 Good afternoon, everybody. On behalf of New America, I'd like to welcome everyone to today's event, Beyond the Classroom, How Work-Based Learning Helps Young People Move from School to Careers. My name is Nika Jenkins-Thompson. I'm the senior manager here at the Center for Education and Skills at New America. I'm joined today by Mary Alice McCarthy, who's the Center's director. New America is a think tank in civic enterprise committed to renewing American politics, prosperity, and purpose in the digital age. We generate big ideas, bridge the gap between technology and policy, and curate broad public conversation. The Center for Education and Skills is dedicated to improving our higher education, technical training, and workforce development systems on behalf of the growing population of non-traditional and historically disadvantaged students. One way we do this is through research and writing about pathways to good jobs that don't necessarily have to pass through traditional education systems. Thanks to all of you who were able to join us in person, and also thanks to everyone who has joined us virtually. Just to note that we are live streaming today's event, and it will be on our website as well. We're tweeting about it and using the hashtag OECDskills. We're here to discuss a very important issue. It's a conversation being held on behalf of the 40 million young people across OECD countries who aren't in school, working, or in job training. There are young people most at risk of becoming permanently disconnected from education and employment at a critical time in their lives. We're very fortunate to have with us Dr. Andreas Slicer, who leads the directorate on education and skills at the OECD, and Dr. Slicer will share key findings on their newest report, work-based learning for youth at risk, getting employers involved. We have an esteemed group with us today. We'll hear from them all as we talk about work-based learning and how it benefits youth at risk, and ways to prove to employers that work-based learning is also good for them as well. And a panel of experts will bring the key points from the report to life as direct providers and employers and researchers who are thinking about policy and practice in creating a change agenda in the new administration. Mary Alice will moderate that conversation. Finally Portia Wu, the Assistant Secretary of the Employment and Training Administration in the U.S. Department of Labor, will wrap up our time together with closing reflections. To get things started, I'd like to first introduce Dr. Johann Uwen. Johann is the Assistant Secretary of the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education in the U.S. Department of Education. As many of you here know, Johann has been working tirelessly over the last few decades to create more opportunities for young people from all backgrounds. He has been at the Department of Education since the earliest days of the Obama Administration and has led efforts to improve federal policies and programs serving our most vulnerable young people. Throughout his tenure, he's also made sure that we learn from what other countries tackling similar problems are doing and how those lessons might be applied here in the United States. So here we are today, thanks to Johann and his commitment to finding strategies to keep young people engaged and on track. Thank you for that. And with that, I'll hand over the floor to Johann. Good afternoon, everyone. And good morning to those on the West Coast who are joining us remotely. It's still still morning there, I think late, late morning. So it's my pleasure to be here and participate in this event. And I'd just like to give a few sort of background comments that I think will be helpful in terms of understanding how did we get here today? And why are we focusing on this particular issue today? So for nearly a decade, the U.S. Department of Education has actually partnered with the OECD to conduct reviews of various issues pertaining to career and technical education and adult skills development as well. But most recently, we have focused a lot on career and technical education. At least that's what we call it in the United States. It seems that everyone else in the OECD calls it or OECD nations calls it vocational education and training or vet. But we call it career and technical educations. Now, our efforts over the last couple of years with OECD have really enabled us to sort of benchmark ourselves against other countries as well as learn. And I should say learn a lot about international policies and practices that we in the United States actually might or maybe ought to consider to improve the educational and employment outcomes for our nation's youth and adults. Building on our prior work with OECD in July 2015, we again partnered with Andreas and his team this time focused on the topic of work-based learning. We were interested in this topic because we acknowledged the importance and the promise of work-based learning as a way to not only prevent this connection amongst young people, but also as a way to re-engage young people and provide them with a meaningful and smoother transition into the world of work and adulthood, paying close attention to both the development of their academic, technical and employability skills. Now, when effectively structured, work-based learning provides young people with an alternative way to learn that is sometimes more appealing to them than many of the academic options that they currently can access. It can also provide, we believe, a bridge into careers. It can equip young people with skills that are in demand in the labor market and connect them to potential employers and caring adults at many workplaces and in community contexts. We will hear a little bit today about the benefits of work-based learning and these are particularly important when we look at these options from the perspective of at-risk youth. As you may know, the estimates in the United States are that there are approximately 5.3 million young adults in the younger than 25 who are not in education, they are not working, they are not in training and in many instances they are actually disconnected from community and family and we believe that that subset of the more than 40 million needs as the OECD calls it, those not in education, employment or training really deserves our attention. These numbers, while incredibly discouraging, should not discourage us. They should motivate us. They should inspire us to work harder to find solutions for this vulnerable subpopulation and we believe that the work-based learning is actually one of these strategies that may be very useful in that regard. Now, the project that Andreas will talk about had different purposes. One was to synthesize the evidence we could access on the benefits of work-based learning. Secondly, to really document some of the global experiences with work-based learning so we could have a fully informed policy conversation here in our country and then finally, building on those foundations to see what are the key policy messages that needed to be developed and sort of shared. We did not do this by ourselves. We had more partners in this umbrella effort that OECD led. There were eight other partners who were co-investors and thought partners with us. Australia, Canada, the European Commission, Germany, Norway, Scotland, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and each of these partners focused on one of six key topical areas and I think it's good that I share with everyone sort of the broader context than the topical areas that this particular study that we supported, funded, fitted into. One was identifying the costs and benefits of work-based learning. The second one was really looking at the notion of how do you strengthen incentives for implementation of work-based learning initiatives. The third one was how do we look at a strengthened school to work or school to adult transition. How can work-based learning be used to promote innovation and economic growth was another area and then we looked at the issue of certification and a credentialing of work-based learning experiences and took a look at what people were doing across the world and then finally we realized that the whole issue of career guidance and career counseling is an essential part of making sure that young people will have access to these types of opportunities. So that was the final sort of topical areas that these nations agreed to focusing on. The U.S. as you will hear, we really were interested in how do we use work-based learning as a tool if you will to strengthen that transition from school to work if you will or from adolescence into adulthood. Up to this point in time we've provided lots of information to OECD and we held a workshop this past summer where several of you have participated in where we looked at the initial findings from the research, gave some feedback and then had an opportunity to hear from youth and have them comment on the findings from this research and these initial policy recommendations and today we're here to actually hear sort of the final findings from that report which will then subsequently be fed into a synthesis report for all six topical areas that will become available. I believe it's in April or around that time of 2017 so now I'm about to turn it over to Andreas and I'm going to say a couple of things about him before he gets on stage but I want to thank as I prepare to do that our colleagues here at New America for again being a wonderful partner and host for this event. I think we've done this a couple of times these OECD events with you and we're happy to to see that you were willing to partner with us again around this. I do have to thank Andreas Schleicher and his entire team at OECD for their outstanding work on this project and also for their collaborative spirit. Your efforts Andreas have always broadened our perspectives and they've deepened our learnings and they've strengthened I believe our nation's foundation of policy and practice in so many areas. Personally and professionally I must say that it has been an incredible privilege over the last eight years not only to get to know you Andreas and work with you but also to see how over the last couple of years you have become I think the first global education policy advisor that I'm aware of. I mean you have not only been a remarkable researcher and you've brought incredible analytic and policy development ideas to our conversations here in the U.S. but you are doing this for so many leaders in so many other OECD nations and therefore I am truly, I feel truly privileged that I actually have the opportunity to introduce you and turn the microphone over to you right now Andreas. Thanks so much Johan and thanks to New America for hosting this. It's such a fantastic platform for the launch of our report. The idea of work-based learning is new. This has been serving us since the medieval ages and getting people into war but you know work-based learning and apprenticeships