Stephanie Reisner and Steph Loeck on Make School Work and GPS Education Partners

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In this episode of the Getting Smart Podcast, Tom Vander Ark speaks with Stephanie Reisner and Steph Loeck of GPS Education Partners about how work-based learning can transform student engagement, career readiness, and economic mobility. Drawing on 25 years of experience and their new book, Make School Work, they explore what makes work-based learning truly high quality, why employer preparation matters as much as student preparation, and how regional ecosystems can scale meaningful career-connected learning opportunities for more young people.

Outline

• (00:00) Introduction
• (08:53) Defining High-Quality Work-Based Learning
• (11:26) Make School Work: The Book & Framework
• (21:58) Employer Partnerships & Regional Ecosystems
• (29:28) Metrics & Advice for Ed Leaders

Introduction

Tom Vander Ark: Work-based learning is more important than ever. As Bright Brown’s executive chair, Jean Eddy explains, few things give kids the opportunity they get through apprenticeship, internship and mentorship. These three ships are the best way to supplement formal learning with real-world experiences. You’re listening to the Getting Smart Podcast.

I’m Tom Vander Ark, and today we’re talking about work-based learning with Stephanie Reisner and Steph Loeck from GPS Education Partners, the authors of a terrific new book called Make School Work: Solving the American Youth Employment Crisis Through Work-Based Learning. Welcome, it’s great to have you both here.

Tom Vander Ark: Stephanie Reisner, take a trip in the way-back machine to the days when we met, maybe 20 years ago. The education center and the youth apprenticeship program started in 2000 with Generac Power Systems, and I think you were the VP of HR, and you created these ed centers at local manufacturers in southeast Wisconsin. And I think you and I visited some. I think you have pictures in your background of students that we may have met on that first, visit.

Stephanie Reisner: I think so.

Tom Vander Ark: So, tell us about Generac, and then maybe it can bleed into how GPS Education Partners evolved from that. What was the problem then?

Stephanie Reisner: So, I mean, honestly, Tom, you saw firsthand kind of what we saw early on, right? It really started as a very practical problem that we were seeing inside Generac at the time. A little bit of the backdrop is, it was 1999, for those of you who remember the Y2K craze, right? I’m dating myself a little bit. Tom gets it. But we actually hired 1,100 people that year. And so we saw firsthand these young people who were coming to our doorstep ill-prepared for the world of work, right? Here, Generac had these great jobs, family-sustaining careers already, but we were struggling to find those young people who were both interested in those types of jobs but also prepared for those kinds of roles.

And then on the flip side, as a strong community member and advocate, we were seeing students in the community who were disengaged from traditional school, right? These were bright young people who were falling through the cracks because they didn’t see the relevance of what they were learning. So it was clear to Generac at the time that traditional education wasn’t serving every student and traditional hiring wasn’t serving every employer, certainly not Generac, right? So the question became, what if we flipped that model, right? Instead of asking students to succeed in school first and then have access to those opportunities and that work experience, what if we connected them to that meaningful work while they were still learning in high school, a la the education centers, which had that education right in the business, and then they were going and making school relevant in the work environment immediately? And that’s how the Second Chance program was born, right? And interestingly enough, the students who actually were the first five students in the Second Chance program at the time actually named the program because this was their second chance for success, right? Not only in school, but in career and life. So we quickly realized at Generac that we weren’t just solving a talent pipeline issue for businesses, but we were helping transform education. And we just celebrated our 25th anniversary. So what started with one employer and one school and five kids now has impacted over 20,000 students with hundreds of businesses, schools and communities that we’ve represented in high-quality work-based learning.

Tom Vander Ark: It was a cool new school model back then for 2000. I was describing this to a friend on a bike ride this morning. These ed centers were usually a classroom at a manufacturing site. And the students would do blended learning in the morning, maybe 12, 15 students and a teacher, and then do an internship in the shop, in the manufacturing site, in the afternoon.

So, a neat school model, right onsite, juniors and seniors usually involved. And I think you had a rotation with a local community college built into that year.

Stephanie Reisner: Right. Additional credits that the students can earn, so it wasn’t just about students who were at risk of not graduating and needed credit recovery, but also those that were advanced, and were looking for additional credit. So we actually had a relationship with the tech college system as well that could bridge that gap for the students.

