Building Better Pathways for Youth: A Blog Series Exploring Examples of Federal Flexibility

For many years, federal leaders have extolled the benefits of “bridging the gap” between our K-12 education, postsecondary education, workforce, and human services systems to better provide young people with more affordable, accessible pathways to good jobs and into stable, family-sustaining careers. But accomplishing this alignment is easier said than done. Meaningfully bridging the gap between the systems that serve young people on their journey to adulthood requires those systems to share a common vision and have the flexibility to align their work and resources toward it. Currently, these conditions do not exist at the federal level–at least not universally.

In this blog series, we examine three instances where legislation has extended special flexibilities to federal departments to promote greater resource alignment and deeper cooperation, and to ultimately provide for more efficient, effective, and equitable service delivery. This series highlights the origins and mechanics of these cases and gleans lessons from implementation. Hopefully, these findings can inform future policy experiments designed to address funding barriers to greater alignment between the nation’s youth-serving systems.

This project is one of several publications from organizations that were convened by Bellwether to discuss challenges and opportunities in federal pathways policy in 2023 and 2024. You can read publications from other participating organizations here.