existed before any schools existed before any university existed. Why do we have such a hard time today of making this work in practice? There are several things that stand in the way. The first of is that it's only working as a whole of government approach and this is why it's great to have Johan and you here in Prussia from both departments and that's really where we have effective cross government collaboration, the perspective of education, the perspective of labor. You can make it work but the even more difficult aspect is this is not only a whole of government project this only works as a whole of society project. Apprenticeships do not work without real employer engagement and that engagement is something that you cannot buy. Subsidies we're going to talk about this in a moment are sort of one way of addressing it but it only works when it works for employers for their own intrinsic interest and this is very very hard to do to make this something that actually works very well. Why do we at DOECD have put so much emphasis on work-based learning? Because we have seen time and again how the integration of the world of work and the integration of the world of learning yield so strong learning outcomes. In fact the pathways that people go through who combine education and work lead to much deeper progressions in learning outcomes and what we see from either the world of work or the world of academic learning along. We have done a lot of analysis of this we found that good quality work-based learning generates many benefits not only for the people who are educated but also for the companies and for the education systems as a whole and it's widely used. Why is this like this? First of all you develop the kind of skills that are really at the premium that's something that is very very hard to do with institutionalized learning alone finding out what employers really want, what they need. It provides a multitude of pathways. One of the things that we have a hard time with in education is understand that people learn differently and maybe differently at different stages of their lives and work-based learning is just a great way to actually provide alternatives for people who are not sort of so enthrased by traditional academic learning. But there's a third aspect and it's a very powerful one as well and that is that it's actually connects young people with employers. This is harder and harder you know in the past it used to be very easy you you graduate somewhere you go to work you find a job these days the transition is becoming much more complex much more protected and work-based learning apprenticeships are a very very powerful way to actually build those kinds of connections the kind of social capital that makes things work and as our report explains work-based learning can also improve job and life prospects for young people. Now one of the concerns that is often that is often raised is that you know it's a zero sum game if we put more emphasis on apprenticeship or work-based learning we're taking something away from foundation skills and academic skills but we've been able to look at this we just did a survey of adult skills where we actually tested the skills of workers and one of the things that you can see is that actually look at some of the countries that are very strong on apprenticeships you know Germany, Austria, Australia, the Netherlands they actually also come out very very strong on the foundation skills now this is the mean numeracy score now and you think often you know numeracy is something that you learn in schools or universities actually some countries with a very strong emphasis on apprenticeships seem to be doing really well on that and actually better than other countries where this is not prevalent. Now that just to explain the diamond there is the numeracy score of the countries and the blue bar is the volume percentage of people looking for apprenticeship so not a zero sum game apprenticeship doesn't mean we're taking anything away from building foundation skills in fact that's sort of conjecture obviously but in fact it may add to this it may help people build those kinds of foundation skills in a different format. Now today we're talking about the hardest part of this and this is not only making it work for young people but making it work for people at risk and I must say really this is something where many countries really struggle with how do you make it attractive for employers to invest in the people where the returns are likely to be leased develop how do you make it attractive for young people who have failed in school or we've been unhappy in school to go back to learning this is the hardest part what do we mean by people at risk we have basically looked at here the young needs we call them people who are not in education and not in training and I want to distinguish between two categories here there are some who are unemployed the dark this is the dark shaded part so there are people you know who are not in education not in training not employed but who are looking for work but the bigger part of the problem are the people in the light blue part these are people who have essentially given up they're no longer looking for work they're no longer being counted as unemployed how do you get those people back into the system people who look for employment they want to do something but people who have really renounced to this are really at the part and this is basically we're looking at both groups here we have defined use at risk as young people not employment educational training and those at risk of becoming in this category of course this doesn't include all vulnerable use it's also very clear but across the OECD we've already said it here there are more than 40 million young people who are not participating in employment educational training so improving the outcomes for this group is a big challenge enough even if this is not everyone while work-based learning could in principle play a role in improving outcomes for use at risk making it work in practice is really difficult this is why we've taken in a closer look at how to adapt work-based learning to deliver outcomes for those people so let's try to sort of understand it in a more depth here um how do you make it work apprenticeships will only work if we can offset the cost for employers with the benefits for employers employers look for the bottom line you have to make the lines cross basically you can see that here the costs are moderate at the beginning in their rise because you pay apprentices apprentices more and more as the time passes the benefits at the beginning you hire you get new people are very low and then they arise and what the point is that you have to make the lines cross somewhere to get employers some are involved in this the costs for employers are the apprentice wages the time and wages of in company supervisors not to be neglected that's really a hidden cost it is actually very substantial and then equipment material and so on the benefits is the increasing productive work of apprentices now they contribute to the production processes they generate resources and so on this is the financial benefit then there is the kind of more social benefit as an employer you figure out who might want to work with and actually i'm going to talk about this in a moment because this is actually very important part of the picture so as you can see here on the chart you know early in the apprenticeship you make a loss as an employer and then later on the benefits are higher as long as you can keep your apprentices and this is another piece of the puzzle you know if they drop out because the program is very long and so on you lose everything so actually this is something we have to look at as well and at the end of the process there is another important bonus for employers and that is you as a company can keep the best apprentices those who fit your best and who have already acquired also some of the firm specific knowledge and skills which are highly highly valuable particularly in countries where you know economies are not so flexible and this can significantly reduce the recruitment costs and also the recruitment risks and some occupations this is a big part of the picture you might be willing to make a loss if you know at the end of the process you've got the people who fit your picture so basically getting this equation right is really what we're talking about here and getting it right for the most challenging group of people we have actually give you an example from a country we have actually looked at the different costs and you can see them here there are some you know it specialists corks industrial mechanics where people basically make a loss with that data here from Switzerland in most other areas you can see the economics work out for the regular now so for most occupations companies get a net benefit by the end of the apprenticeship and but not for everyone now you ask yourself so why why do Swiss companies still do that and that's a very simple reason they hire already qualified people and that turns out to be if you hire qualified people it turns out to be far more costly than actually retaining your best apprentices and getting that message to employers is very very important that this is a big plus of a system where you actually know who you're going to work with and that actually can be much less costly than going through a complex recruiting process so that's basically how the economics work but now let's talk at people one of the challenges that we have is when you look actually the skills of people at risk they tend to be lower not a surprise this comes again from our survey of adult skills you can see basically the percentage of people who have weak literacy or numeracy skills is much higher in most systems for the people who are not in education and training now part of the reason is that's why they are not in education and employment so that is the challenge you basically want to get those people make apprenticeship works for people who are least skilled and obviously you translate that back into the preceding chart and you can see that you're dealing with weaker skills that will negatively affect the cost benefit balance for employers and it's going to take longer to move across the cutting line so that they become more productive and that's sort of the difficulties that we have to deal with so what are the answers to this the sort of most intuitive answer is people always have that you know just provide financial incentives basically you just give employers money so that the higher apprenticeship you try to basically shift the cost curve down so that these curves earlier me now that would shift the cost of apprenticeship for employers downwards across the board and gives all employers more money or your target use at risk very attractive several countries have used such themes we document this in the document but is it working unfortunately you know the evidence isn't really reassuring just providing