To achieve theirmission, they focus on three goals:
- All lower-income young people graduate high school on a clear path to college completion and career success.
- All underprepared students gain the skills they need to earn postsecondary credentials with high labor market value.
- All lower-skilled workers obtain the education and training required to move into family-supporting careers with clear paths for advancement.
- Preparing for College and Career
- Earning Postsecondary Credentials
- Advancing Careers and Economic Growth
Founded in 1983, JFF began as a nonprofit helping half a dozen states assess and bridge their workforce skill gaps. Initially incorporating as Jobs for Connecticut’s Future, they advised employers on how to deepen their pools of qualified employees and workers on how to land higher-wage jobs.
As these projects continued into the 1990s, JFF became a key player in the School-to-Work movement, helping young people access family-supporting careers by forging partnerships among school districts, local employers, and other community resources. This work helped us identify and develop the practices and policies that best enable secondary students to prepare for college and career success.
Their secondary school work led directly to the 2002 launch of the Early College High School Initiative, a network of 246 innovative schools that motivate students—mostly minority, low-income, and first-generation college goers—to take college courses and earn free college credit in high school. Propelled by a philosophy of “acceleration, not remediation,” support services, and collaborative group teaching methods, 93 percent of early college students graduate—significantly higher than the national average. More than half leave with two or more years of free college credit or an Associate’s degree already in hand and an excellent chance of entering a family-supporting career or further education.
This initiative, based heavily on partnerships with hundreds of colleges, naturally led to JFF expanding work with the postsecondary sector in the 2000s. In particular, they increased the focus on the supports that college students—especially populations underrepresented in higher education—need to progress toward a high-value credential. The programs and services range from helping accelerate students through developmental education, combining Adult Basic Education and job-skill training to help low-skilled adults gain credentials faster, applying real-time labor market information to help colleges build structured career pathways for students, and developing state policy that strengthens and expands these programs.
Today, the program and policy experts tend to all sections of the education-to-career pipeline, helping reengage and advance those who have fallen through its cracks, or may fall, at any point: those struggling in or dropping out of high school, floundering in pre-college developmental education programs, or underemployed with skills too low to obtain a career-advancing credential.
