the economic and life outcomes for too many students.

Specifically, economic mobility is significantly more difficult for students from high-poverty neighborhoods and rural communities to attain, despite their talent and hard work.

We also know that high school or even college graduation are only part of the puzzle. Ultimately, students need jobs that provide family-sustaining wages, long-term career paths, and that activate their strengths and values so that they can lead thriving lives.  The silos that separate K12, college and work-based learning get in the way of success for students, especially those we have least well served historically.  

Remixing K12 education with either college, work-based learning or both allows students to ramp up to their futures and provides greater engagement and purpose in high school.  This means designing high schools so that students access meaningful, consistent college and career exploration, navigation, and coaching, as well as employer-guided work-based learning via internships, apprenticeships, and pathways to certification in their field of interest. 

Bridge to Possibilities

We support school communities to design, launch, and strengthen, partnerships with higher education and  industry to accelerate outcomes for traditionally underserved students by providing high school students with a head start on their ambitious career goals. Despite decades of focus on “college and career readiness” as a North Star goal for K12 education, evidence shows that disadvantaged students fare considerably less competitively in both college and career outcomes.  Structural changes to high schools to create pathways to success in college and career have been proven to be effective responses but need to scale more.

For over a decade, Empower Schools has been at the forefront of this work helping schools, rural collaboratives and even statewide alliances fashion policies and on-the-ground sustainable practices to bust out from the limits that silos have been placing on students’ ability to identify, pursue and realize their potential and their dreams.

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Change at the School and State Level

How We Help

1. Early College High Schools 

Early College High Schools are joint ventures between high schools and institutions of higher education, working together to provide support and opportunities for first-generation and low-income students to ramp up successfully to college work and credits. Early College High Schools are a proven innovation that helps low-income and first-generation students increase their odds of success in college while saving them time and money to degree as well.

    • By providing scaffolded support through planned sequences of college courses that count for both high school and college credit, Early College students develop confidence and efficacy in college and accumulate significant amounts of credit, often up to a full Associate degree while they are in high school. 
    • Early College students can pursue career-aligned pathways or build their credit base towards the full range of four year college degree programs. 

2. Career Pathways

Career Pathways enable participating students to gain exposure, experience, skills sets, and career-aligned post-secondary credits and credentials while in high school. Career Pathways bring industry partners to the decision-making table, helping to shape and inform the fundamental building blocks of the high school experience.

    • Pathways and opportunities are responsive to state and regional policy and workforce needs.
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    • Students are supported to make informed decisions about their post-secondary options with the goal of attaining economic mobility and to lead thriving lives.

3. State Coalition-Building

Nonprofit, collective impact state alliances unite the many internal (e.g. K12 and higher education leaders) and external (e.g. education policy, civil rights, business, college success and community organizations) stakeholders in the common cause of driving policy and practice in their state towards wide scale adoption of proven early college and career-connected learning models.

    • This approach to statewide coalition building has worked in a handful of states.
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    • Empower works to help design and launch such alliances that can focus on building awareness and consensus, fostering enabling policy and funding, strengthening capacity and technical assistance and encouraging innovation. 

Solutions that Work

Did You Know

With over 1,000 proof points in dozens of states across the country, Early College of the most validated and popular innovations available to educators to add opportunity and shift outcomes.

Yet, today Early College remains the exception to the rule when it should be the new normal.

Read the Research

Spotlight: Massachusetts Early College Alliance

We helped catalyze and launch the Massachusetts Early College Initiative, partnering closely since 2016, which has resulted in state-designated Early College High Schools across the state, including 26 programs with 38 participating high schools and 20 participating colleges. There are now about 4,000 students, predominantly of color and low-income, who are accruing significant amounts of college credit, focus and confidence while in high school. Early results show considerable gains among participants in their likelihood of going on to matriculate in college and to persist into their second year, compared to high school and matched peers. 

MA4EC has also pioneered the Early College Promise program where existing Early College programs adopt a fifth year approach. With Early College Promise, participating students have the opportunity to forego the right to graduate from high school in 12th Grade and instead enjoy one more year of strong financial and human support to advance their college attainment. Participating schools commit to re-engineering their programs and recruiting rising 11th graders to a three-year program, including this added “13th grade,” whereby they can pursue a full Associate’s degree and/or two years of transferable credit to take to a four-year college.

We work with states across the country to explore, design, and launch similar collective impact approaches to supporting strong state-level early college and career ecosystems. 

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How we help Communities grow with Early College and Career Pathways

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EMPOWERED PARTNERSHIPS

DESIGN

We build coalitions between district schools, institutions of higher education, and local industries to build career-connected learning programs designed to help students find academic and career success

ESTABLISH

We support local stakeholders in establishing Early College and Career-Connected High Schools with clear agreements, ambitious performance goals, strong and sustainable governance, and educator voice.

ACCELERATE

We incubate state-level Early College and Career Alliances to accelerate and scale progress towards state-wide college and career readiness objectives.

LEVERAGE

We analyze relevant state policies to identify existing openings for Early College and Career Pathways, partnering with state education agencies and elected leaders to find ways to incentivize and support through existing laws.

AMPLIFY

We connect thought leaders to foster cross-sector collaborations so decision-makers receive the policy learning they need to enable innovation.

CHANGE

We listen to stakeholders, collaborating with people with local knowledge in student, school, and community needs to write, modify, and advocate for state and district policies that advance Early College and Career-Connected High Schools.

POLICY AND THOUGHT LEADERSHIP