financial incentives hasn't moved the needle as much as you would wish evaluations of general subsidies for apprenticeship show limited impact an evaluation of subsidy in Denmark for example found an impact in some of the sectors but not everywhere in Australia evaluations found that the subsidy had a small impact on firms decision to train but overall money is not very good in terms of general subsidies now you can target your subsidies trying to figure out who you invest your money on that's obviously better but actually getting that right you know finding who you're willing to pay for and how to pay for is very very difficult and actually we find that it may actually lead to a very limited expansion of places employers just take the money they invest in summer but they're not providing more opportunities for people in disadvantage it may displace potential other apprentices also not what you want it incurs that way losses basically you spent money that you would have otherwise not have to spend since employers would have offered use at risk some of the places anyway so hard to get the targeting right across the board financial incentives is not very effective instead it seems better in our analysis to focus attention on other ways to shift the cost-benefit balance for employers and I want to look at some of the tools that can shift the cost-benefit balance to make it more attractive for employers to offer work-based learning for use at risk and I'm going to focus on three six the first is to just modify the design of the apprenticeship programs to tailor it better to the people we are talking about the second is investing in the people preparing them to actually benefit more from work-based learning and the third is actually to provide support while they're in this work combined work place study apprenticeship program so adjusting the design of the apprenticeship scheme preparing young people for work-based learning through pre-apprenticeship programs doing something with them so that they're ready for apprenticeship and then supporting them while they are participating in work let's go through this in detail I'm starting with the first one you know what can we do to adapt the programs there's been a range of factors that affect the cost balance cost-benefit balance and apprenticeship schemes can actually be adapted in various ways to do that one is the amount of time spent on the job in the and in the classroom can be adjusted now some of those people may need more time you can basically build that into the design building inter remedial courses for literacy numeracy while also ensuring that the apprentice spends enough time on the job to make a good productive contribution so that's the obvious part you know the time factor the duration it's another variable you can adapt it in two different ways to make it more attractive for employers to take on young people at risk one option is just you know extra time for apprentices to achieve the competency levels that you want to achieve basically that's just giving more of the in the other option is to encourage use at risk to enter apprenticeship programs with a shorter duration and that has multiple advantages as well and a third approach to it can be to adapt apprentice wages for use at risk so they reflect more closely the production that's of course very hard to do often very difficult to do let's have a closer look and on the basis of an example at the duration of apprenticeships you can see that here as you can see from the graph occupations actually differ quite a lot on how productive apprentices at the start they are no that's the the square and then at the end of the apprenticeships and I measure this relative to someone who's qualified so if you're at 50% that means basically you have an apprentice that takes twice as long to complete a skill tasks than an experienced worker that's the idea and you can see those things vary depending on the occupation when you basically look at the car mechanic that's a three to five year apprenticeship starting very low people make very little money because they have to learn a lot but then moving up the productivity cost when you look at commercial clock they can contribute a lot more at the beginning and then at the end a little bit more so those things actually do vary that's the first thing that we see and one way again of serving use at risk could be to offer them programs more on the left side where the duration is shorter and sufficient to develop the required skills shorter duration is another advantage and that is reducing the risk of dropout people who have poor experience and learning outcomes may not want to stay very long periods of time to get a qualification you can do that and also that reduces the so the loss the risk of loss for employer if students do drop out and actually to give you an example here from a switzerland that has been doing really well on that there it shows that to design a scheme that is both attractive to employers and also to young people just as a piece of context in switzerland most apprentices take three to four years to complete now that's sort of the typical duration of those programs and they are actually the preferred choice for many young people if you ask young people at the age of 16 18 what they want to do in their life and they have a choice between an academic pathway and a choice of a combined school of walkways program the majority of people will say well i want to go for the walkways program my country germany very very similar but what they did is they introduced shorter two-year apprenticeships in 2004 precisely to give young people a better chance to struggle with a long three to four-year program and they are structured quite similarly to the three to four-year programs typically one day at school four days at the company and that's the kind of balance you're looking at but classes are smaller remedial courses and individual tutoring are very systematically offered you know this is again very very important to offer the individual support and participants can take longer to complete the course very important also each of these two-year apprenticeships provides the pathways into then a three to four-year apprenticeship programs you're not it's not a one-way road you can always you know upgrade this for example you take a training as a plasterer in a two-year program and then you move into a three-year program to train as plasterer and drywall installer so there are lots of ways how you can basically move later on in this and the good news is that this actually works really well more than 40 percent go into a three to four-year program afterwards and for those who do not continue three out of four people have found a job within six months so actually there's good evidence that the duration element can be very powerful in doing this and also it works for firms you can see that you're nicely on this the analysis of costs and benefits to firms shows that although there are variations across occupations on average it really works out again you ask yourself why do people make the investments when there is still a loss and we're talking about the non-financial benefits that are very significant for employers let's talk about the second aspect that's about the wage you know as I already mentioned apprentice wages are the biggest cost components for employers and what's really interesting is how much they differ across countries these are similar people and similar kind of tasks and what they're getting paid differs enormously Swiss you could see before makes a lot of money out of them it's actually because they pay them relatively little also as you can see from this the ratio between skilled worker wages and apprentice wages are very very different across countries a high apprentice wage that applies to both youths and adults is also likely to make employers reluctant to take the risk you know why you pay an apprentice if you pay the same thing for experienced worker and in fact that's what you see on the chart in countries like Austria Germany and Switzerland apprentice wages are relatively low but also over 90% of apprentices are younger than 25 years old that of course makes it a lot easier if you take someone who lives with their parents or whatever you don't pay as much as someone who has to be independent when you look at the UK the costs are high why because 40% of apprentices are aged over 25 and they earn a higher wage for example around 60% of skilled worker wages in the metalworking sector and here in the US also the vast majority of apprentices are adults of 25 older than 25 years so this is harder to sort of deal with the wage equation here but it is very important the appropriate wage depends of course always on the country context and a low apprentice wage again you know maybe acceptable for young people without family obligations but once you move beyond that it is harder to do that but again it would be very difficult to use work-based learning as a pathway for youth at risk if the apprentice wages are set at the level that they are not really affordable for employers and or get near to the experienced workers one thing that you can consider we have good examples for this are specific arrangements for youth apprentices that in England for example there are regulations regarding the apprentice wages that set different minimum levels for different age groups so they have some principles how that component is dealt with that's sort of something that one can consider that was the money part let's move to the second part preparing people sorry better for work-based learning now if it doesn't pay off employers how can we make the people better prepared so the investment from employers will actually work better and that is basically ensuring that people have the right skills at the start of the apprenticeship programs that's basically not working on the cost line but now at raising the benefit line upwards one option are pre-apprenticeship programs they typically have young people catch up with any weaknesses in basic skills strengths and also social skills turning up on time you know one of the big things that employers worry about is not you know what your literacy numeracy skills are at all but do you have the discipline the social skills the emotional qualities character qualities that actually dealing with conflict that make you productive help develop career plans very important and support the search for an apprenticeship how do you write a CV how do you actually look for an employer getting that part right many countries have those kinds of programs we document a lot of them in the paper bridging programs in Switzerland the whole transition system in Germany and these are not small programs they're actually catering for a very significant share of those young people so basically the government makes an investment in the people so that it's easier for employers to add the apprenticeship system in most countries such programs are implemented by local or regional