Work-based Learning for All: Aligning K-12 Education and the Workplace for both Students and Teachers
The incoming presidential administration of 2025 should champion a policy position calling for strengthening of the connection between K-12 schools and community workplaces. Such connections result in a number of benefits including modernized curricula, more meaningful lessons, more motivated students, more college and career readiness, more qualified applicants for local jobs, more vibrant communities, and a stronger nation. The gains associated with education-workplace partnerships are certainly not exclusive to STEM disciplines of study but given the high-demand for talent in STEM business and industry, the imperative may be greatest in science and mathematics, and the applied domains of engineering and technology.
The rationale for a policy priority around K-12 and workplace partnerships centers around waning public confidence in the ability of schools to prepare tomorrow’s workforce. A perceived disconnect between what gets taught and what learners need in order to thrive on the job threatens individual livelihoods, family and community stability, and national competitiveness in an ever-more rapidly evolving global economy. Bridges are needed that unite education and workplaces, putting students and their teachers to work beyond the classroom. A new administration should:
- Expand externships for teachers in community workplaces. The best way to help every student to explore and to be inspired about career horizons is to prepare and inspire their teachers to represent to them the opportunities that await. Externships in community workplaces sharpen teachers’ content knowledge and skills and equip them to portray the exciting careers that await students. The existing Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) federal infrastructure can be adapted for supporting externships.
- Deploy Competency-Based Education (CBE) at scale. America’s prevailing school model inhibits the expansion of experiential, or Work-Based Learning (WBL) in workplaces. The school day is a regimented sequence of seat-time tallies toward a seven-period stack of classes yielding little if any time to immerse learners in relevant experiences at workplaces. Or as one advocacy organization phrased it, “Today’s high school transcript is a record of time and activity, but not a very good measure of knowledge, skills, and dispositions. It doesn’t capture experiences or work products that provide evidence of growth and accomplishment.” An internet search of Work-based Learning nets over 3 billion hits. It’s one of the hottest topics in education. But those hits reveal a weakness to the WBL “movement”: it is almost entirely focused on career and technical education, a branch of general education serving about one-fourth of all students. Going forward, core area teachers and classes must take part. To do so, mathematics, science and other required and college preparatory courses need flexibility from seat time and content delivery. When teachers, schools and districts adopt Competency-Based Education, this allows more time for the other 75% of learners to earn credits by acquiring the knowledge and skills of a subject area while doing, making and working. Models exist for doing so.
Concerted federal policy promoting the connection between K-12 schools and community workplaces sends a strong, bipartisan message to both education and employer sectors of the nation that the myriad advantages to learners, employers, and communities of cross-sector collaboration will now be the norm, not the exception. Moreover, it requires no new or novel and untested programmatic priorities – they are already at play in forward-thinking communities. Teacher externships dot the American landscape and will fit neatly into a new RET mold (coupling Research Experiences for Teachers with Regional Externships for Teachers as menu options). Competency-Based Education, with guidelines for Work-Based Learning, is already on paper in most U.S. states. Now is prime time to expand these life-changing educational reforms for all young Americans.
Such expansions would fit neatly into existing federal structures; federal agencies have long supported competency-based education (U.S. Department of Education), Work-based Learning (U.S. Department of Labor), and Teacher-Externships (U.S. Department of Energy, and National Science Foundation). The current national landscape of teacher-externships, while promising, is fraught with inconsistency and low participation: presently there are thousands of local teacher-externship models of wide variation in duration and rigor operated by school districts, local business organizations, higher education institutions, and regional education groups. Federal research-based guidelines and example-setting is a desperately needed function for standardizing high-quality experiences. Federal guidance and promotion could also help expand those experiences from the present low-capacity (estimating 10 teachers per year in 5,000 local programs equates to 50,000 teacher-externs annually while there are over 3 million K-12 educators nationwide, meaning 60 years to reach all practitioners) to greater volume through more workplace and educator involvement.
Similarly, the national portrait for competency-based education leading to work-based learning presents a golden opportunity to usher educational transformation. At present, many schools and districts implement CBE to limited degrees in specific courses (typically Career and Technology Education, or CTE) for certain students (non-college bound). The potential for far greater impact across courses and the entire student spectrum awaits federal guidance and support.
