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Media stories about the skills mismatch between applicant qualifications and employer expectations have been a regular feature for . Among the most recent entries are a story titled 鈥淲hy Recruiters Can鈥檛 Find Workers and New Grads Can鈥檛 Find Jobs,鈥� which warned of the oncoming 鈥渓argest labor shortage in history,鈥� and a report on a survey from the National Federation of Independent Businesses that showed a majority of respondents seeking to hire in June couldn’t find qualified staff. One in five said this is their biggest issue as a small business owner.

Solving this predicament is one rationale for the strong political support and attention shown to work-based learning and high school career and technical education programs. But leaders running these programs report a quandary of their own: They can’t find enough employers willing to host interested high school students in meaningful roles, or sometimes enough students to fill available spots.

The usual explanation, that one side or the other isn’t trying hard enough, misses what’s really going on. The problem isn’t effort. It’s infrastructure.

That’s the central finding of our new profiling six work-based learning programs: a network of CTE charter schools in South Bend, Indiana; an industry-themed school network in San Antonio; a multi-district rural collaborative in Colorado; a Purdue University-affiliated early college network in Indianapolis and South Bend; a rural alliance of districts in Randolph County, Indiana; and a Philadelphia earn-and-learn training program built around real wage progression.

Six different design choices. Six different communities. But all suggest that rather than treating work-based learning as another elective or an item on a 鈥渃ollege and career readiness鈥� menu, work-based learning requires intentionally designed infrastructure linking schools, employers, postsecondary institutions and community organizations.

After interviewing the leaders of these programs, we identified six conditions that enabled each program to move from a pilot to a permanent part of a redesigned high school experience.

First, school-based programs benefited when their state allowed work-based learning hours to count toward graduation requirements and higher scores for career and technical education on state school accountability ratings. Colorado and Indiana stood out by allowing students to satisfy graduation requirements or earn a distinction on their diploma by completing a capstone project or a career course pathway with relevant work hours. Program officials told us this recognition meant they no longer felt torn between what was best for students and what state policy required. Instead, they could spend the time and resources to create and sustain high-quality work experiences with employers.

Second, these programs relied on government funding as the core of their budgets, including state career-technical education money, state and local workforce development funds and school innovation dollars. For example, the Fremont Multidistrict Initiative, serving rural Colorado, turned a state P-Tech designation into federal P-Tech dollars 鈥� up to two additional years of per-pupil support after graduation. These were layered on top of a state Opportunity Now workforce grant as well as ordinary state and local school funding. By combining sources in this way, all the programs reduced their reliance on philanthropy, which also increased the sustainability of their work. Still, the leaders told us that none of these funding streams fully covered the true cost of their learn-and-earn programs, so philanthropy continued to fill important gaps.

Third, program leaders reported that flexibility in teacher licensure allowing industry-qualified professionals to teach relevant coursework in the classroom and supervise students in the workplace significantly eased staffing challenges. In many states, students can’t earn course credit for either unless the educator or supervisor holds a full license as a K-12 teacher, in addition to whatever certification their industry requires. Indiana’s 鈥渨orkplace specialist鈥� certification for qualified industry professionals eased some of this challenge for programs in that state. But programs across states pointed to licensure itself as an obstacle, and to allowing flexibility as a key action policymakers could take to support their work.

Fourth, fundamental to high-quality work-based learning is the ability to offer students meaningful experiences in their field of choice through employer partnerships. These must be structured to be mutually beneficial, which is best achieved through detailed partnership agreements. Program staff reported that the best partnerships were built on long-term relationships. Many had anchor partnerships with founding employers who helped design the pathway to a specific work experience. This ensured a core number of students could participate, while employers felt more confident that students would be prepared before their work placements.

Fifth, each program had dedicated full-time staffers for recruiting students and employers. The leaders consider these coordinators so essential that funding their positions is a budget line alongside teachers, supplies and transportation. To reach the scale needed to support one or more full-time coordinators, half the programs in our sample pooled school districts across rural counties or a metro area. Program leaders recommended that states earmark funding for these  coordinators and make it easier for school districts to formally collaborate and share resources.

Sixth, transportation plans helping students get to their jobs improved access, especially in low-income or rural areas. Programs solved this challenge in different ways. CAST Schools Network in San Antonio used its partner districts’ school buses. RAZ32 in rural Randolph County, Indiana, leveraged county workforce dollars for transportation. Launchpad Philly gave students tickets for riding public buses. But not all programs could afford to offer transportation, leaving students to find their own way.

All these programs had a final element in common: entrepreneurial leadership willing to work through challenges. But repeatedly, we saw how the underlying infrastructure enabled programs to create life-changing opportunities for students. Participants in Launchpad Philly‘s post-high-school LiftOff track, for example, averaged roughly $15,000 in annualized earnings six months after graduation, moving to nearly $30,000 by nine months and a $50,000 living-wage benchmark at the one-year mark. That’s against a baseline of about $12,500 a year for a young Philadelphian with only a high school diploma. For students planning to pursue a bachelor’s degree, the program shows them what jobs in a field are really like, which helps them choose the right educational path.

As long as work-based learning is filed under 鈥渋nitiative,鈥� it will depend on the allure of a particular principal or the persistence of a particular grant officer. But by filing work-based learning under 鈥渃ore experience,鈥� the integration that makes it work starts to look like something a state or a region is responsible for building, the way it’s responsible for roads or broadband.

Infrastructure and initiatives get treated very differently by the people who fund and govern them. Initiatives get pilot grants, three-year evaluation, and press releases. Infrastructure gets appropriations lines, dedicated staff positions and long-term institutional ownership.

The six programs in our report prove work-based learning can succeed in rural and urban settings alike, using very different designs. The remaining question is whether the country will treat the infrastructure behind them as seriously as it treats the problem itself.

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