stakeholders and the diversity of approaches provides also an opportunity to experiment you know this is the great thing of work-based learning you don't have one monolithic system you have actually lots of things happening which you can then moderate and look at what at the same time but it is you know diversity is always a strength and a weakness it also makes it so much harder to build a system out of this now when there are many different experiences and so on a couple of country examples I mentioned this already the transition system in Germany apprenticeships are one of the pathways at high school level and if you don't find an apprenticeship as a young person you can use that transition to actually get into the apprenticeship system and it includes a whole range of programs that serve young people who cannot find an apprenticeship who also ones who did not complete high school those people are also an important group and enrollment as I said is significant in Germany you talk about five out of ten apprentices that have gone through that program in one or the other way is always a very heterogeneous sector UK that just for people who you know drop out for very different reasons and in Germany each of the federal states defines and provides the school based initiatives that actually make that work and other initiatives are funded by the federal employment agencies so again it's a whole of government approach most of those initiatives the time investment you talk about is between six and 18 months so that's quite significant now that's what you need to build the foundation skills and they focus often on general education literacy numeracy vocational training at school and sometimes also vocational training in a company there's also an important element of career guidance telling people what the options are giving them a realistic assessment of you know what they're good at and what they can become good at and so participants also get a chance to explore a variety of occupational fields and you'll be surprised you know how few particularly use at risk how few options they're really familiar with it's actually very very hard in our formal education and training systems to actually get a good understanding of how the world of work looks like you know what your father does your mother does maybe some of your friends but getting beyond that is a really really hard and career guidance is not very well done by you know a school psychologist they don't know that don't know the world of work either so giving young people really that kind of option particularly use at risk is very very important. England another interesting example you have traineeships that were introduced very recently 2013 to provide a pathway into apprenticeship it's basically focused at the age group 16 to 24 so also young with little work experience and also covers a very similar range of foundation skills as in the german example and the precise program is then defined by the institutions who actually deliver the training but always in partnership with employers this is always the key figure out what they need and then the implementation of traineeships is another story and some employers in England have not been particularly interested in this is the downside of it it's also a stigmatizing phenomenon and you have been through a transition program while something must have been wrong with you and to get around this to get employers really picking up those skills is very important so let me come to the last part and this is basically supporting young people who are already in the work-based environment now who goes through an apprenticeship what can you do to make sure that they are successful and again what can you do to support employers that they are successful and what I'm taught all the devices that I'm talking about here are better than direct financial subsidies it's much better you support the young people than you just give money that for the reasons I mentioned before so this can help use at risk to complete the apprenticeship and help them also to learn faster during the apprenticeship and it's actually quite widespread in OECD countries we have lots of examples here the aim is always you know to provide academic support additional instruction school college help with homework non-trivial component vocational support again additional instruction with technical content that doesn't happen in the workplace and also broader support many of those people need you know support with conflict with the training company difficulties at home whatever to invest sort of to provide the kind of social support for people that make sure that they can invest the time and effort in the training program another way to help apprentices apprentices learn faster is also to target firms and build their capacity to train apprenticeships if you deal with large companies they can do that small and medium-sized enterprises actually have our time misses where do they get the capacity so actually as government you can invest in this and often pays up really well and in some countries and sectors where apprenticeships have been long established companies also have much more experiences and how to manage those apprenticeships effectively sometimes they share apprentices or programs to support them so there's a lot of thing that we can do to develop a strength in the firm's capacity to manage this process for young people at risk again two examples there is the my coach service in the case of Scotland that we found really interesting it offers support to young people at risk of disengaging from learning towards a certificate of war readiness that's basically something that employers recognize as sort of an entry ticket for apprenticeship program so they undertake an initial evaluation of the young person what are the strengths and benefits the learning gaps their system as they receive career guidance they offer advice to the learning provider that's also important you know the training provider and on a suitable work placement and they clarify what is expected during the work placement that's a good oops sorry and there is also in the case of Norway you have training for apprentice supervisors which is optional is offered free of charge so the Norwegian government actually is investing a lot in providing facilities for companies to actually draw on the courses are offered by schools training offices which are often owned collectively by companies working in the same sector so they basically run those things or by the counties the training lasts two days so it's not such a significant time investment or four half days leaving often sufficient time between training sessions to leave supervisors times to actually practice what they have learned so you focus on the providers on the supervisors is very limited time investment and the evidence that we have suggest is also very effective so those are the three elements that we have highlighted here to to work on this and in fact you know when we studied this in the US and thanks to you Johan we have really learned a lot I mean this is a very vibrant and diverse community when we went to Baltimore we have really seen there's so many people who are really passionate about making this walk what's perhaps missing other structures to make it more predictable and more systematic there are many kind of local initiatives that actually you can draw on the challenges you know really to sustain efforts scale up local success stories connect them network and build a system around this and this is the one thing I think where you can learn from countries like Switzerland like Germany and some of the Nordic countries that have really a lot of experience in building a more structured approach to this so in some it's important to focus on attention on non-financial measures that improve the cost-benefit balance for employers subsidies are easy but actually not very effective it's the non-financial component of both the costs and benefits that really makes a difference in our experience it's about adapting the design of apprenticeship schemes because use at risk have often different needs different characteristics that needs to take into account it's about encouraging initiatives that successfully prepare use for apprenticeships investing in the people before they get there so that employers is easier for them it's about providing support to use at risk who are already in the apprenticeship program social support academic support vocational support and it's about assisting firms to build the capacity to train use at risk and to build an evidence also from emerging innovations finding what the good examples are the bottom line is you know it's hard to get right because it's a whole of society project it requires every part of government it requires very very critical genuine engagement employer something that you cannot just buy and it implies an engagement of people and the challenge is really to make this as systemic as possible the good news is the great examples all around the world where there is a long tradition in this to make it work thank you very much burning question or two maybe we can get those out otherwise we'll move on to our panel yeah in this case it's simply the monetary benefit to employers and we have not even you know systematically captured the non-monetary benefits what you could see for example that there are many apprenticeship programs where the benefits are smaller than the costs and still employers invest in the people and that's where the non-monetary benefits come in for employers basically the matching process sort of avoiding expensive lengthier recruitment processes so but basically there in the charts the only thing that we can measure is a is a productivity benefit from the inter-american dialogue you talked about work-based learning and you talk about apprenticeships is apprenticeship a form of work-based learning or they the same thing because I feel like sometimes you use them interchangeably you're absolutely right you know there are many apprenticeship programs that do not contain a work-based component or not a significant work-based component in fact this is often just a label when we talk about apprenticeships the only thing that in our view qualifies for apprenticeships is where there is a substantial and mandatory quality-assured component of work-based learning otherwise you know don't call it apprenticeship call it something else but it is really in our view the core part of the program that there is a work-based component but you're right you know around the world you find many people you know call it apprenticeship because sounds great but actually it's often delivered and actually in your client group in Latin America that's actually a dominant part you know you have apprenticeships you've never been in a company who learned in some training school that uses outdated equipment outdated people to train them and that is not working so the work-based component really in our view has to be an integral