Alexandra Simon: Building High-Quality Youth Apprenticeship Pathways
Alexandra Simon, Senior Policy Analyst with the Center on Education and Labor at New America and a key contributor to the Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship (PAYA), discusses what it takes to build youth apprenticeship programs that are rigorous, equitable, and ready to scale. Drawing on her experience leading technical assistance for U.S. Department of Labor Youth Apprenticeship Readiness Grants and her recent report "Employers Report Four Indirect Benefits of Youth Apprenticeship," Alexandra reframes youth apprenticeship not just as a talent pipeline strategy, but as an organizational development investment that strengthens managers, renews employee engagement, and improves training systems across the board. The conversation explores how youth apprenticeship differs from internships and other work-based learning experiences, why the field looks so different from state to state and community to community, and what it takes to bring employers to the table. Alexandra also walks through PAYA's five quality principles for high-quality youth apprenticeship, makes the case for starting small and building toward programs that prepare young people for both college and career, and offers practical guidance for educators, employers, and policymakers who want to expand access to youth apprenticeships in their own communities. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces podcast. I'm Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our Work Forces consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education, industry, and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our Work Forces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in. Kaitlin LeMoine: Welcome to Season 7 of Work Forces. As we head into a new season and a new school year, we're excited to kick off the season by further exploring a theme that has been running through our recent podcast conversations: the growing recognition that career preparation can't wait until the end of a student's journey. Whether we're talking about gateway courses in higher education or career and technical education at the secondary level, there is increasing momentum around the idea that young people need earlier, more scaffolded exposure to the world of work. Julian Alssid: That's right, Kaitlin. And yet, as promising as that momentum is, the field is far from uniform. Youth apprenticeship, one of the most rigorous models we have for connecting young people to careers, is taking many forms. And employers, even those who want to engage, don't always see a clear path to doing so. So the question isn't just what are the various ways to engage learners in early career preparation. It's how we build pathways that are coherent enough to scale, rigorous enough to mean something, and compelling enough to bring employers to the table. Kaitlin LeMoine: And all of this brings us to our guest today. Alexandra Simon is a senior policy analyst with the Center on Education and Labor at New America, where she supports youth transitions from high school to post-secondary education and careers. Alexandra contributes to the partnership to advance youth apprenticeship, known as PAYA, through research, technical assistance, and strategic communications, and has spent her career working at the intersection of youth apprenticeship, work-based learning, and career pathways. Before joining New America, she led technical assistance for US Departments of Education and Labor initiatives focused on youth apprenticeship, work-based learning, and career pathways. And she began her career as a high school Spanish teacher. Alexandra, welcome to Work Forces. We're so glad to have you with us to kick off our new season. Alexandra Simon: It's a pleasure to be here. Julian Alssid: So glad you've taken the time to join us. And to kick things off, if you will, tell us in your own words about your background and the path that brought you to your current role at New America. Alexandra Simon: After teaching in several states and overseas, I transitioned into the nonprofit space. And I had the opportunity to lead the technical assistance for US Department of Labor's Youth Apprenticeship Readiness Grants, which kicked off in 2020 and ran through 2024. And that's where I really became passionate about youth apprenticeship. I like to say I drank the apprenticeship Kool-Aid. Since then, my work has expanded to include not only youth apprenticeship, but also more broadly, career and technical education, work-based learning, dual enrollment, and other pathways work that really help young people successfully transition from high school to college and careers. And today at New America, I support the partnership to advance youth apprenticeship, PAYA for short, through research, technical assistance, strategic communications, and also working with grantees who are implementing the boots-on-the-ground youth apprenticeships. Kaitlin LeMoine: Youth apprenticeship, I feel like it can be used interchangeably with other terms or feel similar to other terms we often hear in this space, like internships or work-based learning or pre-apprenticeships. Can you help us understand what youth apprenticeships are, what makes them distinct, and where PAYA and the definitions created through PAYA fit within that broader landscape? Alexandra Simon: So I'm going to start with the broadest term here, which is work-based learning. And that really spans a continuum from