Challenge and Opportunity
Urgency for Action
Thousands of businesses in towns and cities across the United States use science, mathematics and technology to engineer global goods while struggling to find and employ local talent. Thousands of schools across the U.S. teach science, mathematics, engineering and technology yet struggle to inspire their students toward local career opportunities. These two seemingly parallel universes overlap like the acetate pages of an anatomy textbook—muscle over bone—while largely failing to unite for mutual benefit. Iowa for example, is home to 4,273 global manufacturers depending on 263,870 employees to move product out the door. Pella Window, John Deere, Vermeer, Diamond-Vogel, Collins Aerospace, Winnebago, Tyson and others scramble to fill roughly 15,000 STEM job openings (p. 61) at any given time. The good news is that 75% of the state’s high school graduates profess interest (p. 29) in STEM careers. The bad news is that just 37% of graduates (p. 30) intend to live and work in Iowa. That is unless they’ve enjoyed a work-based learning experience and/or had a teacher who had spent a summer in industry. The Iowa experience parallels that of many rural and urban regions across the country: students whose teacher externed find more relevance in STEM classes applied to local jobs, And students who enjoy work-based learning are more likely to pursue careers locally after graduation. In combination, these two programs serve up a culture of connectedness between the world of work and the world of education, generating a win-win outcome for educators, employers, families, communities, and most importantly, for students.
Opportunity for Impact
Immersing students and their teachers in workplace experiences is not a new idea. Career and technology education (CTE) has been a driving force for WBL for over 100 years. More recently, federal policy during the Obama administration re-shaped the blueprint for Perkins reauthorization by encouraging models that “better focus on real world experiences” (p. 3). And under the Trump administration the federal STEM education strategic plan called for a new and renewed emphasis on “…education-employer partnerships leading to work-based learning…” (p. 4). The key word here is “new”, and it’s not being emphasized enough: the status quo remains centered on CTE when it comes to teachers and students connecting with the work world, leaving out nearly three-quarters of all students. High school internships, for example, are completed by only about two percent of U.S. students, and CTE programs are completed by approximately 22 percent of white students but 18 percent of Black and 16 percent of Hispanic students. The national standards upon which states and districts base their mathematics and science curricula, including the Common Core and the Next Generation Science Standards, are not much help. They urge applied classroom problem-solving but fail to promote WBL for students or teachers. Today, the vast majority of K-12 student WBL opportunities—internships, apprenticeships, job shadows, collaborative projects, etc., take place through the CTE wing of schools. Likewise, most teacher-externship programs engage CTE educators almost exclusively.
The potent WBL tools of career-technical education transposed over to core subject area students and teachers can invigorate mathematics, science and computing class, too.
Impact Opportunity for Externships
As one former extern put it, “If you send one kid on an internship, it affects that one kid. If you send a teacher, the impact reaches their 200 students!” Especially for today’s rapidly growing and economically vital career sectors including Health Science, Information Technology, Biotech, Manufacturing, Agriculture, Data Analytics, Food, and Nature Resources, teacher externships can fuel the talent pipeline. Iowa has been conducting just such an experiment for a decade, making this type of professional development available to core discipline teachers. “Surveyed teacher-externs agreed or strongly agreed that it affected the way they taught, their understanding of 21st century [transportable] skills through math and science, and they agreed or strongly agreed that more students expressed an interest in STEM careers as a result of their having participated in the externship (p. 12). Nearly all participating teachers (93%) described the externship as “more valuable than any other PD in which they had ever taken part” (p. 13).
Specific impacts on teachers included the following:
- Greater awareness of the importance of 21st century skills—critical thinking, technology, and collaboration—and greater integration of these skills into teaching practice.
- Improved knowledge of and skills in using technology.
- Greater understanding of the workplace expectations students will encounter.
- Increased professional confidence.
- Improved capacity to use real-world examples in the classroom.
- Better advising for students about STEM jobs.
Specific impacts on their students include the following:
- Increase in science and STEM career interest.
- Highest gain for female interest in science, math, and a STEM career compared to before-externship (p. 29).
Beyond the direct effects upon students and their teachers, externships in local workplaces leave lasting relationships that manifest year after year in tours, projects, mentorships, equipment support, summer jobs, etc. Teacher testimonials speak to the lasting effects.
