Navigating the transition between high school and college, career, the military, or other paths is still too murky and full of opportunities for students to disengage or lose momentum. A 2025 study from Gallup, Walton Family Foundation, and Jobs for the Future (JFF) bears this out: students and parents often lack actionable information about future opportunities until it is too late to take a particular step. In their 2025 Report Card of student perspectives, schools averaged a “B-” a variety of questions about postsecondary preparation, including in teaching students skills relevant to their future, supporting students with career exploration, and preparation for postsecondary education.
At EdSystems, we believe that clear, unambiguous paths to college and career opportunities begin at a systemic level. As we reflected on in our first installment of this blog series, the leaky pipeline for learners is shaped in many ways by the systemic conditions in Illinois and nationwide. But beyond mandates and metrics, the lived realities of learners shape their experience in education and workforce systems, and ultimately their persistence and long-term outcomes.
The second pillar of our Policy Agenda, Student Experience and Conditions, is not just an analysis of the broad challenges students face; it is a call to action to create conditions where students thrive, where their voices shape the system, and where access and success for every learner are at the foundation.
Pillar 2: Student Experience & Conditions
The EdSystems team is grappling with four challenges we believe are core to students’ experiences in their education-to-workforce journeys:
- Influence of Broader Context: Systems and forces beyond education shape students’ access to college and career readiness opportunities, and their education and workforce outcomes.
- A Culture of Gatekeeping: Student perceptions and choices around educational opportunities are shaped by access to quality, timely information; the broader school and community culture; and their experiences with adults who function as gatekeepers.
- Inequitable Placement: Inconsistent policies and practices for placing students in college and career readiness opportunities exacerbate existing inequities that are shaped by student demographics, geography, and resources.
- Scheduling Challenges: Scheduling challenges inhibit district implementation of college and career readiness opportunities and student participation in available opportunities.
Learners are humans first, and their experiences are impacted and influenced by the realities that fall outside the educational system context. In some cases, this means balancing multiple responsibilities, such as contributing to their family home while pursuing their own goals and opportunities. In others, it may mean that learners would benefit from additional support to build social capital and explore a range of fields they may not have otherwise been aware of. These individual realities are compounded by systemic barriers created by policy, such as redundant requirements or placement policies, as well as the humans who make up the system and act as gatekeepers to access.
To ensure Illinois learners, particularly those from historically marginalized populations, benefit from systems and practices, we have to acknowledge and address the broader contexts, placement policies, information sharing, gatekeeping practices, and competing demands that shape learners’ access and outcomes.
What needs to be true about our systems for all learners to reach their full potential?
Our First Aim: Equitable Student Experiences
In centering student experience and conditions in our policy agenda, our first aim focuses on how learners should be supported across our systems and to what end:
All Illinois learners are provided adequate resources, advising, and support to ensure they are prepared for and accelerated into college and career opportunities aligned with their interests and growing skills.
In May, our article in the National Association of School Boards of Education’s State Education Standard highlighted how the Illinois Postsecondary and Career Expectations (PaCE) framework helps establish and coordinate supports for all learners across a range of contexts. Our recent survey of manufacturing pathway students reinforced the need for this coordination by highlighting how students benefit from a coordinated range of support, including information and exploration opportunities, hands-on learning, and receiving encouragement and guidance from caring adults within and outside the education system.
In Illinois, there are many programs that could provide the comprehensive guidance and experiences students need, but vary in implementation due to challenges districts face. Through the Illinois Education and Career Success Network’s Policy Committee, we recently concluded a workgroup to examine the challenges districts face in implementing College and Career Pathway Endorsements (CCPE) under the Postsecondary and Workforce Readiness Act. In a new memo, we elevate innovative local practices and include recommendations for systemic improvements to alleviate pressures on the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) and school districts as they implement CCPE. Several recommendations focus on how to center students in policy and practice, such as engaging students to develop the most attractive and relevant currency for earning CCPE, and consider ways to automate postsecondary benefits to students who earn an endorsement. We continue to coordinate with ISBE to elevate these findings and ideas and provide support for their internal efforts to implement systemic shifts.
Further, much of the learning from our school district partners highlights how valuable work-based learning is as a strategy for engaging students, developing their interests and aptitudes, and supporting them in building social capital in ways that can contribute to long-term success. Our high-quality criteria for work-based learning provide guidance for how to approach continuous improvement by effectively engaging student voice to inform programs and policies.
Our Second Aim: Aligned and Streamlined Systems
As the National Equity Project says, “Any system produces what it was designed to produce.” To achieve equitable student experiences, we need systems intentionally built for equity.. At EdSystems, we envision systems that are designed for equity and are connected from early childhood through college and career, so students experience a clear, coordinated pathway without unnecessary barriers or gaps. Our second aim emphasizes a vision for what this would entail:
Illinois secondary and postsecondary systems utilize clear, equitable, evidence-based, and aligned placement policies and practices that maximize student acceleration throughout the education pipeline.
While we celebrate progress over the last decade, including the broad adoption of college and career pathway systems, multiple measures placement in college-level courses, and the implementation of transitional instruction and developmental education reform, there is much room to grow in Illinois. Ultimately, we hope to see systems that are evidently grounded in a belief in learner potential and designed to support learners in achieving that potential.
In the 104th General Assembly, we saw several bills that drive toward this aim. Notably, the Direct Admissions Act (Public Act 104-0015) advances the One Click College Admit initiative, which reduces friction in the college admissions process by automatically matching students who opt in to select public universities using their GPA data. Reducing the number of steps needed to gain admission to our public institutions will help open doors for learners to postsecondary education right out of high school. Through our work on Launch Pathways, we are collaborating with state agencies and local partners to identify additional ways to reduce barriers to postsecondary access for learners who are otherwise least likely to take a proactive step toward college, including better leveraging existing processes and requirements for learners.
Public Act 104-0355 establishes a Chronic Absence Task Force to examine the causes of chronic absenteeism from early childhood through grade 12 and develop a statewide strategy for mitigating the issue. Dr. Antoinette Taylor presented on this important issue at the Illinois Education and Career Success Network’s 2025 conference and a subsequent Policy Committee meeting. Dr. Taylor emphasized the importance of understanding the real challenges and choices that learners face as they progress on their educational journeys. We will eagerly await the findings of the new Task Force to learn how our systems and programs can be better designed to engage and retain learners throughout the P-20 pipeline.
Finally, the Dual Credit Quality Act amendment passed in the 104th GA (Public Act 104-0012) creates a state Dual Credit Committee that will “meet at least annually to focus on approving accessibility, quality, and alignment of dual credit programs to meet the needs of students.” This committee, composed of secondary and postsecondary stakeholders, has the opportunity to draw secondary and postsecondary dual credit policy and practice into alignment through generating resources, policy recommendations, and elevating impactful local practices that reduce barriers to acceleration. We will continue to monitor this committee and emerging administrative rules, and will offer public input on how this committee can most effectively support expansion of access to high-quality dual credit.
What’s Next
Much work remains to create the conditions in which Illinois learners of all backgrounds can thrive and succeed. We remain committed to this work both through our policy agenda and our deep practitioner-facing work. As we continue our policy agenda blog series, we will consider next how data can be better leveraged to improve policies, practices, and systems.