It was unique in the sense that the students were in that youth apprenticeship programming, right? We were actually able to go to our legislature in Wisconsin and make youth apprenticeship available to all students, where before it was only available to students with a 3.0 and above. And now, because of the program that we developed and the model that we developed, it was now available to all students as long as they were going through our programming. So that’s what made it even more unique, I think.

Tom Vander Ark: I think it was the first time that I saw really high-quality work-based learning. Really good partnerships, committed employers, because they’re not only committing to the internships, but space. Really well-structured, very intentional about the outcomes. In many cases students would finish, as you mentioned, maybe with a credential, some college credit, and many of them even would get a job offer.

Stephanie Reisner: Right. That’s right. Yep. Yep. More than 80% of our students at the time actually went on, well, 100% of them went on to either job placement right away, military service, or they ended up going on to postsecondary. So the doors were open to these students and they had a pathway to a successful what’s next for them. They understood what they liked and what they didn’t like. So there were a lot of valuable things that they had learned throughout that, and that’s a lot of what, those learnings that you talk about, that’s a lot of what is in the book.

Tom Vander Ark: I want to do a quick shoutout to Bob Kern, the founder of Generac and really one of America’s great entrepreneurs. Built a couple of great generator companies.

Stephanie Reisner: He did.

Tom Vander Ark: And came into some tremendous wealth and then created the Kern Family Foundation. I think Bob, at least Bob, was very supportive of Ed Center and this program, right?

Stephanie Reisner: Exactly. No, he was, and not as much through the Kern Family Foundation, but I think personally at the start through Generac, of course, because this was really Generac-funded for the first five-plus years. But then also after that he saw what was needed for our young people. And he also was a strong advocate of education. So he continued to support even after Generac sold.

Tom Vander Ark: A couple weeks ago, I spent a weekend with the KEEN Network and the Kern Family Foundation supports this national network of schools committed to teaching an entrepreneurial mindset, another important cause to the Kern Foundation. So anyway, I appreciate Bob Kern and the Kern family for entrepreneurship and work-based learning. They’ve also been a big supporter of Project Lead The Way.

Defining High-Quality Work-Based Learning

Tom Vander Ark: Steph Loeck, are you two years into this now?

Steph Loeck: Just about.

Tom Vander Ark: Well, let me start with that easy question. Why the commitment to work-based learning, and do you see a connection to the durable skills work that you were doing before that?

Steph Loeck: Yeah, so GPS Ed defines high-quality work-based learning as authentic learning that develops a student’s aspiration, abilities and agency to succeed in the world of work. So in many ways, for me, this is a continuation of what I believe so strongly about and started with in the durable skills context. It’s like, how do we help young people develop this central understanding of themselves as well as these critical competencies to succeed in an uncertain future? And so for us, abilities are durable skills and technical skills. Certainly, in our context, with our roots in manufacturing, the technical skills component is a really big part of that. But when people are looking at the real difference-maker, it’s how we’re preparing students with both the durable skills and then that sense of agency and confidence to navigate their next step. High-quality work-based learning doesn’t have to be as intensive as a 450-hour youth apprenticeship as it is in much of Wisconsin. What is really critically important is that at the end of that experience, a student is better able to wayfind whether they like something they can go deeper in or they don’t. And so a lot of what we’ve created in our framework is elevating those aspects of the model, those aspects of practice that oftentimes are just small tweaks for a school or system to make in order to take these from just sort of happenstance experiences to something really, really impactful and learner-centered, and frankly, the sorts of experiences that I want to see every young person have given what we’re sort of facing in the world today.

Tom Vander Ark: I just want to underscore your definition that work-based learning experience is authentic learning that develops a student’s aspiration, ability and agency. That’s a beautiful summary. I don’t think anyone else has described it so aptly. That’s what we appreciate about you guys, and the way that you have built and committed to those ideals.

Make School Work: The Book & Framework

Tom Vander Ark: Whose idea was the book?