Impact Opportunity for CBE and WBL
Although rarely implemented, every U.S. state now allows Competency-Based Education. Broadly defined, CBE is an education model where students demonstrate mastery of concepts and skills of a subject to advance and graduate, rather than log a set number of hours seat-time and pass tests. Students move at individualized pace, concepts are accrued at variable rates and sequences, teachers operate as facilitators, and the work is more often projects-based—much of it occurring outside classroom walls. CBE solves the top inhibitor to Work-Based Learning for non-CTE, core content areas of study including science, mathematics, and computing: it frees up time.
Utah, Washington, and Wyoming are considered leaders in the CBE arena for crafting policy guidelines sufficient for a few schools to pilot the model. In Washington, 28 school districts are collaborating to establish at least one CBE school in each, the Mastery-Based Learning Collaborative (MBLC).
Another trailblazer in CBE, North Dakota, was recently recognized by the Education Commission of the States for legislating a series of changes to school rules to disinhibit CBE and WBL: (a) A competency-based student graduation pathway and allowance for outside work to count for course credit; (b) Level state support per student whether credits are earned inside or outside the classroom; and (c) Scholarships that honor demonstrated competency equally to the standard credits and grades criterion.
Finally, a school that typifies the power of CBE across subject areas, supported by the influential XQ Institute, is a metropolitan magnet model called Iowa BIG in Cedar Rapids. Enrollees choose local projects in partnership with an industry partner. Projects, like real life, are necessarily transdisciplinary. And project outcomes (i.e., mastery) determine grades. Outcomes include:
- Average ACT scores of 22 (21 is state average, just under 20 is national average).
- 97 percent of graduates report feeling at least somewhat prepared for the future.
- 92 percent cite “collaboration [and] working in groups” as strengths most developed.
Yet, for all its impact and promise, Iowa BIG, like many CBE pilots, struggles to broaden offerings (currently limited to English, social studies, and business credits), and enrollment (roughly 100 students out of a grade 11-12 regional population over ten-times that amount). As discussed in the next section, CBE programs can be significantly constrained by local, state, and federal policies (or lack thereof).
Challenges Limiting Impact
The limited exposure of American K-12 students to teachers who enjoy an Externship, or to Competency-Based Education leading to Work-Based Learning testifies to the multiple layers of challenge to be navigated. At the local district level, school schedules and the lack of communication across school – business boundaries are chief inhibitors to WBL, while educator professional development and crediting/graduation rules suppress CBE. At the state level, the inhibitors reveal themselves to be systemic: funding of and priority needs for educator professional development, a lack of a coherent and unifying profile of a graduate, standardized assessments, and graduation requirements retard forward movement on experiential partnerships. Logically, federal challenges have enormous influence on state and local conditions: the paucity of research and development on innovative instructional and assessment practices, inadequate communication of existent resources to drive WBL and other national education imperatives, insufficient support for the establishment of state and regional intermediary structures to drive local innovation, and non-complimentary funding programs that if coordinated could significantly advance K-12 –workplace alignment.
The pace of progress at the local school level is ultimately most strongly influenced by federal policy priority. The policy is well-established by the federal STEM education strategic plan Charting a Course for Success: America’s Strategy for STEM Education, a report by the Committee on STEM Education of the National Science and Technology Council, Pathway 1: Develop and Enrich Strategic Partnerships (p. 9). The plan was developed through and embraced for its bipartisan approach. Refocusing on its fulfillment will make the United States a stronger and more prosperous nation.
Plan of Action
The federal government’s leadership is paramount in driving policy toward education-workplace alignment. Specific roles range from investment to asset allocation to communication, specific to both teacher externships and CBE leading to WBL.
(1) Congress should legislate that all federal agencies involved in STEM education outreach (those represented on the Committee on STEM Education [Co-STEM] and on the Subcommittee on Federal Coordination in STEM Education [FC-STEM]) establish teacher-externship programs at their facilities as capacity and security permit. The FC-STEM should designate an Inter-agency Working Group on Teacher-Externships [IWG-TE] to be charged with developing a standard protocol consistent with evidence-based practice (e.g., minimum four-week, maximum eight-week summer immersion, authentic work experience applying knowledge and skills of their teaching discipline, close mentorship and supervision, the production of a translational teaching product such as a lesson, unit, or career exploratory component, compensation commensurate with qualifications, awareness and promotion activities, etc.). The IWG-TE will provide an annual report of externships activity across agencies to the FC-STEM and Co-STEM.
