Career Pathways: What We Know and Where We Should Go From Here

Career pathways approaches offer articulated education and training steps between occupations in an industry sector, combined with support services, to enable individuals to enter and exit training within a pathway at various levels and to advance over time to higher skills, recognized credentials, and better jobs with higher pay. Recent years have witnessed a rapid growth of both career pathways programs development and rigorous research the body of research, much of it rigorous, examining the programs’ effectiveness of the approach. This creates a need to both incorporate this new evidence into policy and practice and focus future research on unanswered questions identified through these studies.

Join Abt and the Association for Public Policy Analysis Management (APPAM) for a half-day forum on the latest evidence from career pathways research. Hear from experts in the field as they discuss what have we learned about career pathways strategies for improving economic outcomes for low-income Americans, what makes career pathways programs more or less effective, and what the implications are for public policy and practice.

Follow along on #AbtAPPAM19

Click on the image below to download a PDF of the brochure:

Welcome
David Johnson, APPAM Past President, University of Michigan

Panel 1: The Research Context for Career Pathways
Moderator: Julie Strawn, Abt Associates

• “How Did We Get Here? 40 Years of Employment Evaluations” - Dan Bloom, MDRC (PDF)
• “Overview of Career Pathways Research: Evidence and Gaps” - Julie Strawn, Abt Associates (PDF)

Watch the Welcome and Panel 1 Discussion:

Panel 2: Impacts of Career Pathways Programs To Date
Moderator: Laura Peck, Abt Associates

• Karen Gardiner, Abt Associates, “Early Impact Findings from Pathways to Advancing Careers & Education (PACE) Evaluation” (PDF)
• Laura Peck, Abt Associates, “Early Impact Findings from the Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG 1.0) Program Evaluation” (PDF)
• Richard Hendra, MDRC, “Impact Findings from WorkAdvance” (PDF)
• Rebecca Maynard, University of Pennsylvania, "Strengthening Career Pathways by Embedding Evaluations into Routines of Practice" (PDF)

Watch the Panel 2 Discussion:

Panel 3: Discussion of the Implications of Career Pathways Findings for Policy, Practice and Research
Moderator: Karin Martinson, Abt Associates

• Robin E. Fernkas, Director, Division of Strategic Investments, Office of Workforce Investment, Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Department of Labor
• Mark Fucello, Director, Division of Economic Independence, Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
• Tom Brock, Director, Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University
• Brian Stewart, Dean of Education and Biomedical Sciences, Dean of Student Success, Pima Community College, Tucson, AZ

Watch the Panel 3 Discussion:

Concluding Remarks

• Mary Joel Holin, Division Vice President, Social and Economic Policy, Abt Associates