Leigh Parise: Policymakers talk about solutions, but which ones really work? Welcome to Evidence First, a podcast from MDRC that explores the best evidence available on what works to improve the lives of people with low incomes. I'm your host, Leigh Parise.

Lawmakers have passed legislation designed to reduce carbon emissions while creating green jobs in diverse industries, such as transportation, construction, environmental management, and agriculture. These have all shown growth in recent years and are predicted to continue to do so. Filling these jobs will require a skilled workforce. Yet, the federal investments in training for green jobs have focused mostly on adults. But, at the same time, shouldn’t we be preparing young people for these kinds of jobs in the future? Are we perhaps missing a crucial opportunity to train young people for jobs that are going to be in huge demand?

Today, I'm joined by Rachel Rosen, a senior research associate and co-director of MDRC's Center for Effective Career and Technical Education to discuss evidence-based strategies that can help create pathways for careers in the green economy for young people who are really the next generation of workers. Rachel, welcome. I'm so happy that you're here today.

Rachel Rosen: Thank you. It's so nice to be here talking about this important subject.

Leigh Parise: Most of your work is focused on career and technical education [CTE] and preparing young people for high-quality jobs to help them advance economically. A big focus of yours lately, I know, has been on green jobs. Can you talk to us a little bit about why this issue of green jobs is so important?

Rachel Rosen: That's a great question, Leigh. The shift to a more environmentally sustainable economy is changing the demand for skills that are needed for the labor market. We tend to think of green jobs as being in new industries, like solar and wind and things that we have never had before, but there's also demand growing for new kinds of skills in existing jobs. For example, people who work in HVAC or heating ventilation and cooling or electricians, the skills that they needed 20 or 30 years ago are not the same skills that they need now because the infrastructure and technology for a sustainable economy have changed.

For example, heating and cooling for a sustainable economy now includes things like heat pumps, both air heat pumps and geothermal heat pumps. For electricians, they need to be able to install the infrastructure for electric vehicles and build chargers or to install induction stoves and make sure that homes can support the electrical load of all of these new technologies.

So, there's a greening of skills that's occurring in the labor market, and there's a lot of demand that's growing for people who have those skills in these new technologies. As they expand, the demand for skills for a well-trained workforce who can do these kinds of jobs and deploy these kinds of skills is increasing both now and as we move into the future. That means that we need skills training and CTE [programs] to teach students these skills—so that we have a pipeline of talent to maintain this infrastructure going forward, but also so that students will have the skills they need to graduate into the labor market that's going to exist for them in the next decade and beyond.

Leigh Parise: That's really helpful to hear you talk through. Let's say, existing programs that are training the electricians of tomorrow or high schools or colleges who are training students for the jobs that they may have when they graduate, to what extent do you feel like they're focused on these kinds of things now?

Rachel Rosen: That's also a good question. I think it differs across what sector you're looking at. I know there are some unions that have been training and updating their skills for their apprenticeship programs. There are some community colleges, there are even some high schools that are doing this. But it's not being done in a coordinated way, and there's also a lot of programs that are only training small numbers of students. So, the programs may exist, but they're not producing enough students to meet the demand's need. I think a more coordinated approach would help really build the workforce of the future.

Leigh Parise: Great. I think that makes a lot of sense. I know in your work, and really across MDRC's work, we think a lot about evidence and how we can apply it. What do we know from the evidence about strategies to effectively prepare students for the jobs that are going to really be in demand like the green jobs that you're talking about here?

Rachel Rosen: One of the things we know is MDRC has done a couple of rigorous evaluations of CTE programs like career academies and P-TECH, which stands for Pathways in Technology Early College High Schools—where students get both a high school diploma and an associate's degree and [receive] work-based learning experiences through industry partnerships. Both of those studies have shown they support students in achieving successful outcomes. Those were both done by MDRC. There are other studies that also show other CTE models, like regional vocational technical high schools and early college high schools, also support students to achieve good outcomes.            

The thing that's interesting about those models for green jobs is that those models are not field-dependent, meaning that the positive results have been found for models that are not dependent on whether it's nursing or business or whatever the field area of concentration is for students. So, it seems logical to think that models that we already know provide success for students could be adapted to train students for green jobs and also have success in that training.

Leigh Parise: Do you want to tell us a little bit about some of the components of those models that we know have been effective in the past that you think might be adaptable for green jobs?