things like short-term experiences, like job shadowing, or maybe having guest speakers come to schools from employers to talk about their organizations or certain jobs. And then that continuum goes all the way to more sustained activities like internships. And then on the far side, apprenticeships, which was a really good lead-in earlier to explain how rigorous and aligned with occupations apprenticeships can be. So let's look from the perspective of a young person. An internship for a young person, I think the biggest distinction or confusion becomes between an internship and apprenticeship. So I'm going to break that down. An internship's really a chance to explore a career and gain experience. But an apprenticeship is a pathway into a career, a specific occupation where you're hired from the start. You receive structured training, you have a mentor that you're paired with to help you learn this occupation, and you build the skills needed for that occupation while earning a wage. Oftentimes you hear this term "earn and learn." So you're immediately an employee of the company and you're also learning on the job through on-the-job training. And I think this really matters because apprenticeships and internships are designed to achieve different goals, right? If an employer simply wants to identify some promising talent, an internship might be enough. But if they're struggling to find workers with specialized, hands-on skills, an apprenticeship really allows them to grow that talent themselves. And so I want people to think of internships and apprenticeships as complementary tools, not competing ones, but they are very different in that way. And so I think our work at New America, we have defined what a quality youth apprenticeship is. And I think our version of youth apprenticeship is very specific because youth apprenticeship from PAYA's perspective should start when a youth is between the ages of 16 to 18, like high school age. A lot of youth apprenticeships do start in high school. Some of them might start right at the tail end of high school, so you're identifying that you're going to go into a youth apprenticeship, but you're maybe not starting it until right towards the end of high school for various reasons. Julian Alssid: So to dig deeper into apprenticeships then, you recently wrote a report about the indirect benefits of youth apprenticeship that employers experience and gain from participating in youth apprenticeship programs. Great if you would walk us through that report, the key findings, and what surprised you the most? Alexandra Simon: So the findings from the report, what they really do is reframe youth apprenticeship not just as a talent pipeline strategy, which is how we often look at it, but also as an organizational development strategy for employers. I would say the biggest takeaways from our research were that employers defined benefits that went far beyond filling that future pipeline. And for this report, we did interview six employers across IT and advanced manufacturing; they were training youth apprentices in those two sectors and occupations. And while they definitely valued developing this future talent, we heard from employers about how youth apprenticeship actually made their existing organizations stronger. And so there's not a lot done on youth apprenticeship specifically. There's a lot of return on investment or ROI studies on apprenticeship more broadly, but we really wanted to dig into indirect benefits that are harder to quantify. So that's what we did for this study, and we really identified four major indirect benefits from the interviews that we conducted with employers. And I'll start off with how youth apprenticeship really renewed employee engagement. We had mentors and also just co-workers who worked alongside the youth apprentices describe a real sense of pride and purpose in helping young people succeed. It created what many coined this "proud parent effect," where it's just exciting to work alongside young people and to see them hit milestones in their lives and be a part of that process. I'd say the second, and I found most surprising finding, was the manager development finding. Across broader apprenticeship research, we do see that developing managers is considered like a nice bonus. But in youth apprenticeship, it actually emerges as one of the strongest and most consistent findings across every employer that we interviewed, as opposed to just being like a middle-of-the-pack finding in general apprenticeship research. It's a leading finding across youth apprenticeships. And I really think that's because when you're working with youth, they need really intentional coaching, feedback, and opportunities. The supervision looks a little bit different. And I think people, honestly, from speaking with the employers, they're really thoughtful about understanding that there's different learning styles, that youth might need additional support. And so as a result, these employers were building leadership skills like communication, empathy, coaching, giving feedback to youth in ways that maybe they wouldn't think about giving feedback to an adult to make sure that they're really learning during their apprenticeship. I think it's an important thing to consider that perspective. And also these things are really valuable in today's workplace—the ability to communicate with people and to be able to give this level of feedback. So in many ways, we see youth apprenticeship was really developing two types of talent