Narrative: II. c. 1.

The state of Louisiana must put in place an effective strategy to prepare for the impending job market expansion, in terms of both skills demand, and accelerated job growth. WIOA provides a framework in its requirement for agency and program partnerships that will streamline processes, and create a pipeline for recruiting, training, educating, and otherwise preparing citizens to acquire a living wage. To be successful, this must be a collaborative effort and shared responsibility among all partners. An additional benefit of this course of action will come in the form of a stronger economy. The continuous expansion of the collaborative partnerships will allow Louisiana to fulfill the requirements of WIOA. It will also maximize benefits to the state’s workforce, employers and overall economy.

The mission of the Louisiana Workforce Commission (LWC) is to put people to work by continuously improving our demand-driven system that responds quickly to the immediate and long-term needs of employers. The core focus is to fill job vacancies by connecting skilled and credentialed job seekers to employers in demand occupations. This section describes the strategies that Louisiana will implement to achieve the governor’s vision and goals of improving employer engagement, cultivating regional labor market intelligence to drive services, targeting workforce recruitment to meet employer demand, integrating all workforce development services, improving training and technical assistance to Workforce Development Boards and Business and Career Solutions (BCSC) staff, while reducing administrative costs.

To achieve these goals, LWC will capitalize on the shared vision of state and local workforce development boards’ leadership for transformational change by implementing a growing body of promising structural, service delivery and accountability innovations that build on existing strengths, challenge assumptions and create a systemic approach to transform the workforce system into a demand-driven system. A core element of this transformational approach is the commitment of the combined partners to the comprehensive implementation of career pathways.

Louisiana Career Pathways

Through the WIOA planning process, the state’s education and workforce partners developed a vision and framework for Louisiana Career Pathways. The following describes their approach in creating a vision and framework for the implementation of a Career Pathway strategy that aligns with in demand occupations.

Vision: Louisiana Career Pathways are designed to improve lives and the economy. Through integrated career pathways, all Louisianans will have the opportunity to access progressive levels of education and training leading to high-value, high-demand careers. The career pathways approach meets learners where they are, by spanning high school, adult education, post-secondary and beyond, leading to sustainable employment. This includes pre-apprenticeship and registered apprenticeship.

Louisiana Career Pathways connect education and training programs and support services that enable individuals to secure employment within a specific industry or occupational sector, and to advance, over time, to successively higher levels of education and employment in that sector. Each step on the Career Pathway is designed explicitly to prepare workers and students for the next level of employment and education.

The Louisiana Career Pathways Framework

Minimally, all Louisiana Career Pathways must: • Be designed in partnership with business and industry as well as regional economic development entities (in order to meet both current and future sector needs). • Have multiple entry points, including for those with limited basic skills and those with prior educational and work experiences • Incorporate multiple exit points (off-ramps, stop-out points) connected to the attainment of industry-recognized stackable credentials and/or academic credentials. o First stop-out point must be aligned with a viable career opportunity. o Exit points must be embedded in a longer pathway that ultimately leads to high-wage, high-demand careers. • Pathways include opportunities, where appropriate, for acceleration, contextualization, work-based learning and co- or dual-enrollment. • Pathways include Registered Apprenticeship programs and opportunities to obtain a recognized post-secondary credential in the form of a Completion Certificate or an Associate’s Degree for those pursuing further opportunity and credentialing through a community college member of the Registered Apprenticeship College Consortium (RACC). • Include a logical progression/sequence of courses that are applicable to the target credential. o Could define this as blocks of courses tied to defined entry/exit points. o Course sequence provides a clear plan for what students take and when. • Integrate student (participant) supports, including academic supports, non-academic/general support, transitional support, up-front career exploration and ongoing career development as well as job-placement assistance. • Provide the opportunity to earn college credit. o Can include noncredit programs leading to industry-based credentials, but need consistent state policy on how to award college credit for industry-based credentials. o Noncredit pathways are aligned with credit pathways so that students can continue into credit-bearing pathways with transcript credit and without repeating coursework. o Explore the Registered Apprenticeship College Consortium and support community college membership throughout Louisiana to enable journey workers to get on a fast-track for an Associate’s Degree by incorporating their Registered Apprenticeship program participation.

