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The average American student spends roughly 15,000 hours in school between kindergarten and 12th grade, far more than the 10,000 hours needed to master almost anything. Imagine a school that reimagines these 15,000 hours to give graduates not only the foundational knowledge necessary to navigate life, but also the skills to pursue a career.

Such a school could expose students to a multitude of career fields, allow students to choose learning opportunities that reflect their passions, and facilitate credential-building experiences that support students in launching careers they care about – all before entering college or the workforce. 

This type of learning isn’t hypothetical, and it isn’t always restricted to high school. Innovative communities across the country are proving the power of career-connected learning – which integrates real-world skills and experiences into curricula – to give students of all ages the 21st-century know-how needed to thrive and lead in the future. 

Just outside Austin, Texas, IDEA Round Rock Tech recognizes that more students must access computer science courses to be prepared for the region’s tech economy. The school implemented a comprehensive COMP3 (computer science,computational thinking, and general computing) progression for all of its pre-K through high school students. Programming languages like Python and JavaScript bolster students’ access to tech jobs (if they want them) and build the foundational logic and problem-solving skills they’ll need in any career. 

At the Brooklyn STEAM Center in New York City, 11th and 12th grade students from across the borough spend their afternoons “learning by doing.”  Located at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a robust industry ecosystem with over 400 businesses, STEAM students choose from six in-demand industries, engaging in professional work, developing robust industry networks, and ultimately creating tangible pathways to a career.

Students’ personal stake in the industry and opportunities they pursue is helping STEAM build toward its founding goal of transforming the “school to prison pipeline” into “school to career.” It’s working: 83% of STEAM’s first graduating class earned a career credential, 100% had a fully-developed post-secondary plan, and 95% enrolled in a four-year college.

Career-connected learning solves for the future by engaging students today. Where I work at Transcend, a national nonprofit committed to extraordinary learning for all children, my colleagues and I are hearing from too many students that school is falling short. It is not engaging, relevant or connected to their real-life. They are telling us directly in surveys like our Leaps Student Voice Survey and Gallup’s continued tracking of Gen-Z engagement. They’re also telling us by simply not showing up to class. 

By giving students agency to pursue the kinds of relevant, rigorous learning experiences they care about, career-connected learning can help solve the youth disengagement crisis. 

In Chicago, families designed Intrinsic Schools to address the troubling reality that just 14% of kids entering local public schools would earn a four-year degree by the time they were 25. Intrinsic built a unique school design where students personalize and own their learning with support from innovative technology that helps students and teachers know where to focus and adjust day-to-day. 

For Isaaq, who went on to graduate from University of Chicago with a degree in computer science and psychology, this flexible design was key in pursuing his budding passion for math. While taking three math classes concurrently – unheard of in a traditional curriculum that stresses sequential, paced progression – Isaaq launched a club around video games and used his math skills to code a real-time rankings system he’d been told “couldn’t be done.” 

This student-centered design looks different for every kid, but gets results for most of them: more than 90% of the class of 2023 enrolled in college, compared to the national college enrollment rate of 39%.

Rural communities are also tackling student engagement with career-connected learning. In Colorado’s Clear Creek School District, students were increasingly disengaged in school as their community confronted a serious water crisis. Spurred by students’ advocacy for project-based learning, Clear Creek High School transformed 34 of its classes to tackle real-life challenges, in part by learning more about the careers that influence them. 

In AP Bio, students began learning about filtration systems and water quality. Some students delved into communications, fundraising, and liaising with school and business leaders. In just one school year, students’ belief that they’ve “seen adults in my school listen to the ideas and voices of youth when making decisions” grew from 45% to 54%. And the momentum generated by Clear Creek students led to a commitment of at least $150,000 to mitigate the water issues.

In each of these communities, career-connected learning is giving students a say in what, where, and how they learn. IDEA Round Rock, Brooklyn STEAM, Intrinsic, and Clear Creek are refusing to accept the limitations of a school model designed over a century ago, with students batched by age, curriculum standardized, and uniformity prized. Instead, these schools are elevating student voices and re-designing their education offerings to meet the needs of modern youth. 

Importantly, all of these schools arrived at their career-focused innovations through “community-based design,” a process that starts by listening to students and engages the whole school community to reshape school to meet student needs. When we listen to students, they tell us they want to grow new skills, explore new opportunities, and build their own futures—starting in K-12. 

These schools aren’t anomalies. Career-connected learning can take root in any community—red or blue, urban or rural, coastal or heartland—willing to come together to design learning that responds to the demands and opportunities of the 21st century. Our students are spelling out what they want from school today. It’s up to educators to  listen to them and create schools that make their 15,000 hours count. 

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