Who runs NGLs?
How do NGLs help business?
How do NGLs prepare students for the workforce?
How do NGLs address a communities’ specific workforce needs?
How do NGLs manage interactions between business and education?
Who runs NGLs?
Next Generation Learning Communities (NGLs) are regional alliances of education, business, and civic leaders united in the cause of improving education and strengthening the local workforce. These coalitions can be organized in various ways but must include a broad partnership of all significant players in the community—K–12 and postsecondary educators, leaders from business and industry, and government officials—to effectively produce change. Participants must share a dedication to educational excellence and a conviction that relevant and rigorous education organized on a career academy model can best prepare students to contribute to the economic success of the community.
How do NGLs help business?
NGLs organize networks of career academies that focus on preparing students for careers in specific industries that have been identified as critical for the economic success of the community.
Businesspeople, working with education and community leaders, help decide what curricula, equipment, and resources are needed for successful schools and where to find those resources. NGLs give business a significant say in building a workforce that can handle the challenges of the 21st century economy.
How do NGLs prepare students for the workforce?
NGLs set up career academies in schools based on sectors of the economy that have been identified as priorities for local workforce development. Curricula reflecting the context of these prioritized career clusters is integrated into academic instruction and rigorous career and technical instruction in the career academies.
How do NGLs address a community’s specific workforce needs?
A partnership of education, civic, and high-level business leaders establishes a career academy master plan that identifies the specific local industries and businesses where workforce needs are most critical. Career academies are established that prepare students for those prioritized careers.
Business leaders representing each prioritized career academy make up an on-going business advisory board overseeing the career academy network. Leaders actively participate in and encourage recognition of career academies in their clusters and take special pride in maintaining the quality of their academies.
How do NGLs manage interactions between business and education?
NGLs employ current or former business people as entrepreneurs to mobilize support from businesses within industries that they understand. These entrepreneurs provide the business connections that educators often lack.
In addition, NGLs make a policy of centralizing all business-education interactions in a single office to provide a single point of contact for day-to-day interactions. Higher level relationships are maintained by representative business executives serving on the community-wide NGL partnership boards.