part you know in the OECD we talk about almost nothing that should be mandatory but in this case we really think without it it is it can't work I think we got time for two more questions we got this one and that one and then we'll go to the panel there we go thank you I'm from a UNESCO task force my question is the following most of the jobs you're talking about are related to industrialized countries OECD of course now would you consider as today as we speak European Commission has the first day of vocational jobs policy preparation and so on the question is the following would you see the museum and libraries across the nation in local communities integrating your work and others best practices and roll out this not only to create jobs but also to rebuild communities and their cultural heritage natural heritage I hope you make that thank you yeah you know absolutely I think you can extrapolate from this beyond sort of the kind of industrial production I think the kind of integration of the world of work and the world of learning is a general principle that I think will be beneficial in in many aspects you know I would even you know if I had a choice you I would include workplace learning and university studies you know I don't think we should limit this to apprenticeships I think it's a very good principle for people to combine walking and studying in fact I could have shown you some really interesting data from the PIAC survey where we looked at this when you look at learning progression skill growth it's actually steepest when people do combine learning and walking okay last question and then we'll move not last question for the day but last question right now hi Boris Garnofsky from the congressional research service during your presentation you thought you alluded a number of times to the fact that the programs you talked about are designed for youth age between 16 and 25 that kind of follow a certain pipeline do you have any insights into programs for at risk individuals who are older say you know incoming refugees or people in similar situations absolutely in fact there are some some really good example it's harder to get them right because the cost benefits are working out in different ways but England would be a country actually the US is also a good example you have many older apprenticeships apprenticeships whereas in Europe it's a more typical way to get into the world of work for the US and England it's a more typical way of you know moving between the world of educational work and the Nordic countries in Europe also have a lot of experience with this in fact the intensity of learning in adult life is very very high there and about you know refugees is not something we study specifically specific target groups but you know making it walking across the life cycle there are plenty of really good programs around the world but the economics is harder to get right you end up with more government money in those all right thank you very much thank you bring our panel up is it my imagination or is it really freezing in this room i'm like seeing all these people with like scarves and mittens on i'm sorry for that yeah we're working yeah okay i don't know why that is but keeping all awake all right okay well my name is Mary and Alice McCarthy and i'm the director of the center on education and skills and i'm here with an incredibly esteemed group of people who i'm going to introduce who are going to sort of our goal for this panel is to sort of think about what we heard and reflect on it and really then sort of bring it home to what does this mean for us policy and practice in relation to work-based learning and opportunity youth and to creating more opportunities so i have a group of people with me here who are going to help us do that who are deep in for years deep in working on both the policy and the practices that are effective for our young people so cash is johnson who is the senior director of policy and government affairs at year up angela hanks who is the associate director for workforce development policy at the center for american progress fatties ferber the vice president uh for policy advocacy at the forum for youth investment in crystal bridgeman who is the senior director of um workforce development programs at uh the seamen's foundation and also has lots of years of policy experience in this in workforce development as well so we're just going to do a couple of questions and then we're going to also open it up to you to have a little bit more of an interactive dialogue maybe we're going to kick things off with can can each of you share a little bit as you read you you got an embargoed version of the report you saw it um you know what jumped out at you what for you given the work that you do was your big takeaway either affirmation or maybe surprise or light bulb so thanks again for inviting us great to be here on behalf of my colleagues at year up we're in sixteen sites across the country and a lot of what the report laid out uh was affirming uh particular on a notion of aligning the program to employer demand and the need for legitimate and deep employer engagement and that's hard and also expensive work the other things that stood out is around the supports that are needed to actually target the programs and deliver for employers among this group of opportunity youth and i think three things stuck out as like shifts we have to make um in order to get there first of all we need to change our perceptions uh opportunity youth are need to become seen as a kind of a central part of a pipeline strategy for employers that they are see them as part of their business solution for some of the challenges they have i also sit on the massachusetts state workforce board and chair of the youth committee and we have a 4.7 unemployment rate in the state right now and in in think talking to employers in the state about the need to tap into unemployed or underemployed of people who stop looking for work they said the biggest challenge to tap into that that talent base is you know their professional skills and the workplace skills that they come they don't they don't want to have to spend money on that part they want that already taken place the second shift that we need to make is around practice in order to do the professional skills and some of the other things andreas touched upon we need many more providers even down to the high school level changing their practice around this stuff and that's big shifts and mindset about um college has been the outcome as versus a job uh that grows over time a good colleague and friend of mine is famous for saying that the outcome we need to keep our gay zone is a w2 that grows over time and i think our our kind of college for all particularly house been perceived as four-year college is a limiting kind of outcomes focus and actually is a focus that privileges uh advantage is the most privileged in society so i think that's another shift and last thing we have to shift our policy and i guess we will get to that in a little bit when we talk a little bit about the new administration and such but i think that is embracing this notion a good part around a job and a w2 uh over time being the goal and that if we put that as a go i think we'll go a long ways towards thinking differently what we need to who we need to look at as talent in this country and then secondly how we need to shift and change the way we do business and schools of education and training programs across the country angel you've been working and writing a lot about policy in particular federal and state policy and relationship to apprenticeship and work basically any big surprises from this report or any important takeaways uh so i don't really know about uh big surprises in some ways i agree i think that there's a lot of affirming stuff in here because you see those takeaways and in many cases we are starting to do the things that that the oacd is is saying our best practices the challenges that were sort of starting to do it which is uh which is not where we need to be but i think in many ways that were were on the right path so that was really encouraging um i think the other encouraging thing for me was that uh you know i think that we think about kind of the barriers that opportunity youth face is kind of uniquely american um and so to see that some other countries are facing similar challenges uh means that we also might be able to have some shared solutions as well so when we talk about countries like germany and switzerland where we say like oh it's so great but we could never do that here it's like well you know we're not so different from these countries that we can't adopt some of those practices um there definitely are some uniquely american uh things about our system that we need to to bear in mind uh but but certainly there are opportunities there and then i think um the final thing that i kind of kept thinking about um as i read the report is you know on the on the topic of barriers uh you know keeping in mind who uh the the youth that we're trying to reach uh and and how that impacts the way that we think about wages and we think about program structure so uh for example uh you know more than half of the opportunity youth in this country are people who are not living with their parents their caregivers their parents themselves uh a disproportionate number of them are black and latino uh a disproportionate number are women which i thought was uh interesting that might change uh you know the current population survey doesn't include incarcerated individuals so that could skew it a little bit but um but really they they're facing all of these challenges that are not so different from the challenges that adults face as well so keeping that in mind as we think about what type of wage a young person will accept to be in an apprenticeship and what are the challenges um that they'll face to get through you know it might not be uh just a lack of motivation it might be like i can't get there because i don't have reliable reliable child care for my kid and and that that's going to be a barrier for me so i think that that's something that that it's important to keep in mind and then finally uh the the last thing that i um thought about a lot as as i was reading it is i do think that you know the the role of employers is really critical and there's um like kasha said like there is an economic imperative here with five million youth uh who are disconnected it's not enough just to say oh well it's a social good that we should help these young people because it's really nice and and helpful um it really is is important for our economy um in addition to being a moral imperative it's an economic one and i think that it's incumbent on policymakers and those in the public sector uh to kind of nudge employers to think critically about the role that they play um as as an employer um and thinking about uh how you know workers come to them ready to work and what does that mean uh and and being a more engaged participant uh