Resource Library

This case study tells the story of how Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD) has managed to integrate Linked Learning into its own district reform through staffing, reorganizing, and building capacity within the district. The study notes some early indicators of improvement including increases in API scores and decreases in dropout rates at some SCUSD high schools.

Research, Leadership Development, Lessons Learned

This report examines preliminary data on student outcomes from four selected Linked Learning districts. Each of these districts focuses on pathways to college and career that meet criteria for quality certification by ConnectEd: The California Center for College and Career, the national hub for Linked Learning practice. This summary also assesses implementation progress across all nine school districts participating in this initiative, drawing on interviews, student focus groups and student surveys.

Research, Lessons Learned, Outcomes

According to this report, nearly half (47 percent) of California jobs are in “middle skills” occupations that require education beyond a high school diploma, but less than a 4-year college degree. The report estimates that only 38 percent of California workers have the skills to fill these positions, creating a nearly 10 percent skills gap. When coupled with a shortage of workers with science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills, business leaders are voicing concern about California’s competitive viability in a global marketplace.

Research, Workforce Development

This is the story of how Pasadena Unified School District (PUSD) is creating sustainable high school reform. PUSD, through a set of district leadership practices, thoughtfully built the capacity of and sense of ownership among essential stakeholders to design, implement, and support a system of Linked Learning pathways. Though firmly anchored by the visionary leadership of a superintendent, the PUSD Linked Learning story extends to school sites, civic and industry partners, and the broader community. This story also highlights the impact that a change in leadership can have on reform efforts, the ways that ownership of an initiative can be expanded to a wider pool of key stakeholders, and how those stakeholders can increase capacity to sustain the vision and implementation of reform beyond one leader.

Research, Leadership Development, Lessons Learned

This case study describes how Porterville Unified School District (PUSD), a rural school district in California’s Central Valley, began to fulfill its vision to transform high school and career education through the implementation of Linked Learning. The case explains how Porterville’s district leadership team made Linked Learning the centerpiece of its district-wide reform effort and describes the key strategies the leadership team developed in collaboration with stakeholders to implement a system of pathways across five high schools.

Research, Leadership Development, Lessons Learned

An executive summary highlighting key findings from the second-year evaluation report.

Research, Lessons Learned, Outcomes

This report highlights positive results at California Partnership Academies (CPAs). Many of these CPAs are also part of Linked Learning.

This report on the California Partnership Academies (CPAs) reveals very promising results for student performance across a range of important outcomes: most notably graduation rates for seniors, and completion of the “A-G” courses required for admission to the University of California and California State University. It is significant to note that these results have been achieved despite the fact that 50 percent of CPA students enter the program as “at-risk students” based on strict criteria. The new findings confirm the pattern found in a similar report on the CPAs using data from 2004-05, but with substantially larger numbers of academies and students.

Research, Career-Technical Education, Outcomes, Rigorous Academics

To meet California’s demand for a more educated workforce, high schools must dramatically increase the number of students who graduate and graduate with the skills and knowledge they need to be successful in college and career. Yet disturbingly, few students graduate with the college-ready coursework needed to access our state’s public university system. This is especially true for low-income students and students of color, who are also disproportionately tracked into less rigorous “career education” courses. This report highlights these troubling trends and calls for a more integrated and equitable approach to college and career preparation—so that high school serves to open doors to both college and career options for all students.

Research, College & Career Readiness, Equity, Workforce Development

Traditionally, challenges such as how to sustain district reform, how to build a leadership pipeline, how to create an integrated project, or how to best intervene with struggling students would be resolved with a team of “experts” developing a solution in isolation of the stakeholders involved. By contrast, design thinking centers on the knowledge and experiences of those on the front lines—in the same spirit as student-centered learning, differentiation, and other user-centered approaches in education.

Rice suggests that to best impact systemic challenges, design thinking should be practiced as part of an aligned set of focused priorities across schools and districts. To nurture a culture of innovation, district leadership should thoughtfully integrate design thinking into already existing appropriate structures including strategic planning forums, curriculum development sessions, and teacher and principal leadership development.

Research, Lessons Learned

This report finds that the U.S. strategy for education and youth development in previous decades has been too narrowly focused on an academic, classroom-based approach, and that this has produced only incremental gains in achievement and attainment. In response, the report advances a vision for how the United States might regain the leadership in educational attainment it held for over a century, advocating for the development of a comprehensive pathways network to serve youth in high school and beyond.

Research, Policy