Steph Loeck: GPS Ed was celebrating its 25th anniversary, and, being new to this team, there was such a rich history and so much depth to their work. It was a little bit self-serving in that the book gave me an excuse to go really, really deep with our ed center team, with our consulting team, to unpack the different projects that we’ve had in these communities in a deep way and synthesize that into a framework that we can open-source for others to leverage and learn from everything that our team has experienced. It’s not that this work is too difficult to execute, but the reality of it is, it’s a bit complex and there are definitely common challenges and barriers that people face. Why not let people learn from, frankly, all the mistakes that we’ve made along the way to accelerate progress and accelerate our impact collectively in the work-based learning space?

Tom Vander Ark: That’s a beautiful rationale. I like the idea of sort of open-sourcing a blueprint or a map, a how-to manual, because the book is super practical and it does a beautiful job of sharing succinctly the lessons of the last 25 years. Six-part framework, I’d love to have you sort of unpack the GPS Ed six-part framework for work-based learning. Steph, do you want to?

Steph Loeck: Of course. So, the framework that we developed will walk you through the why, who, what, how, so what and now what of designing, implementing and scaling a high-quality work-based learning framework. It all stacks up when you answer those questions to a logic model that is not intended to just sit on a piece of paper like a nice, pretty poster that lives on the wall, but is really supposed to be something you can come back to over and over again as you implement this work. Ultimately, scaling and sustaining high-quality work-based learning is an exercise in change management, and so there’s a lot of changing hearts and minds, building capacity, iteration and continuous improvement, learning from what’s working and what’s not as you sort of start a program and continue toward growth and scale. And so this framework is designed to help you think through all of those pieces and then grow with you along the way. To your point, as you go throughout that in the book, happy to nerd out at any time, sort of under each one of those six pieces are some really critical questions and considerations that we think you should make. And it’s important to note that it doesn’t all happen kind of in a linear way. You’re sort of doing it all at once. So this framework is going to organize a lot of that thinking for you, especially if you’re new to this space.

Tom Vander Ark: It is a beautiful framework. It’s super useful, and I love the way you can read it sequentially, but you can also dip in and out depending on where you are on the journey. I appreciate the asset mapping, the idea of co-designing with your learners and with your partners, measurement planning. Stephanie, was this the first time that you sort of codified the model and lessons learned, or just an update to the GPS Ed model?

Stephanie Reisner: I would say yes. I mean, we had been doing all of this in practice. To your point, in the earlier days we built many ecosystems that were in these smaller, more localized areas, right? Each education center at the time had a group of schools, a group of businesses and employers, and a set of 15 to 30-plus students. So I think we were ahead of ourselves in a lot of cases, but I think to Steph’s point, we didn’t codify all of that in this much more easy-to-understand framework and that six-part process of how you engage high-quality work-based learning. So I think for us, Tom, I will say there was a lot of goodness that came out of this book for us internally because we focused on the definition as well, right? So Steph gets great credit for helping put all of that together. But it really was 25 years of work that we had been doing that needed to be codified.

Tom Vander Ark: Steph mentioned some of the challenges, and it’s kind of a two-part problem or two-sided problem, right? It can be challenging for schools, but it’s also challenging for partners. And maybe, Stephanie, when you think back over the last 25 years, give me an example of an employer partner, either for you or for one of the schools that you worked with, that was really exemplary in hosting work-based learning.

