The Opportunities (and Challenges) of Organizing High Schools for College and Career Readiness

A High School Diagnostic

Five School District Challenges in Implementing College and Career Strategies

1. Missing foundations: 9th and 10th grade students don’t have the core knowledge and skills necessary to access and succeed in advanced college and career opportunities later in high school. See the recommendations.

2. Random acts of college and career: High schools often deliver advanced college and career experiences as one-off courses, or opportunities accessible only to small groups of students. See the recommendations.

3. A narrow set of providers limits scalability: A huge leap is required to increase the number of opportunities and students’ access to them. This is only possible with an ample number of providers. See the recommendations.

4. An unsustainable teaching job: The structure of the teaching job makes it hard for teachers to deliver rigorous, relevant, and engaging college- and career-aligned instruction. See the recommendations.

5. Misaligned schedules: High schools’ traditionally rigid schedules limit their ability to successfully provide college and career opportunities. See the recommendations.

Challenge 1: Missing Foundations

Often, the first step in a district or school’s college and career strategy centers on expanding advanced, early college, and career-themed course offerings in the 11^th and 12^th grades.  Our analysis, however, shows that many students—especially those coming into high school behind grade level—aren’t mastering the knowledge and skills they need to be ready to engage in this kind of advanced coursework in upper grades.

We’ve seen in many districts that by the end of 10^th grade, many students are often off track to earn required credits for graduation. In one district, nearly a quarter of ninth graders were behind by the end of the year, failing to meet district credit requirements (Figure 1). This issue escalated for students in the 10^th grade, with nearly half of all 10^th graders falling behind. Off-track students were overrepresented in the students who dropped out or left the district.

The pace of credits earned matters for two reasons:

1. We’ve seen that students who fall behind during their early high school years are more likely to drop out and far less likely to pursue advanced coursework. They’ll need to dedicate substantial time to catching up, which crowds out more engaging and college- and career-relevant classes. In one partner district, we saw that students took about two credit recovery courses on average in their senior year; this is time they could have otherwise spent in a more college- and career-aligned experience, like an internship.
2. Perhaps more importantly, students are arriving at the end of 10th grade missing core knowledge and skills that would support their success in college- and career-aligned coursework in the upper grades. That learning is often never recouped. While credit recovery systems have been shown to increase graduation rates, their impact on actual student learning is far less clear.²

Figure 1: Class of 2023 On-Track Rates Based on Credits Earned 

District X highlights a common challenge many districts face. About half of their students are off track by 10th grade, leading them to either dropout and/or fail to meet graduation requirements by their anticipated graduation year.

So, what’s the connection to college and career readiness?

First, we’ll never achieve equity or scale with respect to more advanced college and career opportunities if a significant proportion of students are ending the 10th grade without the knowledge, skills, and/or credits they need to be able to engage in more advanced work. Complicating the picture even further, we’ve seen that when resources are dedicated to offering more breadth in advanced, upper grade courses, it comes at the cost of investments in 9th and 10th grade readiness.

Our analysis has revealed this finding often, with the early high school grades having larger class sizes, larger teaching loads, and a disproportionate number of novice teachers (Figures 2 and 3).

Figures 2a and 2b: Average Class Size by Grade Level and Class Type

Challenge 2: Random Acts of College and Career

While many districts provide meaningful and relevant college and career opportunities, like CTE pathways, AP courses, dual enrollment, and early college partnerships, we’ve learned that in many cases students don’t consistently participate at high rates. For example, in one of our partner districts, we looked at student participation in four different types of advanced coursework—AP, CTE, dual enrollment, and IB—and saw that participation varied widely (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Participation in Advanced Courses

Participation in advanced opportunities varies widely across schools, as seen in District Z.

And, even for students who do enroll, many don’t take courses in ways that add up to a credential or “stackable” credits that will count toward a post-secondary degree. For example, in two schools in one of our partner districts, the overwhelming majority of students who enrolled in a CTE pathway took only one course in their high school career (Figure 5).

Figures 5a and 5b: Count of Students by Number of Career Pathway Courses Taken Over High School Career

Many students do not take CTE course sequences in a way that leads them to an industry credential, as seen in two District Y schools, where most students enroll in just one of three CTE courses required.

Another analysis shows that students who succeed in their AP courses in high school may not be receiving the rigorous instruction and support needed to earn the intended college credits (Figure 6). While about three-quarters of students in this school received As and Bs in these courses, only 10% scored high enough to receive college credit at all universities.  

