Implementation Strategies: Administrators
Administrators and building leaders play a crucial role in ensuring pathways for students in their schools and overseeing and reinforcing connections between the student learning outcomes required by the school and any pathways students might pursue. A superintendent who advocates for funding across a broad array of pathways and seeks formal agreements with colleges and businesses will enhance opportunities for students. A principal who believes and requires that pathways demonstrate rigorous learning by students will cultivate that mindset in staff. A pathways coordinator who works to connect students to outside partners and supports those partners in understanding how to help young people develop important skills will create buy-in from all stakeholders. A career and technical director who seeks to meet the job training requirements of the workforce while also supporting the development of skills that transfer across careers and academics will demonstrate the value of pathways to the community. If administrators do not hold and protect a unified and cohesive vision of pathways for their students, no one else can.
For role-specific resources, please visit our appendix.
By administrators, we mean:
Strategies for Administrators
- Include all stakeholders in clarifying rigorous and transferable learning outcomes for schools. If these outcomes are in place, they can be implemented directly in pathways. For example, if stakeholders define a set of five transferable skills that cut across all classrooms and pathways, those standards can help define the learning outcomes of any pathway.
- Examine district policies, school practices, and graduation requirements to identify and create supports while minimizing barriers to pursuing pathways.
- Include all stakeholders in creating a process for students to demonstrate their learning in multiple ways.
- Create a position within your school or district to formalize pathways, communicate across school-based and career and technical education pathways, and work with students and community partners to ensure success.
- Include time in teachers’ assignments to work with students and evaluate their progress toward learning goals.
- Implement a system that enables students to identify the learning they want to do, plan and organize their work, and share the story of their learning. This system may include personalized or individualized learning plans, but these plans must grow from students’ interests and experiences rather than from state or district mandates.
- With a leadership team, identify and analyze data to ensure that student outcomes are equitable and rigorous.
- Monitor the implementation of pathways programs and ensure students and partners have the support to reflect, rethink, and adjust pathways as needed.
- Cultivate and celebrate student successes and share examples of students who have had compelling pathways experiences to stakeholders in the school and community.
- Enter into formal agreements or memorandums of understanding with local businesses for internships, apprenticeships, and work-based learning experiences, and with colleges and universities for Early College opportunities. Adopt, through Board approval, a policy of advocacy and procedures to ensure equitable access for students.
Equity Check
- To what extent does your pathway data suggest de facto tracking? Are traditionally marginalized students–people of color, students with economic disadvantages, or those who are differently-abled, among others–placed in less rigorous pathways?
- To what extent is your pathway system, outside of career and technical education programs, based on credit-recovery or work completion, rather than demonstrations of deep learning? Does your pathway system invite students to move towards a future of their choice, or only away from traditional high school requirements?
- Does your pathway system reflect your vision and mission?
- Is there evidence that students use pathways to do less, or less rigorous, work?
- Do students begin, but fail to complete, pathways?
- Are some students unable to access pathways because of additional burdens on families, like cost, uniform requirements, or transportation?
- What supports are in place that provide students with opportunities to explore pathways that interest them and help them change pathways when necessary?
