Linked Learning

Each pathway is organized around a major industry sector such as finance and business; health science and medical technology; or engineering. In turn, each pathway contains four essential ingredients.

1. A challenging academic component prepares students for success— without remediation— in California’s community colleges and universities, as well as in apprenticeships and other postsecondary programs. Academics relate to the industry theme when possible and include:
   • English—four years
   • Mathematics—including algebra, geometry, and advanced algebra or statistics
   • Science—two years including biology, chemistry, or physics
   • Social Studies—three years including American and world history, U.S. government and economics
   • Foreign language—two years emphasizing oral communication and cross–cultural understanding
   • Visual and performing arts—one year
2. A demanding technical component delivers concrete knowledge and skills through a cluster of three or more technical courses. The focus is on preparing youth for high–skill, high–wage employment through an emphasis on real–world applications that bring academic and technical learning to life.
3. A work–based learning component offers opportunities to learn through real–world experiences. Students gain access to intensive internships, virtual apprenticeships, and school–based enterprises. These experiences complement classroom instruction, helping sharpen students’ desire to increase knowledge and skills relevant to their career interests.
4. Support services include counseling as well as additional instruction in reading, writing, and mathematics. In the best application, each pathway spans grades nine to 12 and connects directly to a set of postsecondary options.

Each pathway is grounded in a set of four guiding principles.

1. Preparing students for postsecondary education and career
   A pathway is always about both objectives; it’s never a choice between one or the other. Here’s why: The probability of making a living wage in today’s economy without some form of postsecondary education is already low and will only diminish. Increasingly, career success depends on postsecondary education and gaining a formal credential—a certificate, associate’s degree, bachelor’s degree, or higher level of achievement. If there ever was a day when high schools could be content to prepare some students just for college and others just for work, that day is past.
2. Leading students to the full range of postsecondary opportunities
   Pathways prepare students for all the avenues they might pursue following high school graduation: two– and four–year college, certification programs, apprenticeships, formal job training, and military service. Each pathway represents a broad industry theme that can appeal to and engage a student regardless of his or her prior academic achievement and postsecondary aspirations. Pathways can eliminate current practices that sort and track high school students in ways that limit their options after high school.
3. Connecting academics to real–world applications
   Each pathway integrates challenging academics with a demanding career and technical curriculum. Pathways alter how core academic subjects are taught; they do not lower expectations about what is taught. Through the pathways approach, students are expected to achieve at high levels in mathematics, science, English, social studies, and foreign language. Students master these subjects through the power of real-world application—they learn by being presented with authentic problems and situations that are part of the modern workplace.
4. Improving student achievement
   Pathways are based on accountability. They are designed to produce higher levels of accomplishment in a number of measurable arenas, including academic and technical scores, high school completion, postsecondary transitions to career and education, and attainment of a formal postsecondary credential. They also contribute, in ways that most conventional academic and career and technical education curricula do not, to increased student proficiency in vital areas such as critical thinking, problem solving, media and information literacy, and collaboration. Finally, pathways make an immediate difference— helping young people gain higher earnings right after high school and giving these students a leg up in the labor market while they pursue postsecondary education.

With Linked Learning, students in a building and engineering pathway might learn about geometry and algebra while designing and building a structure. Students in an arts, media, and entertainment pathway might learn persuasive writing skills while developing business plans, or creative writing skills while drafting scripts. The success of Linked Learning is grounded in its relevancy and rigor. Pathways connect learning with students' interests and career aspirations. They also connect to actual needs in our state's economy, and they help motivate young people to learn by answering the question: "Why do I need to learn this?"

While any school can be theme based, a key difference with pathways is that academic course content is coordinated with and reinforces technical course content and vice versa. The science teacher learns from the technical teacher what students did not understand in class and then can review those theories. Likewise, the technical instructor learns what theories to bring to life in the next hands-on technical class. This coordination helps students gain a greater depth of knowledge by seeing the connection between academic theories and real-world applications.

While Linked Learning is hardly the norm, it is already a powerful—and proven—approach in communities across California. It is operating in places like the School of Digital Media and Design at Kearny High in San Diego, Arthur Benjamin Health Professions High School in Sacramento, the Architecture, Construction, and Engineering Academy at Jordan High in Long Beach, the Academy of Business and Finance at Porterville High in the Central Valley, the Los Angeles High School of the Arts, and the Law Academy at Richmond High School.

Linked Learning is a flexible approach that can be implemented through various models such as California Partnership Academies, career academies, charter schools, and small-themed schools to name just a few. Today in California, 500 Partnership Academies are organized around one of the state's 15 major industry sectors, and another approximately 300 career academies are in operation. Regional Occupational Centers and Programs (ROCPs) play an important part in many of these academies. In many other high schools, ROCPs are experimenting with innovative approaches to integrate academic and technical education.