Young people learning in teams on computers
Status
Complete
Location

Statewide

TEAM
Director of Innovation and Implementation

Dania Ibrahim

Fellow

Career Development Experience Toolkit

Career Development Experiences are both an integral part of the College & Career Pathways Endorsement Framework of the Postsecondary & Workforce Readiness (PWR) Act and an essential component of Illinois’ work-based learning continuum as outlined in the Illinois Career Pathways Dictionary.

Our Role

In October 2019, Education Systems Center released a Career Development Experience Toolkit aligned to the frameworks established in the PWR Act and embedded within Illinois’ broader strategies around scaling high-quality career pathways and work-based learning.

The primary purposes of this Toolkit are to:

  • Establish expectations for implementing high-quality, rigorous work-based learning experiences that prepare young people to be college and career ready through the development of Essential, Entrepreneurial and Technical Employability Skills
  • Provide guidance, tools, and frameworks to offer a Career Development Experience, which is a required component of the College and Career Pathway Endorsement framework and is included in the State’s Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) State Plan’s College and Career Readiness Indicator
  • Highlight best practice examples of how organizations are accomplishing this on-the-ground and spark thinking for other communities on how these examples might be modified to fit into their own unique context

These materials serve to provide guidance regardless of where an organization might be in terms of establishing and delivering Career Development Experiences. Each section of the toolkit can be referred to separately or as a whole to inform current practices. All included materials have been made possible through collaboration between EdSystems, the Illinois State Board of Education, the Illinois Department of Commerce, and community partners across Illinois.

In 2021, EdSystems released a Companion Piece to provide resources to address the needs of stakeholders outside of a traditional high school setting. In 2022, the team released a Facilitation Guide.

Project Resources

The Latest

News

Executive Director Transition Announcement

Education Systems Center at NIU (EdSystems) today announces that Founder and Executive Director Jonathan Furr will be transitioning from his role as of June 2023 after nearly eleven years of building and leading the organization. Jon will be pursuing new professional opportunities, which he will share in the coming weeks.

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Advancing Racial Equity

Placing Our Big Bets Through 2025 and Beyond

EdSystems is coalescing around five new goals, which we call our Big Bets, to ensure that our state’s education and workforce systems truly lessen racial inequities and lead to tangible progress for our Black and Latinx students that have for far too long been underserved by these systems.

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