Certification of Pathway Quality

Hundreds of schools in California are implementing pathways to improve outcomes for students. Yet, without a common standard as a guide for pathway implementation and quality, schools and districts may have difficulty determining whether the pathways they are implementing are likely to improve student achievement. ConnectEd and its partners, the Career Academy Support Network (CASN), the Education Trust-West, the National Academy Foundation (NAF), and the National Career Academy Coalition (NCAC), have developed certification criteria and a pathway quality review process to address this need.

Certification Criteria
The revised Certification Criteria for Linked Learning Pathways (October 2011) describes the specific elements that should be included in a quality pathway. The revisions were informed by lessons learned during the first pilot year of the Linked Learning Certification process and are described in a memo from the Linked Learning Pathway Certification Design Team.The changes from the original set of criteria (April 2010) are described in a side-by-side comparison document.

These elements are based on the National Standards of Practice for Career Academies that were jointly developed by the National Career Academy Coalition, the National Academy Foundation, the Career Academy Support Network, the Southern Regional Education Board and others. These standards have been used, tested, and validated for more than 5 years. Other guiding documents that contributed to the development of these Criteria include ConnectEd's Linked Learning Pathway Assessment Rubric that pathway teams have used to self-assess their stage of development and other documents from NAF, CASN, and the Stanford Redesign Network.