The Will is There. The Roadmap Isn’t.
Your region wants to expand work-based learning. What's missing isn't willingness; it's direction. Without a shared roadmap, schools and employers end up building their own programming — their own relationships, tools, processes, and administrative burden. It’s inefficient and can stretch limited capacity even thinner.
Moving toward scaled, sustainable programming requires a regional strategy built on coordination and collaboration. The communities that get there don’t do it overnight. They start with focused pilots, prove what works well, and grow over time with support.
A Better Way to Build a Regional Ecosystem
You don’t have to do this alone. GPS Ed unpacks the "how" behind the "what" and helps your community move toward a shared vision one step at a time. We walk alongside you as a coach and capacity builder until the systems are working together effectively across every school, employer, and stakeholder in your region.
Assessment
Co-Design
Coaching
Refinement
High-Quality Work-Based Learning Can Transform Every Student’s Path Forward
GPS Ed defines high-quality WBL as authentic learning that helps students develop the aspiration, abilities, and agency to succeed in the world of work.
Our work is grounded in research and backed by real-world results across regions of every size. Most places today are engaging in work-based learning on some level. We’ve only seen a few that have moved toward true sustainability and scale.
Thriving regional ecosystems only happen when someone can translate between employers and schools. GPS Ed's Approach, built on 25 years in the field, is designed to do exactly that. We build your capacity to coordinate across every partner in your region so programs can scale without losing quality, and sustain without depending on a single champion to hold them together.
Proof in Practice: Hennepin County, MN
Hennepin West Consortium serves 18,000 high school students across 12 college and school district partnerships. GPS Ed helped the consortium move from a small 10-student pilot to a coordinated regional model. Student participation in work-based learning grew to 12% — more than double the state's target — with employer engagement growing significantly year-over-year. As Jean Rakun, Secondary Perkins Consortium Director, put it: "It's been very successful. We are pleased to have them and the resources that they bring to us. Our goal is to get all ten districts on board; our goal is to serve all students. And they're helping."
