Listen to the Kids: Designing Middle School Career Exploration for Today’s Youth

A recent report found that many states are moving towards building strong vision, policy and infrastructure around middle school career exploration. But is good policy translating into effective experiences for youth on the ground? This session will explore what middle school kids really want from career exploration programming, and examine the results of several focus groups and surveys with past and current middle schoolers. Panelists will also discuss a new initiative launched this spring to catalyze the work of leading states in this field to refine and strengthen state-level policy priorities, expand the ecosystem of partners currently supporting and driving the work, and harness their collective power to create a center of gravity around which policy and practice efforts can be concentrated going forward.