(2) Within two years of enactment, all agencies participating in teacher externships shall develop and implement an expansion of the externships model to localities nationwide through a grant program by which eligible LEAs, AEAs, and SEAs may compete for funding to administer local teacher-externship programs in partnership with local employers (industry, nonprofit, public sector, etc.) pertinent to the mission and scope of the respective agency. For example, EPA may fund externs in state natural resource offices, and NASA may fund externs in aerospace industry facilities. The IWG-TE will include progress and participation in the grant program as part of their annual report.
(3) The IWG-TE shall design and administer an assessment instrument for components (1) and (2) that details participation rates by agency, demographics of participants, impact on participants’ teaching, and evidence of impact on the students of participants related to interest in and capability for high-demand career pursuit. An external expert in teacher-externships administration may be contracted for guidance in the establishment of the externships program and its assessment.
As to funding, the agencies charged with implementation are those already conducting outreach, so it could be that initially no new dollars accompany the mandate. However, for the second component (grants), new funding would definitely be needed. A budget line request in 2027 seeking $10 million to be distributed proportionally to agencies based on numbers of externs – determined by the Office of Science and Technology Policy in close consult with FC-STEM – such that a goal of 1500 total externs be supported nationwide at an estimated cost of $6,000 each, plus administrative costs. In summary:
Teacher Externships
- The next administration should work with Congress to authorize the use of the RET infrastructure (NOAA, NASA, Dept. of Energy, NSF, and other variants) across agencies to administer Teacher-Externships at federal facilities.
- Congress should authorize a new grant program where agencies participating in teacher externships develop and administer grant programs by which eligible LEAs, AEAs, and SEAs may compete for funding to administer local teacher-externship programs in partnership with local employers.
Competency-based Education leading to Work-Based Learning
- Congress should ensure that a reauthorized WIOA could support the establishment and operation of state or regional intermediaries like The Center in Iowa and the MBCL in Washington state to conduct professional development and facilitate information exchange.
- Increase R&D on knowledge transfer and mobilization around CBE via funding for Education Innovation and Research and the Advancing Research in Education Act.
- ED and DOL should issue joint guidance to allow for flexible use in combination with WIOA, Perkins V, ESSA and other federal resources to expand CBE and WBL.
Recommendations supporting both innovations
- For all awarded R&D proposals across all member agencies of CoSTEM, encourage Externships and WBL as Broader Impact functions.
- Establish a single, searchable resource specific for finding federal activities and resources for Externships, CBE, and WBL.
- Sustain the call for strategic partnerships of education and workplace as a national imperative in the updated 2025 federal STEM strategic plan.
Conclusion
Teachers prepared to connect what happens between 8:00 am and 3:00 pm to real life beyond school walls reflect the future of education. Learners whose classrooms expand to workplaces hold our best hopes as tomorrow’s innovators. Studying forces and vectors at the amusement park make Physics come alive. Embryo care at the local hatchery enlivens biology lessons. Pricing insurance against actuarial tables adds up in Algebra. Crime lab forensics gives chemistry a courtroom. Designing video games that use AI to up the action puts a byte in computer study. And all such experiences fuel passions and ignite dreams for STEM study and careers. Let America put learners and their teachers to work beyond classrooms to bridge the chasm between classrooms and careers. This federal policy priority will be a win-win for learners, their families and communities, employers, and the nation.
This action-ready policy memo is part of Day One 2025 — our effort to bring forward bold policy ideas, grounded in science and evidence, that can tackle the country’s biggest challenges and bring us closer to the prosperous, equitable and safe future that we all hope for whoever takes office in 2025 and beyond.
The incoming presidential administration of 2025 should champion a policy position calling for strengthening of the connection between K-12 schools and community workplaces.
To help all American workers and strengthen the national economy, the next administration should establish a Sector-Focused Employment Training Initiative to coordinate and expand evidence-based sectoral employment training programs across the U.S. workforce
The new Administration should announce a national talent surge to identify, scale, and recruit into innovative teacher preparation models, expand teacher leadership opportunities, and boost the profession’s prestige.
Congress should approve a new allowable use of Title I spending that specifically enables and encourages districts to use funds for activities that support and drive equity-focused innovation.