Re-imagining the School-to-Work Experience for
Transfer High School Students
JobsFirstNYC and New Visions for Public Schools invite you to join a deep-dive conversation exploring the structural and long-time systemic barriers that Transfer High School students face in accessing equitable economic opportunity and to reimagine their experience.
Even with a healthy economy, low-income high school students who do not have access to traditional educational pipelines continue to be left out as today’s labor market increasingly requires some type of postsecondary training and/or credential. This is particularly concerning for New York’s 15,000 overage, under-credited high school students attending Transfer High Schools, as only about half graduate with a high school diploma, and many become part of the out-of-school, out-of-work or underemployed population.
Despite these realities, the small-school design of Transfer Schools, co-led with community-based organizations supported through the New York City Department of Education's Learning to Work initiative, presents an opportunity to reimagine how sector-oriented successive learning could transform a students' opportunity to access the economy.
That’s why JobsFirstNYC and New Visions for Public Schools—which has 12 Transfer High Schools schools serving this population as part of their network—are partnering to build and demonstrate a new partnership model. The initiative will integrate youth workforce partners in these schools to embed a sector-oriented successive learning model into a young adult’s school experience. This new model aims to leverage the expertise of youth workforce development organizations, as well as the capacity of the New Visions for Public Schools network and the resources and design of Transfer High Schools.
Read JobsFirstNYC's report, Findings and Recommendations for 16- to 25-Year-Olds in the South Bronx: A JobsFirstNYC Working Paper, which offers a framework for successive learning along with a series of recommendations for how to connect young adults in school to training and employment opportunities.