both in uh the training programs and also making sure that people can get to them in the first place okay great thanks but that is the form for youth investment has been on the ground working with with all sorts of youth uh both in school and out of school for years any any big takeaways here big surprises yeah nothing i'll be filled off of where um you left off i want to start by thanking both new america and oecd uh both this paper and this report i really think could not be better time i think it does an extraordinary job both summarizing what we've learned in the eight years of the current administration and i also think it positions us very well for thinking about policy innovations uh in the incoming administration um so some of the things that we learned in the in the current administration that were uh very consistent with the uh the ideas lifted up in the report uh one building off of where um you left off the importance of thinking about this population of not in terms of approaching employers saying please it would be great for america if you could do us a favor and not hire them which in itself sets a expectation that wow if you're trying to convince us to hire them they must not be very good uh to shifting to saying you should hire these young people because they are going to be a great asset for your company um and we saw that um over time so at the beginning of the obama administration they brought uh um employers together and who they called to the table were the heads of the csr the corporate social responsibility uh the corporate foundations now at the end next week or the week after they're going to do their last convening of corporations to talk about this connected youth they did not invite the csr people they did not invite the corporate foundation people they invited the hr officials and i think that shows a very important shift um casios in europe has been very uh active in a public service campaign called grads of life dot org that was really focused for the first time i think event i council uh campaign not focused on the general public they're focused on employee managers and recruiters inside of companies and it was all focused on making the case for why these young people have such vital skills and backgrounds that you can benefit from i think it also parallels and kind of catches up with a similar movement in the hiring veterans uh in the country it started with it's good for the country you should really do this and now the focus is on these high they bring unique skills and talents that would be an asset to your country your company as well as to your country um the second thing i we've seen over time is shifting from a numeric goal of each of you employers could you commit to hiring x number of disconnected you to saying can you commit to a set of best practices that we know are going to show you that are good for the young people and good for your country and i think that plays out in some of the the basic raw financial incentive of just we're going to pay you to do more of these programs as opposed to there's certain types of practices you can do that are going to make it a good experience for the young people and for the country i'll give you one example of a company that i think has really embodied this transition as kind of serves as the model for i think where we can see hopefully other companies will go as well and this is gap ink so across their brands old navy they started with a corporate social responsibility foundation grant to some non-profits in this it was called a this way ahead program to help those non-profits prepare young people for the world of work so kind of the pre-apprenticeship type things that work as well as the ongoing support after they have jobs um the second thing they did which is really really important um is they created a unique employee id code for the young people who came into the company through this method um what that allowed them to do is collect data to make the business case that this is actually good for your company and it's not a big oh trust us like i'm sure it'll be good for your country a company and we can explain why it's like we they have the data they have the data on the interview to a higher ratio they have the data on the retention rate they have the data on speed to promotion they have data on their engagement scores that they're um ranked on and because they collected that data they were able to sit back now five years into it i believe five somewhere from five ten years into it and sit down with the hr directors and say oh my god this is the best move you could do for you to hit your bottom line needs to do your job and what happened is the hr officials have now said we are gonna make five percent of all our new hires people who come through some site of training program uh like this uh like this way ahead and they are putting corporate dollars into it yes it's good for the country but that's not what got it to scale what got it to scale it was good for the company and they collected the hard data to make sure that they knew that that was the case and thank god that opportunity and youth disconnected youth are so amazing right if they weren't so amazing the data would not have played out this way since there's such amazing vibrant people that they are since they really are assets it puts us in a whole new way to get to scale excellent so christa you come to this conversation with a couple of hats as sort of representing an employer the semen's company and then also a philanthropy the semen's foundation and somebody with lots of policy background so what what jumped out at you with the report uh well let me add my thanks as well for being a part of this conversation um to new america and oecd and the department of ed and i think it's um fair to say on behalf of all my colleagues we've been really excited to be a part of this process both in kind of the meetings in baltimore and leading up to some of this work so um we thank you for that privilege i think that you know two on two levels on a macro level something that really stood out to me um is how we're all in this shared boat situation across the oecd countries as angela mentioned this isn't a unique us problem although i think we do have maybe a disproportionate share in some cases compared to some of our peer countries it's something that we have in common uh with our other peer countries as well and yet even though it is a shared issue it's also very clear to me from the report as well as other work that we're so far behind the curve in addressing this issue on a systemic level compared to our colleagues in other countries right i think we saw in the report some very thoughtful um strategic sometimes national sometimes subnational uh approaches to addressing this um whether that's investments or policies or recognition or developing public and private partnerships and i think in the us it's pretty clear that we continue to struggle with that i think that we have a lot of good work happening a lot of good partnerships a lot of good apprenticeships a lot of good interests of work-based learning programs for young people who aren't in school or who aren't working but in terms of a broader systemic approach i think that's something that we absolutely struggle with when you look at the combined resources we put in at a federal level to address the issue you know i think that we probably don't even top you know i don't even we get anywhere near 10 billion much less maybe say five or six billion um to help address this population specifically much less how work-based learning can be a bridge for them and i think that really sets us apart from what some of our peer countries are doing um so while i think we know that this is true we know that you know one in six young people across these countries are disconnected um we know that this is a huge impact on GDP for these countries we know that countries that have higher rates of apprenticeships do better in terms of youth employment all we know all these things and yet i don't think the us has really made amazing strides in this area i think the administration has taken unbelievable steps forward um it has invested and focused on this issue in a way that we haven't seen i would say in decades um and yet you know and something our CEO and board chairman likes to say is that what he's seen from companies who get involved in this work is that they're acting in their own enlightened self-interest and i think that um america has yet to discover that it's time for them to act in their own enlightened self-interest on this issue particularly when it comes to the economic bottom line of drawing out these untapped talent resources so many of my colleagues have talked about here on a specific level you know i think that one of the things i noted is that we need to do a much better job of telling the story well to employers i think some of the data was pretty clear on advantages particularly on the back side of cost savings in some cases i think one thing that wasn't really explored well is retention and loyalty built among particularly i think among this population where there's investments made in them and how they might tend to have a stickiness when it comes to a company um and i don't think that particularly on the stakeholder side of either the educators or the youth development groups where there really hasn't been a dialogue that often with industry we don't often do very good at putting this into business talk or explaining it in a way that companies get that bottom line they get that customer service approach and they get why it makes sense for them for their company bottom line um and i think the other thing was really just this key emphasis on intermediaries whether that's someone to provide coaching or mentoring or supportive services this isn't a unique need to this population this is i would say something that people with areas to education or employment across the age groups experience and yet again it's one of those areas that we do not invest in um as a country you know it's one of those kind of tag on in a lot of different areas so um yeah i think those were the major things that really stood out to me and kind of uh re-emphasized a lot of where our organizations have been going um but yet continue to speak to the gap particularly from a u.s. perspective great excellent i'm gonna exercise my moderator's privilege and add one more thing that i didn't hear and and mostly it's because i'm sitting here in an education policy program and i was just so encouraged to hear the findings around uh learning outcomes for participants in the apprenticeship programs and i think it's really important and we shouldn't underestimate this is a good way for people to build their math literacy skills their foundational skills it's a good way to learn and so that's going to be really important if we want to build out this alternative and and let people know that this is a good way for us to to educate our citizens um as well as to help you know to