at the same time, right? So they're developing the apprentice themselves, but they're also developing the mentor because those individuals were improving upon their skills. And some of them may not have been managers before. The third finding was that apprentices sparked collaboration. So if you speak with young people today, you might know that they have different ideas than people our age. And so they might bring in challenges to assumptions that adults have already made. And sometimes that even went further than just the actual organization. Some of the work that was coming out of youth apprenticeships actually moved across regional ecosystems, coming together with other organizations or employers to build deeper this youth apprenticeship landscape in their local community. And finally, every single employer did say that youth apprenticeship raised the quality of their training because they had to make it accessible to young people. What they did was they built better onboarding, they built clearer frameworks and more structured learning materials. And the interesting part about this is that it didn't just benefit the apprentices; a lot of these organizations actually adopted these materials for their overall onboarding. And so it ended up improving training for organizations, not just for their youth apprentices, but also for their organization as a whole. So I really think that the broad message from this study is that youth apprenticeship isn't just an investment in young people, it's actually an investment in the organization itself. And so when employers think about building this talent pipeline, they can also leave with stronger managers, better training systems, and more engaged employees who get excited about going to work because they are training that next generation. They are passing on the skills that they've learned, their knowledge. I mentioned that that manager development finding really surprised me the most because we did expect employers to talk about future talent, but we didn't really expect every single employer to talk about how mentoring apprentices accelerated leadership for their current employees. So that's really seen as a secondary benefit, but in this case for youth apprenticeship, it's one of the defining outcomes of our study. Kaitlin LeMoine: So when you were conducting this study, I'm curious to know, where kind of how far and how deep into the process were the employers that you spoke to around the implementation of youth apprenticeships? Because it seems like there has to be some infrastructure in place, there has to be some existing policies, procedures, I would imagine, in order to really get these programs running smoothly. Would just love to get a better sense of where were the employers in that process that you had spoken to and any other insights you'd offer, maybe to employers who have thought about starting youth apprenticeships, but maybe are looking to dip their toe in the water around how to go about doing this. Because like these indirect benefits are amazing, but how far down the path do you need to be to start to feel those indirect benefits and what needs to be in place? Alexandra Simon: That's a great question. And honestly, it was one of the first things that we considered when we started to plan for this research. And so we had to shift our parameters a little bit because I think we were a little bit ambitious. Let's talk to employers who've been working with youth apprentices for like four or more years and are serving at least two to fifteen apprentices at a time. And then we narrowed it down to employers who'd worked with youth apprentices for two years or longer. And part of that is that you're right, this is something that can be a little bit challenging to find employers who have been doing it maybe for a little bit longer. But in our case, it was because we wanted to be careful in the sample that we were looking at. So we decided to make it more occupation-specific: employers who were working within what we call an emerging field, which we felt was IT or information technology occupations, and then an established field, which was advanced manufacturing, and just really see if maybe an apprenticeship field like advanced manufacturing that's been around for a long time had differences in how their youth apprenticeships benefited their organization versus organizations that might have newer apprenticeship programs like information technology. But we ended up making sure that they met these bare minimums so that we had something across the board where we could say, we didn't want someone who just started a program, it was their first year, but someone who had been doing it for at least two years. And I think it was really helpful. And I'd say in future iterations, if we want to dive deeper, expanding to make sure that we do include employers who are training youth apprentices in other occupations. Julian Alssid: Did you get a sense of how employers are even becoming involved with youth apprenticeship? When looking across the country, first of all, apprenticeship is one thing, but the idea of youth apprenticeships is a whole other ballgame. And I do think that for many employers, the perception is that this is a heavy lift, it's a lot of work, how do you do it? And then with respect to youth apprenticeships, states vary in what they even consider youth apprenticeships. So how are employers getting involved? And can you speak a little bit to the types of employers that are being drawn to