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About the Commission on Strategic Partnerships for

Work-Ready Students

Throughout SREB’s history, governors have taken the lead on critical education issues by
convening state policymakers. SREB commissions bring greater attention to these topics, build
consensus and make recommendations to address the challenges. The focus of a commission
often arises from SREB’s Goals for Education; commission recommendations always inform
revisions of the Goals.

In late 2018, members of SREB’s Commission on Strategic Partnerships for Work-Ready
Students began meeting to explore how work-based learning experiences in middle grades
schools, high schools and community colleges can prepare more students for the world of work.
The commission’s charge was to recommend promising practices that engage business and
industry and create systemic change so that education-industry partnerships and career pathway
programs can provide students with these essential learning experiences.

This report offers the commission’s 11 recommendations. Each state will implement them in
its own way. But across all states, it will take committed leadership to bring together the many
different agencies, offices, councils and boards involved in workforce development and help
them agree on a path forward.

Recommendations

Process
1. Engage business and industry leaders in establishing regional industry sector partnerships
in support of career education.
2. Prioritize state resources and efforts to develop career pathways in strategic industry
sectors as identified by regional business partnerships.

Supportive Policies
3. Adopt a business-friendly statewide work-based learning policy for K-16 and workforce
agencies that promotes a continuum of experiences beginning in the middle grades and
extending through two- and four-year colleges.
4. Recognize the importance of work-based learning in high school by including those
experiences in graduation requirements and school accountability ratings.
5. Provide policy solutions for workers’ compensation and liability insurance for work-based
learning placements.

Funding
6. Support industry sector partnerships with braided funding from multiple sources —
federal, state, local, private and philanthropic.
7. Provide incentives to employers that offer students paid work-based learning experiences.

4 SREB | Partnerships to Align Education and Careers | October 2020