help our economy um i'm also going to add that we should all shop at the gap and i just added that to my holiday shopping list i think they have good little gift things okay but now let's let's turn um let's turn a little bit away not from the report but but sort of think about again what does this mean for us moving forward and we are in an exciting time here in washington to say the least uh we are in a time of profound transition um which creates lots of opportunities but also lots of lots of risks um sorry to ask each of the panelists to think a bit about both this report the work that we need to do around work based learning and opportunity youth in general and what sort of opportunities and challenges they see for working with the new administration what opportunities there are for working with the new congress where there's continuity where there's challenges and just one sort of we're running out of time so we don't spend a lot of time but just sort of one key thing that you're thinking about of how to position this work i'll say i thought to myself the other day do i want opportunity youth to appear in the president elix twitter feed or to not appear at the president elix twitter feed so some things to think about i hope you're having more profound thoughts than that they need to be on a twitter feed right they this whole notion of the campaign make america great there are 5.5 million young people in this country who have been left out of the economy's growth and progress since the greatest session recession and they too won't to be a part of this great america so what does that look like i think i would encourage the trump administration to look at continuing to work with the obama administration and using the bill of pulpit of the the presidency to organize employers to make this shift and looking at this amazing group of young people as a part of their talent pipeline solution i encourage the trump administration to go further than that to look at the federal investments at the national level and ask questions about results and outcomes and how we're funding programs that are porous and that they have the ability to connect with employers and partner in the way we're talking about to design programs to provide support to corporations to change the practice of front-line managers to actually know how to engage and work with opportunity youth and that had and i think there's some incentives and questions about the efficacy of the federal investment around workforce training for opportunity youth and whether they've been used to fund programs that do this in powerful ways um so two things i would say again billy pulpit pit pit and look at the federal investments and see how do we move the funding to actually scale some of these great practices great um this is such a um a tough question uh a month out from from the election but you know i think that uh chrysalis point was spot on about uh the advances that this administration is made on the front of education and training it's really been remarkable um the investments that they've made um and a lot of these investments they've made kind of uh in spite of uh inaction in congress unfortunately we did have some action in congress on weowa but like you know the the types of job driven investments that the administration made i think that's something that we can't can't forget about and so i think one you know a priority would be to um you know in the next administration continue those the less optimistic part of me um wants to make sure that we protect the advances that we've made i think that we have a lot of uh best practices that are out there we've been able to fund a lot of good programs uh that are doing really good work with opportunity youth and it would be a tragedy if that stops so you know in addition to to kind of pushing forward on best practices i think also just making sure um that the policy is there that the funding is there going forward and i think um that's something to be very vigilant about uh going forward because i don't think it's necessarily going to be easy um and then uh the final thing is i think that um you know from a messaging front as we're thinking about the policy the best thing that we can do is keep in mind that this is a win-win-win for the public sector for workers and for employers um apprenticeship in particular like these are high wage jobs uh they're preparing people for a long-term career and they really are an effective tool um they're also you know making workers more productive on the job um which is good for employers and then in the public sector it's just a good investment um uh for for the government to make at the state federal local levels uh in these programs that will lead to good outcomes for workers and employers so that's something to to keep in mind going forward so to make an advance we need to get both the policy right and the politics right and um early in a couple things are pretty clear right so um on one hand a 10 million dollar tax subsidy to save 700 jobs is a political winner a call for a new federal 10 million dollar program to train young people to be able to get 700 jobs is going to be a tougher road to grow down i think our job collectively and i mean this quite sincerely for everyone in the road the room and everyone watching online is we need to figure out how to come up with pro-business tax-based subsidy proposals that will work and that's going to be not easy right that's what the report shows if the report showed oh you just say we're going to create a 10 uh a tax incentive and provide you some funding for our tax relief for the number of young people you bring into an apprenticeship program our job as policy wants is pretty easy just say go do that since the report says that does not work we are going to have to come up with some creative solutions because what does it say it did work it said you got to find ways to invest in pre-apprenticeship training programs for the young people you need to find ways to support the young people in a holistic way in their apprenticeship period and beyond so the question for all of us is how using tax incentives how can we figure a way to do a tax incentive that is going to lead to investment in the types of programs that work in training young people in supporting them that creates the win-win for the young people for the country and for the business itself great i you know i actually think there's a pretty strong silver lining here you know we have a an opportunity i think that's unique where we have over 30 governors i think 33 might say republican governors i would say many of those might cross over with states that are already kind of taking up initiatives whether that be under the american apprenticeship initiative or other things where they're really taking a hard look at this we've seen particularly around the youth projects even though not all necessarily around opportunity youth these have been state led initiatives or regional initiatives with support from the federal level and so i think there could be a really strong opportunity in silver lining here to continue to encourage these states to become the laboratories of innovation to support these kind of employer engagement initiatives they're going to know their employers better they're they're going to be driven to want to create kind of a job space agenda as leaders of their state particularly if they're new leaders in their state it's it's just more it's it's a it's a home issue for them right and so many of the governors that you'll talk with while disconnected youth may not be their first issue on their list jobs and their economy is and so i think that there is a unique role here that the next administration and congress can really just encourage that support and leveraging estate roles there's just a unique matching opportunity there the second thing i would say i was really struck in reading this report particularly around intermediaries need for basic skills need for stronger connections to the workplace so many lessons that could be learned from accelerating opportunity states and programs like ibis or others where it's just not so different of a population sometimes they're older sometimes they're not sometimes of the same age with lots and lots of data and evidence behind it to support it and so you know taking a hard look at what works in terms of demonstrating how you can move that into a pre-apprenticeship bridge program and how you can expand that for this particular population and i think the final thing to think about too is as investments are going to be made by the Sydney administration or congress in whatever is deemed infrastructure are there opportunities there to really think about how you can prioritize this population and engaging them in the workplace so many times it's really about just giving them their first positive work experience giving them something good to put on their resume building their network and then moving them into a program where they can learn and grow more and so i think there's actually a lot of really great opportunities for us to think through on the horizon great i think those were all great insights and really helpful to think about things if if you do we do you mind if we do a few questions i know we're running a little bit later i'm looking at poor show over here to make sure so my apologies but um it just seems we want to take advantage of this time so we'll take two or three questions from the audience and then we're going to go to our final analysis yeah here comes a microphone your way my name is lori mack from international baccalaureate and there's a the newest program that the ibis has is called the career related program and i keep hearing echoes of it it clearly has some common parentage with a lot of these things that you all have been talking about it's an 11th and 12th grade program that combines ibis classes and career technical education and employability skills critical thinking professional ethics things like that and it's a really great program that i've seen a lot of problems with we're doing research on it right now the outcomes but in the u.s context specifically it's not only in the u.s but in the u.s because everyone goes to the same kind of high school through 12th grade as opposed to for example germany i'm wondering what i guess what the constraints and maybe opportunities would be what the differences would be for a pre-apprenticeship type program for that sort of apprenticeship preparation what that would look like in the u.s or other countries where everyone goes to the same kind of high school up to age 18 as opposed to some place like like germany can you come back in a year and we're gonna have an answer to that question no actually new america we are working on that question of how do we make apprenticeship pre-apprenticeship work in u.s high schools at a time when u.s high schools have very structured curriculum and very structured graduation requirements is very challenging and the state of colorado has just