this? Alexandra Simon: The types of employers really vary. You have small employers that might only employ one or two youth apprentices at a time ever because that's really their capacity, their small business. And then you have employers that are maybe even on the Fortune 500 list who are looking at youth apprenticeship as building their talent in larger cities, and they don't want to miss out on the opportunity to train young people. And I think they're seeing a lot of benefits from the cultural impacts as well. But getting employers on board is definitely one of the biggest challenges in youth apprenticeship. I think organizations that are, for example, originally European-based, maybe they're more familiar with the apprenticeship model, and so the idea of creating a youth apprenticeship program is not so foreign. They're like, yes, they've done that before, just in another country, and so now they're willing to do that here. I really think the best way that employers get involved in youth apprenticeship is when there's really a need for their industry and for their organization. They're seeing a talent shortage and it is a clear path to filling that talent shortage, but it is a little bit of a long-term game, right? You're not just getting someone to come on board who's going to be trained in six weeks, go through boot camp—no, that's not the apprenticeship model. But what they see as the benefit when it's outlined for them is that you get this different level of understanding about an organization when you go through an apprenticeship. You build strong connections with an organization; as the young person, you have a different sense of loyalty and there's a different level of engagement company-wide that we saw in this study by all the individuals that work in an organization that train apprentices. It's also really a way to ensure that someone that you hire is going to learn the job the way that you need it to be done because you're training them from essentially the ground up to learn this specific occupation. And that's why it has a lot of success and a lot of positive outcomes. Because when a young person agrees to do a youth apprenticeship in a specific field, whether it's IT, advanced manufacturing, maybe healthcare, which is another emerging industry, they know that they're going to leave trained to do that job and that either the employer themselves is likely to hire them or they're in a local community where that's a need. Like, for example, healthcare—we know that's a huge need that just continues to grow in our country, and so there will be jobs that will align and the employer will have jobs also available for that young person. So I think it's just really making sure that the employer is aligned with understanding the labor market, the possibilities that come from training young people. And I would say there's also a bit of—I don't really necessarily think it's risk-taking, but it's not that common. So employers, when they hear from other employers, that helps so much. When they hear about success, like "we started a youth apprenticeship program, and this is what we're seeing as the outcomes for our participants," that really helps employers understand and get on board when they're looking to potentially start a program. Kaitlin LeMoine: So PAYA is approaching its 10th anniversary as a partnership. And we understand there's significant investment flowing into the apprenticeship and youth apprenticeship space. How do we think about scaling youth apprenticeships, recognizing, like you said, so much of the variability that exists? PAYA has some existing quality principles and a guide, but how do we think about scaling this effort, because like you said, some of the challenges are that it takes people a while to get going. And then what is transferable? What are transferable learnings, and what is really truly specific to one employer or one region or one state? Would love to hear you riff on that a little bit. Alexandra Simon: Yeah, so I think we're really at an exciting moment right now with the investments in youth apprenticeship from organizations like Bloomberg Philanthropies and Siemens, who has this Careers Electric initiative. And it's really just such a great opportunity. But when you talk about scale, I think it's really a reminder that how we scale matters just as much as how fast we scale. And that's really where PAYA's quality principles come in. To me, they're really the gold standard for designing youth apprenticeship programs and systems. The five quality principles—and I'm just going to quickly go through them, but you can find them on the New America website if you want to dig in deeper—emphasize that programs should be career-oriented, equitable, portable, adaptable, and accountable. And that really helps ensure that youth apprenticeship isn't just another work-based learning experience, but that it's a high-quality pathway that prepares young people—and I want to really push this—for both college and careers. A lot of times we hear "or college or career," but high-quality youth apprenticeship will prepare you for both. And so that's really something to grow towards. And I think that communities get overwhelmed when you see these principles or when you learn about what goes into a youth apprenticeship because there are a lot of different factors like the on-the-job training, the related technical instruction, having a mentor. But communities don't have to have every principle from PAYA realized on day one. For example, building