Career-Connected Learning Enablement Stack: Bridging the gap between classroom and career
Overview
The Pathway Impact Fund’s work is guided by the Commission on Purposeful Pathways’ central report, A Launchpad for Life, a research-backed vision for purposeful pathways that move beyond a patchwork of programs and change outcomes for young people at scale.
These pathways weave together three core elements: high-quality advising, accelerated coursework and career-connected learning. This resource is designed to help communities move from understanding to action on career-connected learning.
Career-connected learning is a continuum of experiences — spanning career awareness, exploration, preparation and training — that bridges the gap between classroom instruction and real-world application. When done well, it ignites student motivation by making academic work relevant and teaching practical skills that employers demand. Research demonstrates strong impact across the full spectrum of these experiences: students build social capital through connections to industry and professional mentorship, develop technical and durable skills through meaningful work experiences, and report greater hope and engagement in school overall.
Career-connected learning is not a single program or destination but an integrated thread woven throughout a student’s learning experience. It helps them envision themselves in meaningful careers and understand why their learning matters.
Scaling high-quality career-connected learning to reach all students remains a persistent challenge. Many schools rely on workforce organizations and regional intermediaries whose strength and availability varies widely across geographies, and work-based learning coordinators often struggle to match students to opportunities aligned with their interests. Rigid school schedules, limited funding and a shortage of career navigators add further barriers. Without intentional infrastructure and cross-sector partnerships, career-connected learning risks remaining accessible only to students whose communities happen to have strong employer relationships in place. Every student, regardless of zip code, should have structured opportunities to connect their learning to purpose and to see their future as real and within reach.
Source: A Launchpad for Life: A Vision for Purposeful Pathways for All Students
This resource focuses on career-connected learning as a strategy for student success.
Why “enablement stacks”? Helping you move from understanding to action
In tech, a “stack” is the set of components that need to work together for something to function. We use the term to emphasize that the content here is most effective when used together, not as standalone tools.
The stack includes a cornerstone, diagnostic(s), metrics and inquiry guides to put it all together — plus supporting content to help you go deeper. Stacks are designed in this way to help coaches and facilitators drive learning and practice change in the field. The Pathways Impact Fund will organize its learning supports for partners around this structure.
Cornerstone: Define Quality
What does quality integration look like? We look beyond traditional approaches to new, improved practices that result in transformational results for young people.
Work-Based Learning Framework
Jobs for the Future
Last updated: 2025
A comprehensive, action-oriented framework outlining a career preparation continuum with four stages: career awareness, career exploration, career preparation and career experience. The framework defines high-quality, career-connected learning from the student’s point of view, across time and experience types. Quality indicators provide concrete benchmarks for program design and continuous improvement.
Experiential Work-Based Learning in Career Pathways: A Guide to Implementing, Maintaining and Sustaining High-Quality Opportunities
Advance CTE and Education Strategy Group
Last updated: 2024
This guide identifies the core components of high-quality experiential work-based learning within career pathways and explores promising practices for implementing, maintaining and strengthening opportunities. It establishes a clear, systems-level definition of quality work-based learning for state and local leaders and offers strategies for expanding and improving work-based learning within career pathways at scale.
Definition & Principles for High-Quality Youth Apprenticeship
Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship and New America
Last updated: 2018
A nationally recognized set of five principles — career-oriented, equitable, adaptable, portable and accountable — that define what makes a youth apprenticeship high quality. This resource provides shared language and quality standards for designing and evaluating youth apprenticeship programs as a form of career-connected learning. It’s especially useful for programs that include paid, employer-led components.
Career-Connected Learning Framework for Out-of-School Time
STEM Next Opportunity Fund
Last updated: 2026
This framework is designed specifically for out-of-school time providers—including afterschool and summer programs — to embed career awareness, exploration and preparation into activities across three developmental stages: career awareness (elementary school), career exploration (middle school) and career preparation (high school). It extends the career-connected learning continuum into out-of-school time settings and is useful for leaders building cross-sector partnerships and seeking frameworks that address non-school-day programming.
DiagnosticDiagnostic: Understand the Current State
To move forward, we have to understand where we’re starting from. These tools will help you gather and assess qualitative data to understand your community’s current state.Student Experience
Youth Apprenticeship Quality Assessment Tool and Protocol
Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship and New America
Last updated: 2022
This resource is a four-step protocol built directly from the five PAYA principles. It prompts youth apprenticeship leaders to document strengths and areas for improvement across partnership structures, program design and occupational pathway components. It’s useful for programs with employer-led or apprenticeship components and supports both early-stage and mature programs with different data expectations.
Validated MetricsValidated Metrics: Measure Progress
Data helps with focusing efforts, spotting problems and tracking improvements.Enabling Conditions and Student Experience
Forthcoming Resource (2027): National Work-Based Learning Taxonomy
Led by Advance CTE in partnership with BriteBound
Career-connected learning lacks nationally validated metrics. Without common definitions for career-connected learning types, metrics, and outcomes, it is difficult to compare programs, communicate career-connected learning value, or build a reliable evidence base.
Advance CTE and BriteBound are addressing this gap through a 50-state scan of existing WBL definitions, metrics, and outcomes, guided by a national advisory committee and stakeholder input. The result will be a National WBL Taxonomy: a standardized framework serving as a validated, nationally-normed reference point for practitioners, policymakers, and intermediaries implementing and measuring career-connected learning. It will release in 2027 with implementation support.
Inquiry ProtocolInquiry Protocol: Decide & Act
The “so what, now what”: where insights come together from the diagnostic and the data to inform choices about what to do next. This approach results in a plan for action plus an understanding of how to measure progress against that plan.Enabling Conditions and Student Experience
This resource is in development
We’ve identified this as a gap in our work to help communities provide integrated supports for students. The Pathways Impact Fund is developing a resource to fill this gap. Want to be notified when it’s ready to share? Submit this form.
Additional SupportsAdditional Supports
A collection of additional resources to fuel your work.
CareerReady HQ
Britebound
Last updated: 2025
This hub for practitioners and policymakers is a place to find work-based learning providers, explore high-quality resources, and understand the policy and organizational landscape of career readiness across the country.
Scaling Work-Based Learning: A Framework for Effective Employer Intermediaries
Strada Education Foundation
Last updated: 2025
This framework defines employer intermediaries not by organization type but by the functions they perform — helping employers design, implement and scale work-based learning programs. It can be used for grounding conversations about the role of intermediaries in building and sustaining work-based learning systems.