launched on a big initiative an effort to build out high school based apprenticeships and so we're going to be talking with them a lot of people are sort of watching colorado under a microscope to see how they're going to do that and it's a lot of tough school-based reform at both the school level the district level and at the state level to build those alternative paths within high school to make sure that those learning that that learning those learning outcomes that we talked about that we know can be very strong are being well documented and assessed so that students are not being tracked away from college you know students who participate in these programs aren't having any of their options limited but I think it's a thank you for bringing the question and I'd love to connect with you afterwards because obviously we want to we want to keep thinking about that does anybody else want to talk about the high school apprenticeship connection at all or should we move on to the next question and Kentucky has done this as well the track program in Kentucky is another one and I think that they are interesting in part because one of the things that they ran into early on was this question of liability having young people on the job that they were able to address by having a third-party employee employee the young people and take responsibility for for that aspect of it but that's another one that you can look at and Wisconsin okay another question Mike this is my fellow traveler to to germany hi um michael robbins i'm here with district of learning we're an lrng site here in dc i'm wondering about um sort of what you see is the role of digital badging or other micro credentialing in the reinvention of the american internship system i would say that i do think that credentialing you know we have a whole um it's interesting we've got some folks here from you know lumen foundations connecting credentials initiative as well and i was tweeting about that while we were listening i mean creating these um all you know these alternative ways through education and into the labor market that are porous in which students can move back and forth between sort of work-based approaches traditional college traditional high school requires connected credentials requires being able for them to be able to communicate effectively what they know and can do and and what their um sort of academic abilities are as well as their technical abilities badging i think is a great could play a great role in that and sort of again helping reassure different parts of the system whether it's the education system or the employer or you know the higher education versus the high school document what a student or apprentice has in fact learn in a way that's verifiable reliable and and easy to see and also easy for the student slash apprentice themselves to understand so i think it's it could play a very big role and i hope the united states really can be on the forefront of sort of incorporating digital credentials into as a bridge between these different types of learning systems anybody else want to comment on that i'll just add that i think that having badges and credentialing as a part of the work based learning experience also will address some equity issues around this that folks have something to take with them not just a work experience by itself and folks just feeling good about that that that's something so we need to incentivize the figuring out some of the challenges around badging and some innovation around credentials for the work alumni is essential to that and what enabled a lot of the work we've been talking about up there i would just add that i think that on the topic of credentials generally employer validation is really important and that gets back to this piece in the report on on engaging employers and making sure that they're really a part of it you know the more that they can be engaged in workplace learning and the more that they can be a participant in making sure that that young people are getting skills uh the more valuable the credentials that they get at the end are as well all right well let's give a big hand to the panel thank you very much everyone i'm gonna i'm gonna take this opportunity to introduce our last speaker tonight who's gonna sort of bring it all home for us and and make it all make sense and make us all feel good about where we're going in the future so no pressure there portion no please uh it's a great privilege introduce porsche woo who's the assistant secretary of the employment and training administration the department of labor and i just want to say before joining the department of labor porsche was at the white house she has been a major force around behind the department of labor's push around apprenticeship um and also making sure that those apprenticeships are you know thinking about disconnected youth or opportunity youth and thinking about apprenticeship thinking about populations broadly and diversifying that pipeline into apprenticeship so porsche thank you for being with us and we look forward to your comments was that instruction i was supposed to make us all feel good about where everything is going all right then in the seven minutes i have a loud um well today um i just have a few brief marks actually today has been sort of a a great work-based learning sandwich or i guess invoking the snacks in the back it looks like a delicious milano cookie right i started the morning meeting with a lot of our state apprenticeship council chairs who are in dc and we had a really in-depth conversation about exactly these things about how do you help opportunity youth get apprenticeships in um early childhood um you know very granular is is 40 hours a week of a requirement of work time too much when in that industry usually it's 30 to 32 hours is typical of work how do you help people get jobs as arborists or in it or so it was it was an incredibly rich and in-depth conversation with people who are leading these efforts on the ground and i think to crystals point really we're looking to our states as laboratories of innovation and it was so wonderful to hear that and then to have this panel with a huge wealth of knowledge and expertise also sound a lot of those same issues and and i think highlight a lot of the things in the report and i'll i'll call the oecd reports or the the delicious chocolate in the middle of the of the cookie you know i think it was it made a lot of really terrific points which we all need to take to heart i i do feel very proud um and first of all i want to thank um the our host here at new america i want to thank our partners at department of education and oecd um i do feel very proud of the work we've done in this administration and uh we'll toot our own horn just for a minute here um which is uh we've made a tremendous number of investments at the department of labor we've used a whole host of tools we've used our apprenticeship tools obviously through the american apprenticeship grants incentive grants um we thank congress for their support that we were able to provide grants to states to expand their apprenticeship capacity as well we also have focused on demonstration grants focusing on youth ages 16 to 29 we did one round of 22 million last year we did another round of 20 million dollars this year for 11 career pathways for youth grants and it's really trying to focus on some of the youth in the most challenged areas where whose communities are facing multiple issues around high unemployment high crime low graduation rates high poverty and looking to see what what comes out of those innovations and and they're tough challenges and trying to bring all of those things together i think uh those approaches as well as the great partnership with we have with department of education and other federal partners around the investments strategies under the workforce innovation opportunity act and really been privileged to work very closely with yohan and his colleagues on that and i think that uh congress gave us a very clear direction and that's that will keep in the law regardless of who sits in the seat i'm sitting in which is really focused on opportunity youth we have some millions of young people around this country who have so much to offer and it is important that federal resources focus on them and focus on work-based learning and um on the job training that i think congress really couldn't have been clearer about the work experience so that i hope is a direction that will continue ahead so so we've made these uh tremendous investments and strides i think those investments and the learnings that come from them will continue to roll out in the years to come so i encourage everyone to take a close look at that um you know i'll i'll wrap up uh with with the point that mary alice made about what sort of what lies ahead um i i won't know i'll be sort of turning into a pumpkin myself in a couple of weeks but um i think it's better than turning back into a mouse i'm not really sure but um but but i think that um i tease our apprenticeship team and i'm joined here by a couple of my colleagues from the department so um i tease them all the time that sort of our new incoming president is sort of the the original author author of a tv show about apprenticeship so i expect that we hope that he will uh believe in that strategy as well as other on the job training and work-based learning strategies i do think that to the point that was made earlier um crystal made a point about sort of the infrastructure opportunities with investments i think that he's made a point others made points about tax incentives i think there are many opportunities for a conversation about training and skills that is not just when you have a wiowa moving along or a trade bill moving along or even an infrastructure bill moving along it's also when you have an energy bill coming or maybe or maybe not a re-envisioning of the affordable care act or Medicaid eligibility or um even our caring infrastructure i think all of these are opportunities for all of us to continue to keep the focus here on opportunity youth on the importance of skills in general we have learned so much in the last several years in this administration and and by we i mean of course through the federal government but it's really the tremendous work and innovation that's going on being conducted by state and local areas by community colleges by foundations by community-based organizations so many people have contributed such a tremendous amount and researchers as well to this to this arena it's important that we take all of that knowledge and bring it to bear and see what opportunities arise so i look forward to to seeing what happens and seeing what terrific work all of you do is that that those opportunities come up so thank you very much well that concludes our program for today um thank you so much for coming please help yourself to snacks and everything and uh we look forward to continuing this conversation i'm sure we'll all be talking about this soon