Chapter 1. Introduction to Career Readiness Review of the Commonwealth of Virginia
Across the world, on average young people are entering the labour market more highly qualified than ever before, but still they struggle in their attempts to achieve smooth transitions from education into fulfilling employment. Understanding the how career guidance systems are working to support students in this transition is an important step to addressing this issue. This chapter gives an overview of this review of career readiness undertaken in the Commonwealth of Virginia (United States).
This report presents the conclusions of the OECD Review of Career Readiness in the Commonwealth of Virginia (VA). Within the review, the OECD team with the support of the Virginian Department of Education (VDOE) and its agencies, notably the Virginia Office of Education Economics, reviewed existing data, research, and policy on career readiness in the state, collected new data from current and former students and undertook a mission to the state in March 2023, holding 22 meetings with state leaders, officials, school leaders, guidance practitioners and stakeholders within the state.
The report consists of five chapters. It begins by providing an overview of how the K-12 school system, notably at lower and upper secondary level, in Virginia is designed to ensure the career readiness of students and the economic context within which it operates. The report then presents the results of two surveys which were conducted within the review. A survey of 19–26-year-olds provides a user perspective on teenage career development within the state. A second survey of current Grade 10 and 11 students allows for benchmarking against international practice as captured in the 2018 round of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA 2018). Overall, the chapter provides an assessment of the career readiness of young people and the career readiness system in Virginia in international context.
The report then reviews Virginia’s career readiness systems across three thematic areas:
Effectiveness: how the VA career readiness system engages students in forms of career development that can most confidently be associated with better employment outcomes (Theme 1).
Efficiency: how the VA career readiness system ensures that the career development of students is informed by understanding of the economic and labour market opportunities while minimising unnecessary navigation time and waste of resources (Theme 2).
Equitability: how the VA career readiness system addresses inequalities in assisting young people’s transition by providing them with equal and targeted access to opportunities and empowering marginalised youth to build human, social and cultural capital necessary for effective transitions into employment (Theme 3).
The study concludes with seven recommendations which are discussed below and in detail through the report, alongside international examples of practice.
Recommendation 1: Virginia should consider systematising and monitoring the implementation of career readiness instruments to strengthen effective provision.
Recommendation 2: Virginia should consider revising and updating its K-12 framework for career readiness.
Recommendation 3: Virginia should consider further increasing the quantity of relevant staff in part by easing regulations in recruitment to strengthen career readiness efforts.
Recommendation 4: Virginia should consider adopting new approaches to encouraging and enabling employers and people in work to engage with schools to provide students with systemic, consistent and diverse exposure to the working world.
Recommendation 5: Virginia should consider introducing new means of deepening and broadening the exposure of students to the skilled trades from an earlier age, through career guidance interventions and work-based learning (WBL).
Recommendation 6: Virginia should consider providing greater support to students facing additional barriers within career development and labour market participation to create more equitable outcomes for youth.
Recommendation 7: Virginia should consider ways in which it can take greater advantage of digital technologies, notably to address geographic variations in access to career development.
Career readiness is a key policy agenda for Virginia, and the state has made visible efforts in many policy fields to support and strengthen the career readiness of students. In line with this, the OECD Career Readiness Survey of Young Adults in Virginia shows that most former students have a positive perception of their career readiness experiences in high schools. Virginia is already equipped with valuable instruments and strategies that can enable the state to strengthen career readiness of young people.
Revisiting career readiness instruments
Recommendation 1: Virginia should consider systematising and monitoring the implementation of career readiness instruments to strengthen effective provision.
While each one of current career readiness instruments has value and potential, they are not consistently used across schools and school districts, reflecting that state standards for these instruments are not strictly respected or consistently implemented. For example, Virginia should ensure that every student actually has an Academic and Career Plan (ACP) as mandated by the state (currently 75% of Grade 10/11 students), define how each mandated provision such as Career Investigation Course is offered, assessed, and reported on, and measure outcomes of each mandated provision in relation to the K-12 learning framework. The data collected in this process can be used to further assess engagement of students in forms of career development which are associated in empirical studies with the greatest effectiveness of the provision. It can also be used to plan future offerings in relation to local labour market needs and challenges in delivery, with an aim of building a consistent, systematic and institutional procedure to use, track, update and transfer ACPs between educational institutions and stages to facilitate the overall career readiness process. Opportunity exists to further manage the ACP online within a single or better co-ordinated system that both record student decision-making and makes available resources useful in that decision-making.
