Although nearly two decades have elapsed since the turn of the 21st century, the U.S. approach to education, training, and workforce development still largely operates on a 20th-century model. Workforce preparation-a linear pipeline from K-12 education to possibly college and then a job-is similar to what it was several decades ago. Labor market policies designed for the industrial age still prevail. Labor market signals and other information flows between members of the current and future workforce, education and training institutions, and employers have not kept pace with the revolutionary changes in information processing. New technologies are often viewed as threats to the world of work rather than as opportunities to enable the labor force to be agile and adaptable to further innovation and change. Recognizing the value of interdisciplinary collaboration and systems thinking, RAND Corporation researchers, supported by RAND Corporation investment funds, conducted this study to develop a systems-level, blue-sky approach to conceptualizing and visualizing a 21st-century U.S. workforce development and employment system. This report is the first step in moving the United States to a system that accounts for workers' needs for lifelong learning, employers' continuously changing workforce requirements, rapid and often disruptive changes in technology, and the ever-evolving nature of work. This publication should be of interest to educators, business leaders, policymakers, researchers, and other stakeholders who are engaged in issues relating to workforce education and training and the future of work.

Testimony presented before the Florida House of Representatives Education & Employment Committee on January 26, 2021.

This book investigates the professional needs and training requirements of an ever-changing public service workforce in Australia and the United Kingdom. It explores the nature of future roles, the types of skills and competencies that will be required and how organisations might recruit, train and develop public servants for these roles. Leading international research - practitioners make recommendations for how local organisations can equip future public servants with the skills and professional capacities for these shifting professional demands, and the skillsets they will require. Drawing on ideas that have been developed in the Australian and UK context, the book delves into the major themes involved in re-imagining the public service workforce and the various forms of capacities and capabilities that this entails. It then explores delivery of this future vision, and its implications in terms of development, recruitment and strategy.

Tested, practical ideas to meet current and future skilling needs of both workers and employers The labor market in the United States faces seemingly contradictory challenges: Many employers have trouble finding qualified applicants for current and future jobs, while millions of Americans are out of work or are underemployed—their paths to living-wage jobs blocked by systemic barriers or lack of adequate skills. Growing Fairly offers workforce development reforms that meet the needs of both workers and employers. Based on the experiences of hundreds of leaders and workers, the authors set out ten principles for designing a more effective and equitable system that helps workers obtain the skills necessary for economic mobility. The principles outlined in the book argue for a more comprehensive view of the skilling needs of current and prospective workers. They spell out the attributes of effective programs and make the case for skill-based hiring, widely distributed performance data, and collaboration. The book emphasizes the importance of local action to overcome the structural barriers that challenge even the most determined would-be learners. Growing Fairly shows cross sector leaders how to work across organizational boundaries to change the trajectory of individuals struggling to make a living wage. This is not a book of untested theories. Instead, it is written by practitioners for practitioners. Much of it is told through the voices of those who run programs and people who have taken advantage of them. While the issues the book addresses are profound, its take on the subject is optimistic. Between them, the authors have spent decades searching out and supporting effective practices. Even more critically, they have learned how to knit competing agencies and organizations into cohesive systems with coordinated missions. Their practical ideas will benefit a wide range of readers, from practitioners in the field to students and scholars of the American labor system.

A revolutionary new educational model that encourages educators to provide spaces for students to display their academic brilliance without sacrificing their identities Building on the ideas introduced in his New York Times best-selling book, For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood, Christopher Emdin introduces an alternative educational model that will help students (and teachers) celebrate ratchet identity in the classroom. Ratchetdemic advocates for a new kind of student identity—one that bridges the seemingly disparate worlds of the ivory tower and the urban classroom. Because modern schooling often centers whiteness, Emdin argues, it dismisses ratchet identity (the embodying of “negative” characteristics associated with lowbrow culture, often thought to be possessed by people of a particular ethnic, racial, or socioeconomic status) as anti-intellectual and punishes young people for straying from these alleged “academic norms,” leaving young people in classrooms frustrated and uninspired. These deviations, Emdin explains, include so-called “disruptive behavior” and a celebration of hip-hop music and culture. Emdin argues that being “ratchetdemic,” or both ratchet and academic (like having rap battles about science, for example), can empower students to embrace themselves, their backgrounds, and their education as parts of a whole, not disparate identities. This means celebrating protest, disrupting the status quo, and reclaiming the genius of youth in the classroom.

An argument for reimagining skill in a way that can extend economic opportunity to workers at the bottom of the labor market. America has a jobs problem--not enough well-paying jobs to go around and not enough clear pathways leading to them. Skill development is critical for addressing this employment crisis, but there are many unresolved questions about who has skill, how it is attained, and whose responsibility it is to build skills over time. In this book, Nichola Lowe tells the stories of pioneering workforce intermediaries--nonprofits, unions, community colleges--that harness this ambiguity around skill to extend economic opportunity to workers at the bottom of the labor market.