Career Connected Schools

Building a Career-Curious Culture Across Your District

Career Connected Schools is the highest level of partnership with Connect the Work, designed for districts and schools ready to make career readiness a defining feature of their culture. Schools work toward internationally benchmarked best practices across five career benchmarks, from integrating career conversation into everyday instruction to empowering students to own and develop their own plans. Certification for staff is included, along with strategic planning, professional development, and print and digital resources to support lasting, systemic change.

52 member schools across 7 states

237,000+ students impacted

1,400 certified coaches and teachers

THE PROBLEM WE SOLVE

Career readiness doesn't require more initiatives. It requires better alignment.

Districts are often pushed toward new technology, assessments, and platforms that add cost and complexity without improving outcomes. Career learning gets positioned as one more program, when what students actually need is a common language and a set of practices woven into what teachers already do every day. Connect the Work embeds career conversations into existing instruction, maximizing what your schools already have rather than replacing it.

WHAT THE RESEARCH SHOWS

Three studies across California, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, involving more than 89,000 students, found that schools using career conversation practices saw measurable increases in:

Student-initiated career conversations
Engagement in existing school activities
Alignment between student identity and aspiration
Work-based learning participation and postsecondary planning

Advancing Career Development and Student Wellbeing Districtwide through Career Conversations: Quakertown, PA – 2024/2025 Research Findings by Dr. Cristina Santos, October 2025

Student Engagement and Career Development in Montgomery County Public Schools: Impact of MoCoCAP – by Dr. Cristina Santos, November 2025

Evidence of Career Development and Student Wellbeing in Schools with Career Conversations: Orange County Schools – 2024/2025 Research Findings by Dr. Cristina Santos, December 2025

WHAT Does A PARTNERSHIP LOOKS LIKE?

Schools and districts in the Career Connected Schools network evaluate their current practices and set priorities for improvement using five career benchmarks. Career Connected Learning:

Is part of everyday instruction
Is ongoing
Engages families
Involves community partnerships
Empowers students to own and develop their plans

Partnership is flexible and designed to meet your district where it is. Depending on your goals and capacity, we work together through an early adopter model to build momentum school by school, a schoolwide implementation anchored by leadership benchmarking and coaching cycles, or a system integration model for districts ready for broad, coordinated change. All models include professional development, staff certification, and customized print and digital resources. This is not a new platform. It is not a curriculum. The focus is on building educator capacity that scales without adding cost or complexity.

CAREER LEARNING BUILT INTO WHAT YOUR TEACHERS ALREADY DO