Walk into most districts, and you’ll find a familiar pattern: pathways beginning in high school. At this level, many teams are busy designing academies, revising schedules, forming business partnerships, and gaining access to college-in-high-school opportunities. Now, don’t misunderstand, these are all good things, but starting here means we’ve wasted an incredible opportunity. Today’s reality is…

The way pathways frame choice is a fiction.  Pathways encourage young people to make a linear series of choices, but choice in adolescence is not linear. It contains uncertainty and possibility at the same time. Young people hold multiple possible futures in their heads at once. They’re thinking about becoming a nurse and starting a business and…

If we are serious about not only preparing learners for the age of artificial intelligence but also supporting their current use of AI, we have to start by listening to the people who are already living in it. During our recent webinar, Creation in the AI Era, one message came through loud and clear. Students…

STATUS OF JOB POSTING: WE ARE NO LONGER ACTIVELY REVIEWING APPLICATIONS HOWEVER, THE POSTING WILL REMAIN ONLINE UNTIL THE POSITION IS FILLED. FLSA Status: Salaried, ExemptMinimum/Maximum Salary: $125,000/$180,000Preferred Starting Date: January 2026 Organization Overview All4Ed is a national nonprofit organization committed to expanding equitable educational opportunities for all students, especially students of color, students from low-income…

STATUS OF JOB POSTING: WE ARE NO LONGER ACTIVELY REVIEWING APPLICATIONS HOWEVER, THE POSTING WILL REMAIN ONLINE UNTIL THE POSITION IS FILLED. Reports to:                            Director of State Government RelationsFLSA Status:                         Salaried, ExemptMinimum Salary:                 $85,000+ (salary commensurate with experience)Preferred Starting Date:   Early 2026 Organization Overview All4Ed is a national policy, practice, and advocacy organization based in Washington, DC,…

We’ve been focused on the wrong problem.  Remember how, in our last post, we committed to asking uncomfortable questions about whether we’re solving problems young people actually have or those that reflect our own interests? We tried that out. And we concluded that how we’ve framed the problem pathways are solving has led us to talk about young people as though they’re commodities that we seek to customize to meet employers’ specifications. This isn’t a metaphor. It’s the actual operating logic of economic and education systems designed around…

Have you seen it? Have you heard? The Future Ready Librarians® Framework 3.0 is here—and it’s inspiring librarians everywhere to lead the charge in literacy, innovation, and equity. This latest version of the nationally recognized framework reflects how school librarians are shaping the future of learning—not just keeping up with change, but leading it. So,…

Innovation and scale are only the means to an end.  Yet it sometimes seems like they’ve become the goal. The pathways movement celebrates strategies that scale, applauds bold approaches, and races to generate new ideas. And for good reason: transforming education and workforce systems requires innovative thinking and scale, and the work is urgent. But…

In our first post in this series, “Supporting Every Student: How the NC Center for Resilience & Learning Is Building Safer, More Inclusive Schools,” we introduced how NCCRL works with districts—especially in rural and remote areas—to provide trauma-informed professional learning and long-term coaching so that all students, including those with learning differences, have supportive school…