Updating career readiness standards and frameworks
Recommendation 2: Virginia should consider revising its K-12 framework for career readiness.
Where school districts and schools exert a high level of autonomy, as in Virginia, variation in delivery is to be expected. Career readiness systems can better function when being underpinned by a well-designed and commonly agreed set of standards and frameworks, including the articulation of expected outcomes, which can be measured and monitored.
In this context, there are strong rationales for a more updated and comprehensive career readiness framework for K-12 system in Virginia. This is timely because of the character of educational and labour market participation has changed considerably over the last generation, increasing the need for more informed decision-making by young people as options, opportunities and risks of poor integration into the labour market proliferate. Data on the effectiveness of specific guidance inventions, evidenced in longitudinal data (including from the United States), also demands consideration in determining framework content.
Virginia should therefore develop a new, or at least update its existing K-12 career guidance framework. In recognition of school district autonomy, this new or updated framework need not be overly prescriptive in determining every aspect of career development, but should articulate a core collection of activities and experiences that students should be able to expect of their schooling. At the heart of such expectations are those career development activities and experiences which can be most confidently associated with better employment outcomes. By Grade 11 for example, the state should ensure that all students have had opportunity to participate in career talks and job fairs, workplace visits and job shadowing, application and interview skills workshops alongside direct experience of the world of work through internships, volunteering or part-time employment linked to areas of career interest. Integrating such provision into an online ACP would allow for monitoring of provision in order to ensure that all Virginian school students receive a minimum level of provision based on international standards.
This new or updated framework can allow for the variance of the ACP instruments and career development activities used to achieve the career guidance framework outcomes, but with clearer monitoring mechanisms. It is possible to systematise how the framework outcomes are tracked, evaluated and fed back to stakeholders to improve career readiness provision.
Supporting the career readiness workforce
Recommendation 3: Virginia should consider further increasing the quantity of relevant staff in part by easing regulations in recruitment to strengthen career readiness efforts.
While teachers and counsellors play a crucial role in student career readiness, they often lack time and resources to put additional effort into further strengthening the career readiness of students given existing workloads and responsibilities. On average, ratios of counsellors to students in Virginia public schools are low compared to the US average but are generally still high in comparison to standards recommended by the American School Counsellor Association. Virginia also spends less than the US average on per-pupil student support, including career guidance although many schools in Virginia now also benefit from career coaches who provide an important additional resource in the career development of students.
Virginia can benefit from further increasing the quantity of relevant staff. One option to consider is the easing of regulations in recruitment to strengthen career readiness efforts. Compared to the US average and other states, Virginia relies heavily on traditional teacher preparation programmes in comparison to alternative programmes (e.g., recruiting professionals with prior work experience but seeking to switch careers). Virginia can diversify recruitment and training routes for teaching professions to ease teacher shortages and attract talent with industry experience to the profession. Such an approach would be particularly relevant to developing the workforce involved in provision of CTE programmes. At the same time, it is essential that counsellors and teachers receive appropriate, high-quality training. In this regard, schools and responsible institutions should look to enhance in-service training and other resources that can inform teachers and counsellors about appropriate methods and approaches for career counselling, including up-to-date entry requirements for tertiary education, labour market dynamics and key new research findings.
Virginia emphasizes the responsiveness of its education system, notably at High School level, in relation to labour market opportunities in various ways. The ‘responsiveness’ component in the career readiness system enriches the choices and pathways available to students and helps them to make informed choices. At the heart of effective labour market signalling, is the active engagement of employers in the career development of students. Virginia has been proactive in encouraging and enabling collaboration with the economic community, especially through the provision of work-based learning (WBL) opportunities, but current levels of employer engagement are insufficient to meet student needs.