Stephanie Reisner: Yeah. So I would say something to be aware of is that buy-in really needs to come top-down and bottom-up. So the one that comes to mind is we had an employer that at the executive level absolutely got it, right? Got that this was an investment in developing their future talent. This was going to be part of a longer-term strategy for them as an organization as they continued to grow. And the CEO of this midsize manufacturer actually went through the European model of apprenticeship. So he understood the value of work-based learning, no problem. Well, then he went to his team and said, now let’s do this. The folks on the floor went, I am not babysitting these kids. Are you kidding? They better come in ready to do this job, and that’s it. Fine, but they better come in ready to go. Well, obviously that’s not the case, right? You’re not going to put 16-, 17-, 18-year-olds into the business with them knowing all the jobs and what to do next, et cetera. What made the real difference with this employer specifically was working with their team. And I think this is a model to follow no matter what business it is. Establish clear expectations, right? In the book we call it walking the floor, so understand what roles and responsibilities the employer is looking for from these students. Helping set the expectations for the employer on what these students can and cannot do. And I would say often enough, the supervisors actually were lowering the bar for the students instead of raising the bar or holding that bar and helping the students obviously achieve that, right? And then we built intentional onboarding kind of across the company, so all the folks in the organization actually understood why those students were here and then aligned with their corporate culture. And then third, we actually did some exceptional mentor training. You can’t assume that just because there are 25-, 35-year veterans in these businesses that they know how to mentor at all. So the funny thing is, as the students really did their jobs well in these little small wins, their perspective really changed from bottom up. So those same long-term employees who were the kind of crotchety 35-year veterans who wanted nothing to do with these kids had now adopted these kids. And so they weren’t just proud to teach them the skills that they needed for the job, but they were teaching them about life. And I know, Tom, you have said this a lot, relationships matter. It is amazing what happens to these students and the things that change within them when they know someone cares, right? So today that employer has been a partner for years and one of our strongest advocates. They even helped build some internal systems to support youth apprenticeship. And now they have tours and mentor other companies who want to engage because sometimes companies need that B2B to help give them, and especially with HR, it’s like, how do I do this? What do I do now? So they’ve been great. But it didn’t start out that way.

Tom Vander Ark: I appreciate stressing relationships. A couple weeks ago I was in the Kent Valley here in Washington, one of the great manufacturing centers in America, and I visited a couple companies that were hosting work-based learning, and they all remarked on the shock that the first week for a student onsite can be when they’re introduced into work-based expectations. And getting through that stress and learning curve can be a challenge, But an employer that appreciates developing relationships helps that student get through that initial phase.

Stephanie Reisner: Yep. Yep.

Tom Vander Ark: Relationships matter, right?

Stephanie Reisner: Right. And the one thing I will say too, Tom, that we learned, and this was learned, right, is we were so concerned about preparing the students for the workplace, and you should be, right? You should have that. But what we learned is that we actually needed to better prepare the employers for the students. And actually, we’ve got some good new stuff coming out that’s going to help the employers build capacity, really be able to implement high-quality work-based learning much, much better. So that was a learning we had. But we’re doing really, really well in helping prepare these businesses for students and work-based learning.

Employer Partnerships & Regional Ecosystems

Tom Vander Ark: Steph Loeck, we’ve been talking about the challenges of individual work-based learning experiences, but what GPS Ed is really known for is helping to create regional ecosystems that support work-based learning. And your book, the book we’re talking about today, Make School Work, does a really nice job of laying out the case for regional ecosystems and kind of a how-to on a regional ecosystem.

What have you learned in the last two years about how to create a regional ecosystem that supports work-based learning?

Steph Loeck: So I’ll share that one of the biggest lightbulb moments for me came in writing the book and thinking about why people show up to do this. So, as a longtime education advocate, my ultimate why in showing up for work every day is about expanding access to economic mobility for young people. And in so many examples of these regional ecosystems where we have worked, or in experiences that our team has had, there’s a breadth of whys that can exist in terms of the value work-based learning offers to a community. And they’re not always just about economic mobility. And so it was a really interesting thought exercise in synthesizing the framework to think about creating something that would allow that why and the flag of that why to be planted in different areas: for schools because they’re looking for ways to bring more relevance and engagement and are facing a critical absenteeism crisis; for employers and thinking really differently about their talent pipeline; for other community organizations in terms of bridging gaps; or, like GPS Ed did, reaching opportunity youth that are otherwise disconnected from the worlds of work and school. And so that was just kind of my biggest learning. They’re all good reasons to do this work. I think because of that, we’re seeing a ton of interest in work-based learning. So looking across the country, frankly, it’s hard to find a school or district who is not engaging in some level of career-connected learning, maybe apprenticeship, maybe co-ops. The struggle is really moving from these sort of small, siloed programs into something that’s really sustainable and scaled and thoughtful, that allows a lot more students than the fraction of the percent of students that we’re serving today. And that’s ultimately what requires that ecosystem approach. I think what you need is kind of an opportunity traffic control, whether that’s an intermediary, whether that’s a single champion employer, a chamber of commerce, a leading school, a community college partner, but someone who can really be a convener and then can ensure that opportunities are being distributed across a community in accessible and equitable ways. And so that was, I think, something I knew sort of in theory, and it was cool to see it play out in practice in thinking through these real-life scenarios with our team.