Rachel Rosen: For example, in the P-TECH model, there's a partnership between a high school, a community college, and one or more industry partners to provide things like internships and CTE coursework for students that will train them for jobs in that industry. Similarly, in career academies, cohorts of students spend three or four years of high school addressing content that is related to a work area as well as related to the academics. So, they're really immersed in learning about the career and how it fits into both their academics and their career aspirations. Those integrated models seem to be successful for students.

I will say there are some of these schools that are already focused on training students in green jobs. For example, there's a P-TECH school in Malta, New York, that's focused on training students for sustainable jobs. There are a bunch of career academies in California that also focus on different areas of green jobs. But, as I mentioned, these are all small programs, and they're not training the numbers of students that will be needed for the jobs that are coming in the next decade.

Leigh Parise: Great. Thank you. It's helpful to hear about specific places where some of this stuff is already happening, so I think that will be really interesting for people. We are at a time where it feels like there's a lot of attention on green jobs and sustainability. What do you think it really takes to make this happen? Employers and educators and federal and state governments, what can they all be doing?

Rachel Rosen: I think one of the things that's always a challenge for schools and for employers is to figure out how to break down the silos between them to build effective partnerships—where the schools have knowledge of what the skills are that employers need, and employers feel invested in the school in that we are training a pipeline for the future to be competent, skilled workers for our industry. If there are ways that policymakers and schools and institutions can come together to figure out how can we work together and learn together to have mutually beneficial, rewarding relationships between schools—whether it's community colleges or high schools—and industry partners, I think that that would go a long way to helping build some understanding about what it is that's needed. I think also professional development in what's needed for teachers and developing interest in students about how learning about sustainability and these jobs fits into the future for them.

Leigh Parise: Thank you. That's really helpful. Is there other work that you're focused on at the MDRC CTE Center that you think will be helpful for informing the different ways to think about that?

Rachel Rosen: Right now, we're working on a case study in the New York City metro region where we're looking at how city policy, community colleges, the education department, and other workforce developers are working to train a labor market in the New York City region for jobs that are expected to grow—and that are being facilitated by some local and state policy. We think that this will help provide a blueprint for how other localities can work to really facilitate training people for these jobs—and also highlight what are potential barriers and things to look out for and ways to address issues that come up. So that's something that we're working on now, and we're excited to put that out there once it's done.

Leigh Parise: That feels like that'll be really helpful for getting to some concrete and specific examples of both: what does this process look like and then what are the activities that are happening for students? One question I think that people might have when we talk about green jobs is how do you know what jobs are going to be needed in the future? When you're thinking about green jobs and what kinds of skills people are going to need five, ten years down the line, what do you tell people when they want to know how you think about that?

Rachel Rosen: That's a great question. I think one of the ways to think about it is that really, in some ways, every job is going to have to change. The way to think about climate change and what we need to do to keep a sustainable planet is to think about, how do we constrain the resources that we're using so that we continue to have them into the future and not just use up all the resources now? In some ways, every job is going to have to change to think about its impact on the environment.

There's a big push to change the way agriculture is done because agriculture currently is a huge contributor to climate change, but there are more sustainable ways to engage in agriculture that can actually help reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. But other jobs also need to think about their environmental impact: How much plane travel do specific jobs do? How do we think about or talk about climate change? So, if you think broadly, every job in some way is going to need to change to live on a planet that is resource-constrained.

But right now I think the focus is really on these issues of infrastructure and technological change—and how do we deploy a lot of the things that have been developed? So there's been a lot of things that have been developed and people are continuing to develop, but it's a matter of how do we get them out there into the world? How do we get builders to use cement that is more sustainably developed? How do we get electricians to know how to build out the infrastructure that's needed to support electrifying things so that they don't use gas, for example? There are lots of ways to think about the greening of every job, but for now the immediate needs are on infrastructure change and technological change. As we go forward into the future, more jobs will develop and expand.

Leigh Parise: It makes me feel happy that you are thinking about this. I know that being able to take the MDRC lens of what do we know about what's effective, and what are the big questions, and how can we help to find some answers to them, I hope, makes others feel good, too. Rachel, thank you so much for joining me.

Rachel Rosen: Thank you so much for having me. I think this is a really exciting new thing to think about. As you said, it's great to think about how we can apply lessons learned from strong evidence building to this really big question of what's happening in the labor market.

Leigh Parise: Great. Your insights, I think, have been really helpful. To learn more about MDRC's Center for Effective Career and Technical Education, visit mdrc.org. Did you enjoy this episode? Subscribe to the Evidence First podcast for more.