Engaging employers to increase, strengthen, expand and promote WBL opportunities, setting up systemic and consistent collaboration among key stakeholders
Recommendation 4: Virginia should consider adopting new approaches to encouraging and enabling employers and people in work to engage with schools to provide students with systemic, consistent, and diverse exposure to the working world.
Employer engagement is an essential component of effective career development. Considerable opportunity exists in Virginia to strengthen the engagement of employers and people in work in the career development of students. Student participation in WBL activities in Virginia is also low compared to other states and many other countries. For example, 18% of CTE concentrators in Virginia participate in work-based learning compared to 38% in Georgia in 2020-21. The OECD Career Readiness Surveys also confirm that in comparison to international practice job shadowing, worksite visits and internships are particularly weak in Virginia. While many CTE programmes currently provide excellent examples of provision enriched by strong employer engagement, this is not always the case.
In this context, Virginia should consider additional mechanisms, from Elementary through to High School, for encouraging and enabling the enrichment of career development by employers and people in work. A first step for Virginia would be to make the business case to employers and people in work as to why they would benefit from engaging with schools to support guidance activities. Secondly, Virginia should consider removing barriers that prevent the provision of and participation in employer engagement activities.
Collaboration and co-ordination between stakeholders are key to operating a career readiness system given that the system lies at the intersection of education and workforce development. While collaboration between schools, employers and communities and co-ordination among state agencies is happening, there is a tendency for this to be in an ad hoc fashion and is shaped by the capacity of the school, division, agency and employer. Greater clarity on expectations, as articulated in a revised set of standards/framework will enable stronger local cultures of collaboration.
Strengthen career development activities that lead to aspiration for skilled employment
Recommendation 5: Virginia should consider introducing new means of deepening and broadening the exposure of students to the skilled trades from an earlier age, through career guidance interventions and WBL.
The skilled trades (construction and manufacturing) is one of Virginia’s most in-demand industries. Such professions offer many attractive careers, but student interest is limited. As is the case across the United States, interest in those professions among teenage students is low by international comparison. Only 9% of surveyed teenagers in Virginia with a clear idea of their occupational expectation, named a medium-skilled occupation.
While CTE and co-operative education programmes in Virginia offer valuable introductions to skilled employment, opportunity exists to expand student interest. Lack of interest may be for one of two reasons. Students may not have a fully informed understanding of relevant professions and decide that their career ambitions lie elsewhere. Alternatively, it is possible that student understanding is partial and insufficient to make an informed decision about CTE provision or the professions to which it is related. While the education system has limited capacity to address the attractiveness of occupations, it can (in collaboration with the economic community) take steps to address information asymmetry. Here, scope exists to broaden and deepen student understanding of careers to which CTE and co-operative education provision commonly provides access. Notably, during Middle School (before important decisions are made concerning more vocationally-focused pathways through secondary education), it is possible to expand potential interest in fields commonly entered without the need for a four-year university degree. By providing students with the opportunity to see the actual careers behind the CTE courses, through programmes of career talks, job fairs, workplace visits and digital tools, opportunity exists to broaden career interests and address potentially erroneous assumptions. Within High School, the expansion of WBL opportunities will provide students with deeper, first-hand experiences of potential future employment and access to social networks which can facilitate progression into employment. Such an objective would be facilitated through the availability of state-wide mechanisms that enable schools across the Commonwealth to connect employers and employee volunteers. Efforts can also be made to better inform parents about the realities of employment in the skilled trades. School provision in Virginia can also do more to help young people in the process of identifying and applying for apprenticeship and training programmes while students are still in school.
One of the goals of a career readiness system and strategy is to provide young people from all backgrounds with relevant information and experiences to broaden and raise aspirations to make appropriate educational, training and occupational choices, and to support their transitions into fulfilling employment. This is accomplished through building the human, social and cultural capital that enables employment regardless of the student’s existing challenges or characteristics, school or community of residence. By consequence, equitable guidance systems will not be based on one size fitting all. Participation in career development activities (CDA) can assist in breaking negative intergenerational cycles of disadvantages and gender and racial/ethnic disparities by recognising and addressing structural barriers.