Tom Vander Ark: Stephanie, after building a few ecosystems in Wisconsin, I think your team was active in DuPage County just west of Chicago, and I think we visited there a couple times. Is that worth a shoutout, and what’s made that an active, vibrant work-based learning ecosystem?

Stephanie Reisner: Yeah, well, I think again, in the early days in the ecosystem build, we did some exceptional work with them in helping bring the right people together to actually build out that ecosystem. And talk about lessons learned too over the years, because we were exceptional technical implementers for them, right?

So we were bringing in our technical expertise, we were helping the schools interview the students, identify the employers and the roles and different work-based learning opportunities, et cetera. But we weren’t really building their capacity to grow it and sustain it on their own. So the interesting part about this last, I would say, year now is not only did we help them grow kind of a vibrant ecosystem within DuPage County, but now we’re helping them very intentionally build their capacity throughout so they can actually work to grow it now and continue sustaining it on their own.

That it doesn’t require us to be doing the day-to-day as much and really be able to scale that work more broadly within the region as well. So we’ve learned a lot through that relationship over the last, gosh, almost five years now. But it has absolutely grown, I would say, even more so in the last year, year and a half.

Steph, I don’t know if I know you’ve been in there as well, but I’ve seen a huge difference in this last year.

Steph Loeck: Yeah, I would actually point to one of the other really strong communities that we serve, Hennepin West Consortium. It’s on the edges of Minneapolis. And we actually wrote a case study last spring.

Stephanie Reisner: Yep.

Steph Loeck: We had done a pilot there with our friend Ian from NEMO School, joy, talking through what Stephanie is really trying to summarize. A big part of this work is in matching students and employers. So level-setting expectations on both sides, understanding what employers’ capacities are, what depth of experience a student is ready for or interested in, and doing the hard work of sort of lining all of those up so that you have the highest number of best fits that you can. Inevitably there are going to be matches that aren’t great and you’re going to have to work to sort of maintain those partnerships. I think from a school perspective, there’s just such a fear of messing up business partnerships. They feel like these really scarce resources, so the matching is a way to sort of mitigate some of that risk and allow you to expand your capacity. And I’ll name, in our case study we learned a lot because the AI, where we thought it was going to be helpful, didn’t sort of turn out the way we wanted it to. And so we share all of those lessons really openly with others who are also playing around with ways technology might play a role in scaling work-based learning in the years to come.

Tom Vander Ark: Yeah, thanks for mentioning that case study. That would be a good trip if you want to go see this in action. While you’re there, go visit Shakopee. There are great career academies that each have CAPS courses built in, so a great example of work-based learning embedded in pathways. And just south of there is Burnsville, which has a pathway program with a lot of work-based learning.

So, a lot of terrific examples in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Steph, your book talks about metrics.

Shorts Content

Metrics & Advice for Ed Leaders

Tom Vander Ark: I guess the communities that have taken this seriously have started charting how many kids get a work-based learning experience, how many get an internship, how many have an entrepreneurial experience, how many do a connected project. Is there anything else that we ought to be measuring in terms of access and quality?

Steph Loeck: Yeah. We could probably do a whole podcast just on this, the quality measurement and impact measurement and the like. I will say it’s really positive, both from a state policy lens and in data capture more broadly, that we are tracking work-based learning experiences. There are a lot of efforts right now to create some common definitions for what those work-based learning experiences are. I’d like to see us go a level deeper, and I think that’s where there is an opportunity to think about technology in the years ahead. It’s not just enough to sort of document this happened, it’s really how are the learners making meaning out of what happened to get to that aspiration, to get to agency, to build toward wayfinding. So oftentimes when we’re talking about sort of tracking the numbers, we’re also talking about continuation in a single path. For us, it’s just as big of a win for a student to decide they don’t want to pursue a path. And in a lot of cases we don’t have the ability to measure that impact. And so we’re also working on a really exciting research project right now with our good friend Chris Unger, who is interviewed alongside you in the book, Tom, and many others, thinking about how we measure and develop some instruments to get at that student wayfinding component in more cutting-edge ways than we’ve had to date.

