Executive Summary

*Printable summary with illustrations (OhioSkillsBank_Exec_Sum.pdf)

The Ohio Skills Bank (OSB), a key component of TurnAround Ohio, will seamlessly link education, workforce development and the needs of business. It will coordinate talent development initiatives on a statewide basis to:

• Ensure that higher education and adult workforce training are responsive to both employer needs and the career advancement requirements of workers
• Facilitate the development of a single seamless statewide educational system through adulthood where courses and credits are more uniform to eliminate confusion and disparities and to enhance transferability

The OSB will foster regional alliances between employers and education and training providers to conduct localized gap analyses of critical occupation and skill shortages of targeted industries. It also will ensure that education, training and industry-recognized, portable credentialing systems are best aligned to meet these challenges and, in doing so, contribute toward achieving Ohio’s workforce development goals.

This is a sector strategy approach, which differs from traditional state economic development-driven training programs. Economic development-driven programs generally fund workforce projects for individual employers in a transactional sense. Sector strategies, on the other hand, align entire education and training systems to address the talent development needs of multiple employers within an industry sector.

The Ohio Skills Bank will fundamentally reframe the relationship between regional adult education and training and their surrounding community, turning adult educational institutions into demand-driven engines of economic development.

Process

1. Research and Analysis

• Ohio Bureau of Labor Market Information releases target industry/occupation indicators within context of statewide economic development targets and
• Regional teams of employers and educators/trainers conduct gap analysis on high-wage, high-skilled and high demand occupations using the Career Pathways methodology.

2. Program Design

• Regional consortia design/redesign regional education/training programming to address economically critical gaps, with modifications to institutional budgets and
• Employer Panel signs off on plan as responsive to industry needs.

3. Program Implementation

• Classes enrolled, students recruited through social marketing and networking within target industries and
• Performance measured to ensure that regional gaps are closed, individuals are placed into high-wage occupations in growth industries and industries’ needs are met.

Areas of Activity

The education/training consortia structure will also allow the University System of Ohio to implement a number of state policy objectives at the Regional Level. These initiatives will directly support the demand-responsive programming goals of the Ohio Skills Bank:

• Integration of adult education assets into the University System of Ohio (ABLE, Adult Career-Tech Education, Colleges);
• Regional constructs that enable articulation and transfer agreements leading to a seamless education system through career pathway planning and
• Implementation of Accelerate Ohio’s “stackable certificates” program.

Key Elements of Ohio’s Regional Sector Strategy Model

1. Balanced approach:

“Silos” are dismantled as the needs of employers and the economic development communities are addressed through alignment of education and training assets. Balance also is achieved by leveraging the transactional relationships of Ohio’s economic development professionals with the systems management expertise of the University System of Ohio.

2. Multi-employer:

Competitors within an industry work together with education to design solutions to common workforce needs. Individual regions may foster multiple sector strategy programs at once – each to address specific industry needs.

3. Creating a bridge:

Industry has a common forum with education and training to advance regional economic development, largely through a career pathway development model. Giving industry a direct policy role in the program offerings of their regional education providers will ensure that Ohio has a demand-driven education system.

4. Knowledge-driven:

Local education providers work together to leverage economic and labor market data and “first person intelligence” from key stakeholders to meet employer demand.

5. Dual customers:

Solutions are developed for the benefit both employers and workers.

6. System change:

Education and training programming (using existing budgets) is aligned with community partners to systemically address critical workforce shortages.

The Goal: Ohio Skills Bank Career Pathways Plan

Ohio is seeking to emphasize “foundational” elements of regional economies that generate new wealth as opposed to simply re-circulating existing wealth. Critical to this approach is transforming a decentralized state into tightly knit regional collaborative that will create constant feedback and response mechanisms between business and education and training providers. The organization within which these mechanisms will be developed and maintained will be the Ohio Skills Bank (OSB). The mechanisms themselves will be built on the Career Pathways methodology. The existing Career Pathways work in Ohio and around the country gives ample reason to believe that adopting this approach is the fastest and best approach to building the regional collaborative system we seek.

The Ohio Skills Bank (OSB) initiative has identified career pathways as a way to link education and training providers with workforce and economic development systems to meet employer needs. The following plan presents how this important goal will be “operationalized” with the implementation of Career Pathways state-wide. This plan will address three major components.

1. Communicate the Career Pathways methodology and the five steps of the Career Pathways process.

2. List the key attributes of career pathways

3. Present the process and roll-out plan for introducing the Career Pathways model to the major stakeholders and the systems they represent in the 12 regions across the state.

“Career Pathways” is a process, not a product. It will serve as the framework and methodology for implementing sector strategies in the defined 12 economic regions across Ohio. It will permeate every aspect of how the community is served, from the way courses and programs are designed and delivered and the ways we support our students and incumbent workforce in their learning, to the way employer needs are met. Many of the strategies may already be in place in many places right now; in fact there are six current Career Pathways finishing a multi-year demonstration, others may radically change the way faculty and staff, workforce providers, and other stakeholders think about their work.

Defining Career Pathways “Career pathways” is a term for a particular framework or process by which regions can better align publicly supported systems and programs to build a knowledge workforce. A career pathways system is a series of connected educational and training programs and support services that prepares and enables individuals, often while they are working, to secure a job and advance over time to successively higher levels of education and employment in a specific industry or occupational sector. No single organization can implement career pathways—the model is based upon partnerships.

Career pathways provide educational mobility. They are coherent, articulated sequences of rigorous academic and career courses, which can commence with the ninth grade and leading to an associate's degree, an industry-recognized certificate or licensure, and/or a baccalaureate degree and beyond. They also are connected education building blocks, with integrated work experiences and support services, which enable students and adults to combine work and learning and advance over time to better jobs and higher levels of education. As a statewide and national initiative, Career Pathways goals are to increase access, awareness, affordability, resources and alignment for high school students, adult learners, and the incumbent work force to pursue educational and training opportunities around a career focus.