New Skills for Youth Initiative

A collaborative project of the Council of Chief State School Officers and JP Morgan Chase

Economic success is increasingly out of reach for millions of young people who either have not graduated from high school, or have graduated but do not have the skills required to enter successfully meaningful workforce opportunities. To address this gap, the Council of Chief State School Officers in partnership with the National Association of State Directors of Career and Technical Education Consortium and the Education Strategy Group will launch an ambitious new initiative known as New Skills For Youth, thanks to the generous support of JP Morgan Chase & Co.

NSFYI will provide a select group of state-led teams with expert technical assistance and peer support as well as with financial resources to transform their systems of career preparation through higher quality and more demand-driven, rigorous, and accountable approaches to career-focused programs.

The initiative has two over-arching goals:

 To dramatically increase the number of students in the US who successfully complete career pathways that begin in secondary school and culminate in postsecondary degrees and/or industry credentials with labor market value; and

 To catalyze transformational approaches to the design and implementation of programs and policies to increase students’ career-readiness in a cohort of leading states and disseminate lessons learned to the rest of the country.

This initiative consists of two phases: a six month plan design, development, and early implementation phase, and a three year implementation phase. Montana was one of 24 states that received $100,000 for Phase 1.

OPI will be working on the following 6 goals in Phase 1:

1. Demand-driven, employer-led process in Health Professions fields; one of MT’s highest workforce needs

2. Rigor & Quality in Career Pathways

3. Career-focused Accountability Systems

4. Scaled Pathways with credentials

5. Align funding streams/cross institutional alignment

6. Foster greater collaboration between K-12 and post-secondary institutions

At the end of the six month Phase 1 (May- Oct), OPI will submit the grant application for Phase 2 which will be a three year grant with up to $650,000 per year to implement our pathways work.