Promote educational models of schooling that blend academics and technical training, and connect students to authentic work-place learning.

Our Youth program recognizes that California is home to diverse students with different learning styles and a wide variety of interests. The comprehensive high school has worked for a portion of California students, but not for countless others. Likewise, community colleges, which are the entry point for more than two thirds of students entering higher education in the state, are not working for a large percentage of students. At both the high school and community college level, traditional academic courses and curricula do not always seem relevant to the lives and aspirations of many students. Vocational courses, which in many schools have been aimed at lower achieving students, typically lack the academic and technical rigor required for success in postsecondary education and high-skilled career paths.

We seek to bridge this divide by supporting efforts to provide students with multiple pathways to college and career and to develop models that integrate rigorous academics with career and technical study. We envision these pathways as long-term programs of academic and technical study organized around different industry sectors such as engineering, biomedical and health sciences, and arts and entertainment. Often partnering with employers and institutions of higher education, academically rigorous career and technical education (CTE) offers students opportunities to apply academic knowledge and skills to concrete, real-world problems that increase students' engagement in learning. Each of these pathways blends academic rigor and real-world relevance, theory and practice, and is geared to prepare students for both college and career, not one or the other.

Innovative and promising models of academically rigorous CTE are emerging in a variety of organizational settings. These include small learning communities, district-managed small high schools,
high-quality charter high schools, partnerships between high schools and colleges, and occupational centers. These new models offer significant advantages over traditional comprehensive high schools, including closer relationships between students and teachers, opportunities for cooperative and interactive learning, and the potential for increased student motivation and commitment to learning.

Rather than promoting one model over another, we seek to support promising efforts across a variety of organizational settings. For example, while we support several charter schools and charter management organizations that have developed sophisticated models of academically challenging CTE, it is the content of the work that is critical, not the location of that work in charter organizations. Indeed, it is our hope that these models can and will be adapted throughout the educational system in California, so that they touch the lives of more young people.

We also strive to connect educational sectors to create seamless pathways for young people. For example, we support dual enrollment programs that build CTE-focused pathways from high school to community college.

In order to build capacity and support throughout California for academically rigorous CTE, in 2006 Irvine founded ConnectEd: The California Center for College and Career. ConnectEd serves as a hub for innovative practice, policy and research to expand the number of education pathways that prepare students for college and career. ConnectEd will advance the role that academically rigorous career and technical education plays in reforming California high schools so that more students master the knowledge and skills they will need to succeed in tomorrow’s economy. As a result, more students will graduate from high school prepared for college and a career.

As part of Irvine’s commitment to academically rigorous career and technical education, the Foundation commissioned “Multiple Perspectives on Multiple Pathways.” This collection of fifteen essays, written by distinguished California scholars, provides a critical intellectual framework for a multiple pathways approach to secondary education.

Types of activities supported

We consider projects within this priority that:

Develop CTE curricula that are aligned with academic standards, integrate content with concrete and practical applications, and build on regional economic strategies or industries
Supplement classroom instruction with work-based learning that is linked to a standards-based academic curriculum
Develop institutional partnerships with employers, high schools, community colleges, universities, or community-based organizations to articulate new career paths for youth and offer related educational programs and services
Expand successful CTE programs to other sites or regions
Support schools that are integrating rigorous academics and technical training, to implement or replicate high-quality alternative educational programs. We support such programs in a variety of organizational settings, including charter schools, district-managed small high schools and occupational centers
Support research and policy development on effective CTE curriculum, teacher training and related high school reforms

Review criteria

Competitive projects will:

Designate a target population that includes low-income youth between the ages of 14 and 24 years old and/or academically under-performing youth
Demonstrate evidence of rigorous academic and technical content in the CTE curriculum that is aligned with state standards
Demonstrate potential for, or successful use of, project-based instructional approaches that engage students
Demonstrate a commitment to using CTE courses that meet “a-g” eligibility requirements for entry into California's public colleges and universities
Demonstrate collaboration between technical and academic instruction, including teacher professional development strategies designed to promote expertise across sectors
Establish specific and results-oriented agreements between institutions and/or educational sectors in any proposed partnership that clearly defines roles and responsibilities for administrative, management and programmatic functions
For any research project, demonstrate expertise in conducting program- and policy-relevant analysis that combines qualitative and quantitative methods
Demonstrate commitment to ongoing assessment, evaluation and dissemination of promising practices and research findings

While we accept unsolicited inquiries from grantseekers, we are able to fund very few of them. Please click here if you would like to learn more about submitting a letter of inquiry. Full proposals are accepted by invitation only.

Profiles of illustrative grants

The following grantee profiles are illustrative of the type of work the Youth program seeks to fund through its Academically Rigorous Career and Technical Education priority: