Learning By Doing: Policy Recommendations

If the case studies in this report teach one lesson, it is that effective workforce development does not come from designing a single national program. It comes from enabling many institutions—schools, colleges, employers, unions, and regional intermediaries—to build pathways that fit their local economies. The task for policymakers is not to prescribe a model, but to create the conditions in which multiple models can flourish.

The following ten recommendations aim to build and support that infrastructure. Together they advance what this report calls opportunity pluralism: a diversified system of credible, work-connected pathways that meet people where they are and lead to good jobs.

Build Earn-and-Learn Infrastructure

1. Establish a general-purpose funding mechanism

Opportunities: federal legislation; federal agency action

In an effort to provide college access for all, policymakers established open-ended funding streams to subsidize any and all attendance in a college classroom. Meanwhile, people pursuing other pathways to careers—and the employers and unions supporting them—generally receive nothing or, at best, limited compensation tied to onerous bureaucracy. 

Both federal and state governments should attempt to equalize the resources available on a wide range of pathways, by establishing a robust model for “trainees” that mirrors the funding for “students” and reallocating substantial funding from the latter to the former. American Compass’s “Workforce Training Grant” is the leading example for this model, and has been introduced as the American Workforce Act (AWA) by Senators Tom Cotton and JD Vance in the Senate and by Congressmen Max Miller, Derrick Van Orden, and Anthony D’Esposito in the House of Representatives. Under the AWA, employers would receive $9,000 per employee per year for workers holding a “trainee” status. 

The federal government should also strengthen its registered apprenticeship program, which effectively combines wages, training, and credentials, by simplifying requirements and accelerating the approval process for interested employers. One advantage of AWA funding would be to immediately provide substantial economic rewards for the establishment of apprenticeships. The goal should be normalization: apprenticeships as common as internships.

2. Provide standard curriculum and credential frameworks

Opportunities: federal agency action; state agency action; employer and union engagement

The many institutions eager to advance new career pathways face a straightforward challenge: developing curriculum, defining achievement, and creating recognized credentials is hard to do. By default, many individual high schools, community colleges, employers, and unions working in isolation are inventing and re-inventing various versions of the same programs, duplicating effort and failing to learn from each other’s experience. Everyone has different expectations and uses different vocabulary.

States must play a leading role in defining pathways and developing curriculum for widespread adoption. The federal government can help as well, by compiling state-level materials for reference and engaging with states and employers to establish voluntary national standards and best practices. Employers and unions should be encouraged to collaborate with each other and share their own materials with public agencies.

Importantly, educators and trainers at all levels should give greater emphasis to so-called “soft skills” that help prepare people for the workplace, improve their communication and teamwork, and accustom them to learning on the job. Employers consistently report that these skills matter at least as much as technical skill; when they speak of a “skills gap,” they are more often thinking of reliability than familiarity with some piece of equipment. These soft skills also have the benefit of being universally applicable across all pathways, and indeed may be as valuable for students planning to pursue college as for those headed directly into the workforce.

3. Install a revolving door between industry and education

Opportunities: state legislation; local action; employer and union engagement

Scaling work-based learning requires more qualified instructors and workplace mentors. At the level of public policy, states must ensure that technical professionals can earn the necessary credentials for quick transitions into the classroom, and that school districts can provide sufficient compensation to attract them. School districts must implement pay scales accordingly and build relationships with local industry that allow talent to flow in both directions: not only new teachers entering education, but also experienced ones spending time in the field gaining experience that they can bring back to their students. 

Employers have an important role to play themselves. Neither providing support to teachers nor sending employees into teaching is the sort of activity that can be compensated via tax credit or will show up quickly on the bottom line. But such engagement is likely to be highly valued by the broader workforce, help in recruiting and retention, and pay dividends in contributing to a stronger talent pipeline. Both employers and unions should consider incorporating related programs into their collective bargaining agreements, for the benefit of both parties.

4. Sponsor industry consortia

Opportunities: federal legislation; state legislation; employer and union engagement

Organizations like the electrical training ALLIANCE underscore the importance of “middle infrastructure”; partnerships among workforce development boards, employers, and unions that can coordinate on curriculum development, instructor training, and recruiting. Public funding often focuses only on students; it should also support these backbone organizations that make systems work at scale. A useful analog exists in R&D policy, where the federal government has sometimes sponsored industry consortia to partner on development of intellectual property that all participants can then use. Matching federal funds for union and industry consortia dedicated to workforce development would create a powerful incentive to invest in human capital upstream of each individual employer’s workforce.

Start Earlier and Broaden Access

5. Embed career pathways in high schools

Opportunities: state legislation; state agency action; local action

Treating all students as if they should be headed straight to college until after they have crossed the stage to receive their high school diplomas does a great disservice both to the many who already pursue other paths and to the many who would benefit from other paths if strong ones that began during high school were available. Policymakers tend to assume that a serious tradeoff exists and time spent on a career pathway sacrifices the academics necessary for college preparation, but the evidence suggests otherwise. If anything, access to career pathways, technical training, and on-the-job experience will often engage students more effectively than a generic academic curriculum and leave them better prepared for any and all next steps.

After decades spent neglecting other pathways and holding schools accountable only for their test scores, states have a wide range of opportunities for recalibration. As noted above, they can develop curriculum and credential frameworks and promote new teacher pipelines. They also need to provide districts that commit to high-quality technical education with additional funding that accounts for the higher cost of launching and delivering those programs. And they need to refine their accountability standards to balance required classroom hours with time in the workplace, academic achievement with industry credentials, and college enrollment with successful entry into good jobs. 

Ultimately, responsibility for delivering access to new pathways will rest with local school districts. They must choose to make pluralism a core value and a budget priority, and to embrace collaboration with the private sector. Sometimes the decision will be as simple as honoring more types of success than just national merit scholarships and college admissions. Other times it will be as difficult as reallocating capital spending toward new kinds of facilities. The successful districts will be those who align their mission to what most parents want for their own children: developing the skills and values to build decent lives. 

6. Normalize paid internships and co-ops

Opportunities: federal agency action; state agency action; employer and union engagement 

Work experience shouldn’t be a luxury. Employers should partner with school districts on cooperative education placements and offer paid internships. Paid learning levels the playing field and accelerates skill development. Public funding should support the effort, and public schools should build their schedules and requirements to accommodate it. Unions should welcome the creation of such roles as vital to their future members and the health of their professions, rather than resist them as possible substitutes for existing jobs.

One major obstacle is outdated labor regulations that often prevent high school students from participating in safe, supervised technical work experiences. Both states and the federal government should update regulations to allow structured, education-connected employment in fields like manufacturing, healthcare, and construction, while maintaining strong safety standards. Inflexible time-in-classroom requirements are obstacles as well. States should allow districts to substitute time on the job up to a substantial share of an upper secondary student’s credit hours, provided that work builds toward recognized credentials. 

7. Nurture a pre-apprenticeship layer

Opportunities: state agency action; local action

Many young people and adults need preparation before entering formal apprenticeships. Along with efforts to reform high school career pathways and promote internships, state and local policymakers should focus on building and growing pre-apprenticeship and youth apprenticeship programs, which provide an increasingly important foundation for apprenticeship programs. Often housed at high schools or community colleges, these programs provide instruction in general education (e.g., math or science) or vocational fields and, upon completion, facilitate the entry of students into Registered Apprenticeship Programs. Although the U.S. DOL does not regulate and register pre-apprenticeship and some youth apprenticeship programs, it has issued guidance on the characteristics of what it considers a “quality” pre-apprenticeship program.

For high school students and adults, these programs are valuable because they teach foundational skills, safety, and workplace expectations, provide exposure to career options, and then offer an official on-ramp into the apprenticeship pathway. For employers, the programs broaden participation and help them hire more confidently.  

Align Incentives with Employment Outcomes

8. Define data standards and share data 

Opportunities: federal agency action; state agency action

Holding schools at every level accountable for outcomes, and even helping them to understand what outcomes they achieve, requires significant upgrades to data collection and sharing. Most school districts and community colleges genuinely do not know what happens to their students after graduation and have no way to find out. Basic employment measures, even up to the level of national job creation, rarely make any distinction in job quality.  

The U.S. DOL should establish criteria for job quality (e.g., income level, income variability, benefits, and schedule) and assess job growth and employment rates accordingly. Those same criteria should then be applied to qualify jobs and career paths for registered apprenticeship status and funding streams like the workforce training grant. At both the state and federal level, existing systems for recording income like Social Security and Unemployment Insurance programs should be leveraged to provide aggregate data back to high schools and colleges on the outcomes achieved by their students. States should publish accessible dashboards showing employment rates, earnings, and credential outcomes by institution and program, empowering students, families, and providers to focus on programs that deliver real value.

9. Restructure funding formulas

Opportunities: state legislation; state agency action

Public funding should reward results, not seat time. Texas State Technical College’s value-added funding formula offers a model: tie institutional funding to the wage gains and employment outcomes of students. States should move away from credit-hour or enrollment formulas and toward performance systems that measure whether graduates actually proceed into good jobs. When funding depends on outcomes, institutions naturally align curriculum, advising, and program design with labor-market demand.

10. Tie tax incentives to job quality and workforce plans

Opportunities: state legislation; state agency action

States routinely offer billions of dollars in tax abatements and subsidies to attract employers. Those incentives should come with workforce expectations, not only the quantity but also the quality of jobs. Well-defined criteria for job quality, described above, would be an important first step.  

Before qualifying large projects for incentives, states should ask a simple question: How will you develop the workers you need? Companies receiving public support should demonstrate credible training plans, an apprenticeship strategy or other engagement with local education systems, and pathways to family-supporting wages. Good employers make recruiting and training a core business strategy, ensuring that public investments translate into local opportunity.

Closing Perspective

Taken together, these recommendations do not prescribe a single blueprint. That is intentional. The goal is not uniformity, but diversity with accountability.

An opportunity-pluralist system recognizes that different people thrive in different settings: a high-school pathway in Fresno, an employer academy at Hadrian, an apprenticeship at Micron, a union training center in Syracuse, or local programs for electricians coordinated by a national consortium. Public policy should make it easier to start, scale, and sustain these initiatives.

The test of success is simple: more Americans learning by doing, earning while they learn, and stepping into jobs that support families and strengthen American industry.