The Louisiana Workforce Investment Council, the Workforce Cabinet, and members of the WIOA Planning Team recognize the need for an education and training system that addresses the state’s economic and workforce challenges. The Planning Team will continue to provide leadership in developing Career Pathway initiatives with a focus on targeted populations with significant barriers to employment (e.g., individuals receiving public assistance, long term unemployed, basic skills deficient adults and youth).

Business Engagement

The Business Engagement Initiative is focused on garnering and utilizing input from businesses to build a package of services and strategies to meet business needs today and into the future. There will be special effort to foster relationships with small businesses and targeted industry sectors in order to develop a custom package of services for these customers. Business Engagement will increase overall business utilization and value received from the workforce system, reduce employer costs to recruit and hire qualified workers and decrease the time required to fill vacancies.

Regional Business Service Structure

Regional business service strategies will transform Louisiana’s workforce development service delivery, creating a positive long-term economic impact. This regional approach is appropriate for the following reasons:

• A sector (also termed “industry cluster”) builds strategic partnerships among businesses, training providers, community organizations and other key stakeholders in a labor market region to bolster the region’s economic competitiveness and promote systemic change.
• A sector approach is more responsive to labor demand than traditional job-matching and training services because it is problem-oriented versus program-oriented, addresses needs interdependently and works to understand the specific needs of businesses within a particular sector.

To create sector strategies, local Workforce Investment Boards and chief elected officials in each region will collaborate in a regional planning process, establish a regional service strategy and develop sector initiatives for in-demand sectors or occupations in the region. Along with a sector strategy, the LWDBs in the regions, with representatives from secondary and post-secondary education programs, shall lead efforts in the regional/local area to develop career pathways by aligning employment, training, education, and supportive services. Engaging industry will lead to the development of career pathways, growing the pipeline of qualified job candidates to fill existing skill gaps in targeted industries. Two existing within the education system are Workaday and Jump Start.

WorkReady U, supports the mission of educating Louisiana’s adult population and moving them beyond a high school equivalency diploma through credit-earning coursework for postsecondary certificates, degrees and family-supporting jobs. Louisiana colleges and WorkReady U providers have implemented career pathways in the following industries:

• Health sciences.
• Information technology.
• Skilled crafts.
• Manufacturing.
• Business office technology.
• Transportation.
• Industrial technology.

Jump Start is a new paradigm for career and technical education (CTE), allowing high school students to attain an industry-promulgated, industry-valued credential in order to graduate high school.Louisiana’s Jump Start program aligns Louisiana’s K-12^th grade CTE strategies with the state’s economic development strategies. Jump Start regional teams, consisting of school districts, colleges, businesses and workforce/economic development experts; collaborate to provide career courses and workplace experiences to high school students. Students have the opportunity to earn industry-valued, industry-promulgated credentials in career fields most likely to lead to high-wage jobs, while preparing them to continue their post-secondary education (in 2- and 4- year colleges) and career development.

LWC will provide additional guidance to LWDBs regarding Career Pathways development as part of its ongoing technical assistance and guidance.

Successful regional sector strategies will share the following common principles:

• Serve the dual purpose of aligning education, training and support services to the needs of employers in an industry sector, while ensuring that those services are accessible to a range of workers.
• Require a strong intermediary organization that sustains energy, coordinates dialogue and brokers relationships among service providers and employers in carrying out the partnership’s agenda.
• Be employer-driven, wherein employers recognize their self-interest in and need for the partnership.
• Promote systemic change benefiting workers of all wage and skill levels, the industry and the community at large.
• Include the workforce system as a central player in any number of roles, such as the neutral intermediary body, the manager of operations and funding, and/or the source of labor market information.

The implementation of a regional sector strategy does not follow a cookie-cutter approach, but does reflect the common principles outlined above. Regions create and implement the best overall approach for their local economy with the following core steps in mind:

• Development of a leadership team.
• Identification of a data team that uses traditional and real-time labor market data to identify the top three targeted industry sectors in the region.
• Identification of a neutral, third-party facilitator to assist with creating the process.
• Development of regional sector strategy vision and goals.
• Development of a sector-based strategic plan.
• Identification of performance measures for the strategy.
• Development of a plan to sustain the sector strategy over time.

The ultimate goal is for sector partnerships to successfully identify workers with skills that employers need to compete and expand, as well as for workers to receive relevant training that leads to increased job stability and advancement opportunities. Business needs change rapidly, therefore it is critical that this effort be driven by regional business and is based on continuous, sustained engagement with regional businesses.