Tom Vander Ark: We’re talking to Stephanie Reisner and Steph Loeck from GPS Education Partners. It’s GPSed.org. About their new book, Make School Work. It’s a terrific book. It’s easy to read. It’s a great read, but it’s also useful as a guidebook once you’re in the middle of the work and need to go back and get some guidance and inspiration. I’d love a word of advice from both of you for edleaders who might be early in the journey. Stephanie, what would you suggest they do? I guess, read this book?

Stephanie Reisner: Right, right, right. Well, learn from 25 years of falling forward. So that’s first, right? But I would say, I think so often communities get so excited about this, schools get so excited about this, and they try to eat the elephant. Start small, right? Find your champions in business and in community and bring them to the table right away to create those shared goals and expectations. I think a lot of schools have this build it and they shall come mentality. They won’t, because it doesn’t fit employers. Employers need to be at the table right away and part of that building process and managing those expectations upfront. And then it’s amazing what kind of participation and engagement that you’ll get. The other thing I would say is just be careful not to build out just activities, because we call them random acts of work-based learning. Rally around that student experience and then build on your successes from there, and you’ll see some real, you’ll see great, great success.

Tom Vander Ark: Great. Steph, what would you add to that?

Steph Loeck: I would say don’t walk the road alone. So whether it’s reaching out to GPS Ed, our friends at CAPS, NAF, the like, there are so many folks, many of whom we highlight in the book and many others that exist in this space. So don’t feel like you’re on an island by yourself.

Stephanie Reisner: Yeah.

Steph Loeck: Raise your hand. Look for help. This is a space that a lot of people are thinking about right now, and a lot of people, GPS Ed included, are willing to jump in and be thought partners and supporters in this space.

Tom Vander Ark: Yeah. That’s a great way to end. If you want to know more about work-based learning, read Make School Work and then call Steph Loeck and get a consultation, and then maybe do a field trip. I have just loved all the opportunities to see it in action, see lives changing.

Thank you so much for this book and for joining us today.

Guest Bio

Stephanie Reisner

Stephanie Reisner is the President/CEO of GPS Education Partners. Her passion is to advance work-based learning and increase equitable access to high-demand career pathways for ALL students. Her efforts to strengthen connections between business and educators ensure that the next generation of our workforce thrives as members of strong communities.
Stephanie graduated from Carroll University with a Bachelor’s degree in Communications, Org Development, and Business. Prior to GPS Ed, she served as VP of Human Resources at Generac Power Systems for 16 years. While there, she piloted and advanced the innovative GPS Education Partners work-based learning model. Under her leadership, the nonprofit experienced significant growth in the education and technical fields, while continuing to expand its reach nationwide. GPS Ed currently serves over 1100 students, partnering with businesses, schools, and community organizations.

Stephanie uses her industry expertise to champion students underserved by traditional education. She leads her team to design and execute high-quality work-based learning programming, with an ever-expanding ecosystem of education, business, and community partnerships serving ALL students. Stephanie has been a speaker at national conferences highlighting regional industry, education, and workforce development, including – ACT Workforce Summit, Close-It Summit, and inclusion as a panelist at SXSW EDU, ASU/GSV and JFF Horizons.

Stephanie Loeck

Stephanie Loeck brings over 10 years of workforce and education advocacy experience to her work at GPS Education Partners. Most recently, she served as Vice President of Partnerships at America Succeeds where she focused on engaging business leaders in modernizing education systems through initiatives such as Durable Skills. Previously, she worked in economic development for a chamber of commerce, as a strategic marketing consultant, and for a variety of technology startups. Stephanie is active in several boards, including the CAPS Network Advisory and CompTIA’s Career and Technical Education Council, where she helps champion the expansion of authentic, career-connected learning experiences. Based in Denver, she enjoys spending time outside with her husband and basset hounds.

Links

• Watch the full video here
• Stephanie Reisner
• Steph Loeck
• GPS Education Partners
• Make School Work book