that transferable college credit that we push might take a year or more to build that partnership between the community college system and the K through 12 system and the employer to make sure that you're getting those courses right, that you have the instructors that can teach those courses, and how they fit in with the high school curriculum that's already there. So what I think is really important is that the principles guide the work from the start, but know that you don't have to check every single box on day one. And growing youth apprenticeship programs, the most successful programs that I have seen from working with grantees, from working with organizations that we partner with to showcase their work, they start small. They don't start with 50 youth apprentices; they start with one or two. And so I'm really encouraged that a lot of these investments are understanding that you have to start at the beginning. So you're actually looking at career technical education and how can we get more courses aligned with the occupations or fields that are in need, whether it's the skilled trades or pre-apprenticeships, to prepare young people to go into an apprenticeship ahead of time. And I also really like that a lot of these investments are mirroring PAYA's approach in many ways, like focusing on sectors: skilled trades, healthcare, information technology. And I think that sector-based strategy really helps employers collaborate. It's going to create a stronger career pathway for a student because it's very concrete that they're going into a specific sector they're interested in. And I think ultimately this level of cooperation in the sectors will make programs more sustainable over time. So I really think that the two big things that I would push are: know that you can start small, and know that you want to be able to make sure that youth apprenticeships prepare young people for both college and career. Kaitlin LeMoine: Recognizing that youth apprenticeships draw on, as is in PAYA's name, partnership across employers and educational institutions, where do you find that the youth apprenticeships tend to stem from? Where does the conversation start? Because it feels like it could start with a high school, an employer, or an industry association of some kind. Do you find that there are common places where the idea of youth apprenticeship originates in different communities, or does it range? Alexandra Simon: I think it's really a range from my experience. For example, when I look at our grantees that we support in developing, building, and sustaining youth apprenticeships, they really run the gamut. So we have, for example, school districts, community-based organizations, intermediaries, and employers. And so I think one of the things that when we give youth apprenticeship 101 training to folks is that there's always someone in the middle who's functioning as an intermediary. Intermediary can mean so many things, but essentially they're the person that's linking everyone together. And so then you also have a combination of the K-12 system, the higher ed system—because we want to have those college credits and courses, dual enrollment—and then you also have the employer, and you might also have an intermediary. But where we've seen the leadership happen, it could be a community college system. Trident Technical College is a great example. They kind of spearheaded the Charleston Regional Youth Apprenticeship system, and they're a community college system that brings together three school districts in their area that all work together to build, develop, and sustain these youth apprenticeships with employers. And the employers have been a key part of building the apprenticeship system in Charleston. So I think really what you just asked, it works best when everyone comes to the table. And it's actually much harder to do when it's only a K to 12 school system or when it's only a community college, because you need to work collaboratively to really have a successful program and you need to work with all those entities from the beginning. It's really hard if like a community college system and a K to 12 system come together and say, "we want to do youth apprenticeship for our students." I think that's fabulous, but we need industry there, we need to have the employer, it needs to really be aligned. Where I see a lot of opportunity is looking at what already exists in K-12 in career technical education and what's the labor market need for communities on the local level. And can we align that? Because I do think it's a lot easier, working with grantees over the years, to build something when there's already a foundation—if there's already, for example, a pathway in education or in healthcare in the high school CTE program. And then you have an employer that has a need—and it might actually be the K to 12 school system that needs educators or paraprofessionals, right? And so you take those two things and you work to align them and be really strategic, and build out youth apprenticeship as a part of those work-based learning opportunities that might already be happening. Work-based learning, like the little things that I talked about earlier like job shadowing or having guest speakers, those are also the beginnings of a youth apprenticeship. When you can get an employer to come in and get to know students, or you can bring students to their work site and they get to see how excited these young people are to learn about their company, to learn about the