Figure 6: Student Success, as Measured by Grades and AP Scores

Oftentimes success in AP coursework does not translate to intended college credits, as seen in District Y, where about three-quarters of students succeed in their AP courses based on course grades, but only 10% score high enough on the AP exam to ensure they receive college credit.

To support our districts in understanding these findings, we explored more deeply why these challenges were happening. One driver is the missing foundations explored in the previous section. But that’s not all. We found several other common root causes across our district partners.

One district that made significant progress in naming explicit CTE course sequences that added up to meaningful results struggled to maintain high completion rates of these sequences. Three key reasons completion rates hovered at 50% were course failure, pathway switching, and transfer between schools (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Pathway Credits Earned and Pathway Completion

Even when course sequences are defined, many students fail to complete them due to course failure. For example, in District X, only half of students complete pathways; for about a third of all students, course failures were one of the biggest barriers to completion.

In this district, students can rarely recover credit for CTE courses, so if a student fails a CTE course, that student will usually take an available course from any pathway to earn credit. This led to about a quarter of all students enrolling in and receiving credits from a mix of pathways while remaining at the same school rather than completing a full sequence leading to a credential.

Another common obstacle lies in creating awareness of offerings and how they should be integrated into strategic course sequences. We hear often that there is not enough common knowledge of opportunities and sequences among students, counselors, and teachers, such that students have the agency to choose thoughtfully and be scheduled into the appropriate courses. We’ve heard from students that they feel they are assigned their schedules and don’t have agency to choose courses based on their interests and goals. Survey results from one of our partner schools showed that while about half of students expressed interest in earning college credit in high school, many did not enroll because they didn’t know which classes were offered, how to enroll, or they worried the classes would be too difficult.

This lack of consistency, transparency, and guidance can be a big driver of sporadic and inequitable enrollment in these opportunities. In one district, we saw that even among students prepared for advanced courses, as measured by their PSAT scores, there was a tendency to under-enroll in AP classes (Figure 8).

Figure 8: Proficient Student Enrollment in AP Courses

Many students who are prepared for advanced courses are not enrolling, as can be seen in District Y. There, the majority of proficient students, as measured by PSAT scores, did not enroll in AP courses.

We often see that Black and Latinx students are underrepresented, a trend confirmed in recently released research. For example, these findings showed that Black and Latinx students and students from low-income backgrounds who enrolled in and passed Algebra I in 8^th grade were less likely to enroll in advanced math courses in high school compared to their peers.⁴ 

Finally, we discovered that many high school schedules often pose challenges—they are either too rigid, not leaving enough room beyond graduation requirements to fully complete sequences of courses that lead to a credential, or they don’t provide sufficient advisory or individualized time to support students to and through these sequences of courses. Figure 9 shows a sample student schedule in a district that has six-period days in its high schools. Students who take a three-course CTE sequence have room for only three other course experiences in their schedules.

Figure 9: Typical Student Course Progression

Typical high school schedules are too rigid. As seen in District Y, students barely have enough room to reach credentials, and course failures limit student ability to take advanced courses or electives.

So, with few open slots, students must follow a rigid sequence of courses to earn the necessary credits that lead to credentials. When there’s no room for error or courses are offered at a single time, students who need additional support or want to participate in more customized experiences, like work-based learning, can quickly fall behind.

How to Meet This Challenge

Without intentional design and awareness among students, advanced offerings can be costly investments that fail to lead to the outcomes and experiences we want for our students. To ensure equitable enrollment, foster student success, and maintain financial sustainability, districts should: 

• Define clear course sequences with integrated academic support.
  • Name course sequences that add up to combinations of college credits and/or certifications that are aligned to students’ post-secondary aspirations and the local labor market.
  • Incorporate purposeful support structures within these sequences, such as companion courses aligned with college-level coursework, taught by high school teachers.
• Build a portfolio of providers and modes of instruction that support scheduling flexibility.
  • Explore options that give students some flexibility in where and when they access courses aligned to strategic college and career sequences. This might include use of partners who deliver courses through a hybrid model, centralized locations for specialized course offerings that are accessible to all high schools, and evening, summer, and weekend options. This can help meet the needs of students who transfer between schools, and/or experience schedule conflicts with a course they need to take. This is a strategy that is necessary to reach scale and ensure students have abundant choice.
• Prioritize resources and systems for advising, navigation, and placement.
  • Invest in advising programs and structures, like advisory programs to build strong student-teacher relationships and help students explore career interests.
  • Prioritize schedule structures that foster meaningful student-teacher connections, such as cohorting students and teachers and reducing teacher loads.
  • Provide high-quality counseling to all students, by decreasing student-counselor ratios and enabling more individualized support for academic and career planning.
• Align school schedules and staffing.
  • Ensure schedules and associated staffing enable these sequences, while also maintaining other elective choices and enabling flexibility for credit recovery when necessary.

