Honing in on Key Enabling Conditions Necessary for a Strong, Diverse, Local Talent Pipeline
In our last blog, we discussed our Big Desired Outcome: that it is the rule, rather than the exception, that DC youth are hired into and succeed in the District’s good jobs. In this blog, we share more about the most important elements that must be in place to achieve a strong, diverse, local talent pipeline here in DC and the steps we and our partners are taking to put them in place.
Getting clarity and agreement on a Big Desired Outcome often brings me a short-lived sense of joy: I feel both a justifiable sense of pride in clearly defining a North Star goal to which my colleagues and I can constantly strive towards and the overwhelmed feeling I get when I’m about to start to tidy up one of my kids’ rooms –– knowing that I’ve got a lot of messy, hard work to do before I begin to see results. With a Big Desired Outcome as ambitious as a strong, diverse, local talent pipeline, that feeling of paralysis is fair: if this were an easy goal, we’d have done it already. This is why my colleagues and I knew it was essential to spend time and effort identifying the most critical elements that must be in place to achieve a strong, diverse, local talent pipeline here in DC. I’m calling these most important elements our Essential Enabling Conditions. Here is a high-level preview of the Enabling Conditions we’ve landed on to date and the journey we took to develop them.
The Enabling Conditions:
Here are the eight Enabling Conditions we have identified to date as essential to achieving a strong, diverse, local talent pipeline in DC:
Our Journey to Develop a Framework
Confession time: I have a love-hate relationship with frameworks. A framework is a conceptual visualization of the high-level interrelated outputs and outcomes needed to achieve a desired outcome. I love that frameworks can serve as a playbook that captures great thinking and learnings of smart people who’ve spent time working on a similar goal. Where I struggle with frameworks, especially here in Washington DC, is that I often find elements that just won’t work here, given our unique governance structure. In this case, given that other states have made some real, meaningful progress in building a strong, local, diverse talent pipeline, it made sense to learn from them, and to try to find a framework that best captured those learnings.
After an extensive review of existing frameworks, the Excel in Ed Pathways Matter (PM) Framework emerged as a compelling model known for its comprehensive and equity-focused approach, equity focus, and community engagement. The PM Framework established a learner-centered education-to-workforce continuum, encompassing 20 key policy components across six focus areas. The framework is presented in a nesting-doll-like way, allowing a reader access to high-level descriptions of each element, as well as deep-dive examples of exemplars across multiple jurisdictions in the US. Its emphasis on understanding local context and stakeholder engagement also resonated with us, sparking our interest in using it as a starting point for our journey.
Crosswalking
As we dove deeper into the Pathways Matter framework, we determined that a logical next step was to conduct an exercise crosswalking each component of the PM Framework against our current state in DC. We engaged stakeholders and partners to pressure test our findings, prioritized the most important to address, and proposed the next steps. Here is a high-level summary of where we landed on this crosswalking exercise in 2022:
| Pathways Matter Framework Element | Assessment of Current State in DC (2022) | Suggested Next Steps |
|---|---|---|
| Learner Pathways | Ample evidence exists of high-quality CTE programming in DC, however, there is opportunity for shared definitions of success across agencies and business/industry, and a longitudinal data system to measure success outcomes. | ▪️ Identify and align on success and common definitions across stakeholders. ▪️ Pursue longitudinal workforce data system. ▪️ Identify stable local funding stream (post-ARPA) to support continued growth of CTE programs. |
| Postsecondary Acceleration | The city has significantly expanded accelerated access to college credit through Early College, Dual Enrollment programming, and the Advanced Technical Center, however, there is no consistent policy for awarding postsecondary program or elective work for prior learning, or work experience. | ▪️ Support OSSE in establishing and finalizing articulation agreements with local colleges and universities. ▪️ Support OSSE and UDC in offering seamless pathway of CTE Programs of Study. |
| Postsecondary Credential Attainment | The city’s scholarship programs including DC TAG and DC Futures are positive factors in postsecondary credential attainment. That said, the PM Framework highlights additional opportunities to improve resident postsecondary completion. | Pursue a statewide policy to earn associate’s degree while working on bachelor's degree ("Reverse Transfer Credentials"). |
| Workforce Readiness | ▪️ WBL is currently reserved for CTE students, when we know it should be an opportunity offered to all students. ▪️ Schedule flexibility makes WBL challenging for students. ▪️ Insufficient dosage of WBL to become competitive for good jobs. |
▪️ Every student has access to more quality work-based learning. ▪️ Increased schedule flexibility. ▪️ Review courses to count towards multiple grad reqs. |
| Employer Engagement | DC has evidence of employer incentives, however there is a lack of data to measure how effective incentives are understood and used. | Support exploration of the extent to which DC’s employer incentives are known, used, and impacting resident workforce outcomes. |
| Data-Driven Decision Making | DC needs a data system that spans agencies, education systems, and the workforce to inform decision-making and drive outcomes, as well as shared definitions and indicators for quality and success in education to workforce pathways to ensure shared priorities extend across agencies and systems and inform decisions. | Establish a P-20W longitudinal data system in DC. |
Making It Our Own
When we reviewed the crosswalk with our partners and stakeholders, their feedback was nearly unanimous: this is great…but there are still some missing pieces. That rang true to us, too –– we’d been asking, “What about this? Or that?” when reviewing the crosswalk. At that point, we decided to free ourselves from the constraints of a framework (which had been indispensable in getting us this far in the process) and create something uniquely ours. To do that, we pulled from the original PM Framework, our crosswalk, stakeholder feedback, and research we’ve compiled over the past few years. After several rounds of engagement, pressure testing, and revision, I hope you’ll see we’ve already made progress on some of this work, and we still have much more to accomplish.
In our next blog, we’ll talk in more detail about the Enabling Conditions and some of the progress we’ve made to date in achieving them.
Which of the above Enabling Conditions resonates most or least with you? Which do you think is most urgent to implement? Email me to continue the conversation.