High school students in Chicago’s south suburbs (e.g., Chicago Southland) face a fragmented landscape of college and career preparation. Career and technical education programs, early college coursework, and work-based learning opportunities exist across the region—but they often operate in isolation, disconnected from one another and from clear postsecondary outcomes. Without intentional alignment across high schools, community colleges, and employers, students struggle to see how their coursework connects to careers, and educators lack a shared roadmap for guiding students through secondary and postsecondary transitions.
At the same time, regional employers need a skilled workforce, but often don’t know how to effectively engage with education systems or where their industry connects to student learning pathways. This lack of coordination limits students’ access to high-quality career preparation and makes it harder for the region to meet workforce demand.
Strong regional pathways require more than good intentions—they require structured collaboration, clear alignment to state policy frameworks, and systems that connect education and workforce partners around shared goals.
Our Role
EdSystems serves as the project convener, technical assistance provider, and design partner for the Chicago Southland Regional Pathways Initiative. Working in partnership with South Suburban College and Prairie State College, we are guiding regional stakeholders through a structured, collaborative process to design and implement coherent secondary-to-postsecondary pathways aligned with workforce demand and state policy.
Beginning in the 2025-26 school year, we are facilitating cross-sector working groups that bring together community colleges, school districts, employers, and community partners to co-create regional pathway models. Through this process, the regional team is identifying priority industry sectors, informed by labor market analysis, and mapping clear pathways that incorporate high-quality Career and Technical Education (CTE), early college coursework, and work-based learning experiences. From these conversations, EdSystems will map out cohesive regional pathway models for priority industry sectors that are aligned with state policies and frameworks, including Illinois’ Model Programs of Study Guides, Recommended Technical and Essential Employability Competencies, and College and Career Pathway Endorsement framework. At the same time, EdSystems is developing an inventory of current work-based learning opportunities and identifying gaps and opportunities for scaling.
Through this work, we will help the Chicago Southland region translate policy and labor market data into actionable pathway models that reflect diverse stakeholder perspectives, support consistent implementation across systems, and can be scaled to benefit students.
Key Deliverables
- Regional pathway maps aligned to priority industry sectors, incorporating strategic CTE and early college coursework, which can be customized for individual high school districts.
- An inventory of current work-based learning offerings and a regional continuum of employer engagement experiences.
- Structured engagement of educators, employers, and community partners to inform pathway design and validation.