For examples of what this looks like in practice for schools and districts across the country, see our Early Postsecondary Opportunities Guide.

Challenge 3: A Narrow Set of Providers Limits Scalability

We’ve learned that if districts plan to increase access to advanced opportunities for more students, and they recognize that sequences of courses matter, this often will require planning for a huge increase in college- and career-aligned course offerings and a shift to the educator workforce.

As one of our district partners set out to do this work, we analyzed the number of seats, course sections, and teachers required to scale up advanced courses to their long-term goals around participation rates and course sequences. It required a substantial increase in offerings and thus in educator resources. One school required a seven-fold increase in total AP and/or dual-enrollment seats (Figure 10). This translated to 84 new course sections, impacting at least 14 educators at this school alone.

Figure 10: Advanced Course Seats

In many districts, reaching the desired scale of advanced course enrollment requires a dramatic increase in course seats. For example, School A would need a ~7X increase in total AP and dual enrollment spots.

How to Meet This Challenge 

Reaching the scale of student participation that many districts are aiming for requires a robust strategy that invests in a mix of providers aligned to strategic sequences of courses. This means:

• Investing in certification of the existing teacher workforce to teach on-campus dual-enrollment courses: Many teachers already in the system may be qualified or close to qualification for teaching dual-enrollment courses on campus. By investing in certification programs or providing support for teachers to fulfill necessary qualifications, districts can leverage their existing workforce to expand opportunities for students.
• Building partnerships with community colleges and universities: When establishing partnerships with post-secondary institutions, more is not necessarily better. Concentrating efforts on a few key partners allows for streamlined logistics and creates incentives for those partners to offer entire sections of courses at times that align with high school schedules.
• Identifying hybrid partnerships: Collaborative models that involve hybrid partnerships can effectively broaden access to advanced opportunities. For instance, innovative models like Ed Equity Lab, integrate dual-enrollment courses into high school schedules using co-teaching by a university professor, a high school teacher, and a university teaching assistant.
• Reallocating staff to support other school priorities: Building a mix of off-campus providers that support student learning can often free on-campus staff time. We’ve seen schools use this newfound staff time to invest in other priorities that support readiness for and coordination of scaled, advanced, on- and off-campus opportunities. For example, freed staff time could be used to increase teacher collaboration and learning time or to invest release time to support internship coordination. Alternatively, districts could use freed resources to decrease class sizes and loads in the ninth grade.

For examples of what this looks like in practice for schools and districts across the country, see our Early Postsecondary Opportunities Guide.

Challenge 4: An Unsustainable Teaching Job

A sustainable, supported workload for teachers is a key enabling factor as districts expand their college and career programs. Teachers need time to plan new student experiences and individualized support, and they need a job structure that supports advising and deep relationships with students. We’ve learned that sometimes efforts to expand college- and career-aligned course-taking can sometimes inadvertently make the teaching job harder.

As students’ course-taking options expand, so can the number of unique courses teachers must prepare for and teach across the week. This can make it challenging for teachers to provide effective instruction and supports for students across the board—both in early high school grades, as students build foundational knowledge, and in upper grades as they participate in more rigorous experiences. Figure 11 shows the unintended effect of one district’s strategy to expand college and career-aligned course-taking on the teaching job. CTE and electives teachers were most likely to have four or more preps, and even a third of core teachers also had four or more.

Figure 11: Percentage of Teachers by Number of Preps

High percentages of teachers have too many preps, meaning distinct classes they are expected to have lesson plans for. For example, in District X, CTE and elective teachers are most likely to have four or more preps, and even a third of core teachers have four or more preps.

The teaching job is often most unsustainable in ninth and 10th grades, where teachers can have the largest teaching loads because resources are prioritized to ensure a breadth of upper grade electives, (Figure 12). Addressing this challenge is a critical step toward ensuring students receive rigorous, relevant, and engaging instruction throughout their high school careers.

Figure 12: Average Teacher Load

9^thand 10th grade teachers often have higher loads, working with a larger number of unique students per day compared to their peers in 11th and 12th grades, as seen In School Y.