In this regard, Virginia offers multiple pathways and programmes for diverse segments of its population, for example through well-integrated CTE, co-operative education and dual enrolment. In particular, integration of vocationally-focused provision within general high schooling keeps options open for all students and reduces reputational risks. School divisions have autonomy to make customised selections of programmes and introduce specialised institutional approaches, such as the Career Academies programmes. While this autonomy can make it difficult to set state-level standards and work toward balanced implementation, it can act positively and swiftly to adjust provision and options based on student needs and local labour market demand. Overall, Virginia is putting significant effort into reducing existing gaps and, this study shows, is performing well in several equity indicators, but there remains a case for strong minimum standards for all (as articulated within a revised framework and standards) and targeted interventions to support students who face additional barriers in converting their human capital into successful employment.
Reducing gender, race/ethnicity and socio-economic disparities
Recommendation 6: Virginia should consider providing greater support to students facing additional barriers within career development and labour market participation to create more equitable outcomes for youth.
The variation in career exploration, experiences and thinking of students who share comparable levels of academic achievement and social characteristics helps to explain similar variation in their work and study status as young adults. The two OECD Career Readiness Surveys show that disparities among different groups remains an issue in Virginia, although positive cases were highlighted, such as better access to CDA for historically marginalised populations compared to the majority population.
Personalisation in career guidance is a challenge in all countries. In Ireland and Canada, guidance systems explicitly articulate aspects of provision which should be available to all students, while other initiatives are reasonably targeted at some or a few students. In this way, personalisation is increasingly built into the provision of guidance, enabling students to explore and experience a wider range of occupations and addressing known barriers preventing confident transitions. Here, as discussed below, digital technologies are of considerable importance.
Making the issue of equity more explicit in the career readiness policy agenda can help close further gaps in the transition process and expand the careers that are being considered by all students beyond limiting boundaries, with a goal of narrowing labour market outcome disparities. Virginia can build upon other country examples and research that shows how to help raise and broaden the career aspirations of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, both to make them more informed and better aligned with future opportunities, and to overcome structural inequalities.
Reviewing equity-related data highlighted particularly strong patterns of concern in relation to the socio-economic status and geographic location of students. With relation to the second issue, significant scope exists to enhance the availability of online resources (discussed below). With regard to the former, options exist and are discussed in the report for targeted interventions. Perhaps most striking in international practice is the example of Ireland which in recognition of greater needs, provides more than double the level of standard funding for career guidance provision in schools serving the lowest-income populations.
Increasing provision through the use of digital technologies to overcome regional disparities and enhance personalisation in career development
Recommendation 7: Virginia should consider ways in which it can take greater advantage of digital technologies, notably to address geographic variations in access to career development.
Both access to CDA and the quality of them vary across schools and districts. Students are often bounded by what schools or school districts can offer and the availability of local employment and employers. Transportation is also a significant issue not only because of the cost but also of the lost instruction time. It is striking that the career aspirations of young people in Virginia are particularly strongly influenced by parental occupation: 20% of students say that their parents’ opinions are very important in their career planning, compared to an OECD average of 13.5%.
Virginia can broaden the aspirations of young people and address the barriers presented by geography through greater use of digital resources, building on such notable innovations as CTETrailblazers. These new tools also underpin innovative models of guidance that explicitly recognise that equitable guidance will not be characterised by a one size fits all approach.
Virginia can bene it from increasing the use of digital technologies and the innovative approaches they enable. Virginia is already heading in this direction, for example by delivering Career Investigation Courses online. Virginia can build upon examples from other countries and examples from the OECD Observatory on Digital Technologies in Career Guidance for Youth (ODiCY). This is particularly relevant with regard to guidance activities such as online career talks, workplace visits, job shadowing and work placements that are increasingly being developed online.