occupations that they offer, that can spark an interest to go deeper and to build on what they're already doing. Julian Alssid: You paint a wonderful picture of collaboration, and as we always say, workforce development's a multidisciplinary undertaking, and clearly this is a great example. Given that our podcast is Work Forces, we always ask our guests: what would you recommend to educators, employers, policymakers who want to become forces in expanding access to high-quality youth apprenticeship? Very specifically, how do they get involved? If they really want to drive this forward in their community, whichever seat or role they're in, how do you recommend doing that? Alexandra Simon: Well, from a practical level, I would recommend that they start by understanding the landscape in their own community. I think that youth apprenticeship is really regional and locally driven, as all apprenticeships are. Youth apprenticeship is a special opportunity, and so there is a lot of knowledge building. I would really recommend folks who are already starting to do this work or interested in doing the work that they learn more about PAYA and potentially, if they're looking to start a youth apprenticeship, they join the PAYA network. It's not something that we keep open on a rolling basis typically, but we will be accepting applications towards the end of the year. And when you join our network—and this is free, there's no cost to it—it allows you to have access to learning opportunities. For example, we just held a healthcare-specific meeting in Charleston, South Carolina, at Trident Technical College, to learn all about healthcare youth apprenticeships. We also have the National Youth Apprenticeship Summit that happens every year in the fall; this year it's November 17th through 19th in Denver, Colorado, co-led with one of our partners, CareerWise. So I would say going to something like that, getting tuned into our webinars that we offer through the PAYA network or through PAYA more broadly, that's a really great way. I think once you understand how youth apprenticeship works, you can dig a little bit deeper. I think the other thing is to really understand that these opportunities do need support. So policymakers can become cheerleaders; we see a lot of policymakers in the U.S. at the state level really pushing to expand youth apprenticeship, creating opportunities in states like Delaware, Maryland, and Florida, knowing that you can build a robust youth apprenticeship system within your state. It doesn't always have to be at the federal level. So I think that's another thing. But definitely tune into the PAYA network. And another way that you can learn more about these opportunities is to check in your local community and see who is doing the career technical education work. Like a very personal example, I'm applying to be on a committee for career technical education at my local school district because I want to better understand that. So if you're in the workforce development space already, get involved and understand how you can learn to grow these things. If you're an employer, see what else is out there and if you can learn from individuals already doing this work. And I think that we're going to see more of a push for sector-specific collaboration and growth and that there's going to be a lot of opportunities forthcoming. Kaitlin LeMoine: Great. Well, thank you so much for providing all of those resources and materials. And as we close out our conversation today, I would also love to invite you to share how listeners can continue to learn more about you and your work and follow what you're doing on a regular basis. Alexandra Simon: Great. Well, thank you so much for having me. If you want to connect with me, you can find me on LinkedIn, Alexandra Simon. And I do share the work that I'm doing at New America, and I'll probably also be sharing the work that I'm doing in my community as well. But also subscribe to our newsletters at New America. So if you go to newamerica.org/subscribe, you can select subscribing to "Education & Work" and PAYA newsletters, and that's where you're going to hear a lot of the latest information on this work. And you can also follow us on LinkedIn at the Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship (PAYA) and New America Education Policy Program as well. Julian Alssid: Well, thank you so much, Alexandra. Really, this is chock-full of amazing information that everyone should act on. So appreciate your taking the time to speak with us today, and we look forward to continuing to follow your work. Alexandra Simon: Great. Thank you so much for the opportunity. I love talking about youth apprenticeship and I hope that if listeners want to learn more about youth apprenticeship, that you do reach out. Kaitlin LeMoine: Thanks again for joining us. Kaitlin LeMoine: We hope you enjoyed today's conversation and appreciate you tuning in to Work Forces. Thank you to our listeners and guests for their ongoing support, and a special thanks to our producer, Dustin Ramsdell. If you're interested in sponsoring the podcast or want to check out more episodes, please visit workforces.info/podcast. You can also find Work Forces wherever you regularly listen to your favorite podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, like, and share it with your colleagues and friends. And if you're interested in learning more about Workforce Consulting, please visit workforces.info/consulting for more details about our multi-service practice.