How to Meet This Challenge

To provide teachers with a sustainable workload, and the time for team collaboration, reflection, and relationships to effectively support students in early post-secondary opportunities, districts should:

• Reduce teacher loads through innovative scheduling or staffing structures. They should explore options such as a 4×4 block schedule, ninth-grade cohort teams, and/or double blocking to reduce teacher loads and create more manageable teaching environments.
• Use external partnerships for advanced opportunities in the upper grades. Leaders should work with external partners, such as regional providers, hybrid programs, and/or industry collaborators in work-based learning, to help alleviate the burdens of high teacher loads, as we recommended in the second and third learnings.
• Protect teacher planning time. District leaders must prioritize teacher planning and collaboration. They should be strategic around who has shared planning time with colleagues, including grade-level and content-level teams, and pair up novice educators to have time with veteran teachers for mentorship opportunities. They should also consider carving out additional planning time each week through creative structures, like Cardozo High School’s Learning Lab, where partners engage with students on- or off-campus, while teachers have dedicated planning time.

For examples of what reimagining the teaching job looks like in practice for schools and districts across the country, see our Reimagining the Teaching Job vision paper.

Challenge 5: Misaligned Schedules

From our work across several districts, we have learned that scheduling is a necessary piece of the puzzle to seamlessly integrate college and career opportunities into the high school experience.

Within each of our major takeaways about what’s required to do this work well, we’ve seen common barriers imposed by student and teacher schedules: 

• Rigid schedules don’t embed enough time for academic supports or advising.
• Students don’t have enough time to complete sequences of courses that lead to a credential, especially in cases when they fail a course in the sequence or otherwise need space in their schedules for credit recovery.
• Bell schedules often don’t align with the availability of external partners, which prevents students from accessing off-campus opportunities, like dual enrollment and internships, in large numbers during the school day.
• Teachers often have inadequate planning, learning, and collaboration time built into their schedules, yet as the breadth of student coursework expands, teacher preps often expand too.

How to Meet This Challenge

Scheduling is an incredibly complex process, with decisions causing cascading effects that have implications for how students and staff spend their time, and thus shape the teaching and learning occurring in classrooms. Yet, many of the opportunities discussed above cannot be successful without rethinking our school schedules. Therefore, when redesigning schedules to solve this diverse set of challenges, districts should:

• Engage in a systematic and comprehensive schedule design process: This undertaking should facilitate reflection across a broad set of potential priorities related to college and career goals, weighing the trade-offs between different decisions. Districts should evaluate different schedules against their priorities using a set of key metrics, such as instructional time, credits possible, and teacher planning time (Figure 13). 
• Explore flexible crediting methods: One of the reasons schedules can feel so inflexible is that we assume a fixed time allocation for every credit earned. To minimize this complexity, consider approaches that give credit based on mastery rather than seat time; this can include: assigning multiple credits to courses that integrate standards from multiple areas, enabling students to receive credit via “testing out” of certain courses, assigning credit for out-of-school experiences (e.g. journalism credit for blogging), or more generally, moving to a competency-based model.   State policy makers and agencies have a critical role to play in ensuring that laws, policies, and regulations include flexibility for districts and schools to allot resources strategically, including around seat time and credit-earning experiences.
• Make off-campus partnerships work: If students are accessing dual-enrollment courses on a large scale, districts can often influence the content and timing of regional providers’ offerings available to their students. State agencies can play an important role in facilitating partnerships, from identifying allowable technology providers to creating incentives for colleges and business partners to participate in pathway experiences for students.

For examples of how strategic scheduling can be used toward a number of different priorities, see our High School Guidebooks.

Figure 13: Comparison of Metrics Against Different Schedule Options

Districts should consider assessing schedule options based on metrics aligned with their design priorities before finalizing a new schedule, as seen in District X.

What Should You Do?

District leaders should collect and reflect on a range of course-taking and resource allocation data to see whether the findings we’ve uncovered across our partners resonate with their districts. Once districts have gathered data and identified key themes, they can dig into root causes. We’ve found that probing into both student and teacher experiences leads to powerful insights.

Leaders can use what they’ve learned to set a “Do Now, Build Toward” strategy, identifying short-term shifts and the larger changes they need to move toward over time. It’s critical to use the data gathered to mobilize a broad set of stakeholders around a clear “why” while delving into challenging resource reallocation decisions.

Students are demanding more relevance in their high school experiences—and organizing strategically to deliver college- and career-aligned experiences is a key part of meeting this student need. The pandemic era taught us that high school structures that have remained the same for decades can be shifted to meet the moment. Taking a data-driven approach can empower leadership to advocate for necessary changes with confidence.

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