The Nashville Plan for the New Skills Ready Program


With cross-sector leadership from secondary, postsecondary, philanthropy, and the public and private sectors, this project will design, build, and/or transform career pathways across Nashville to meet high-quality bars with the goal of recruiting historically underrepresented and underserved students and supporting them through secondary and postsecondary completion into high growth, high wage careers in the local economy.

The project will address systemic inequities, barriers to Early Post-Secondary Opportunities (EPSOs) and Work-Based Learning (WBL), and challenges to postsecondary access, persistence, and success. We will focus initially on four Metro Nashville Public Schools - Whites Creek, Pearl-Cohn, Maplewood, Overton - each with high concentrations of students of color and students who are economically disadvantaged.

The project will transform partnerships between K-12, postsecondary & employers to create high-quality pathways to family-sustaining careers for underrepresented MNPS students. Outcomes will transform institutional cultures to both impact community access to higher education & careers by focusing on students of color and economically disadvantaged students to decrease equity gaps across systems in EPSOs participation/completion; postsecondary enrollment & completion; and entrée into high-demand opportunity careers. The work will expand beyond Nashville, with piloted practices scaled across the state.

In 5 years, Nashville will see:

  • Increases in student access to and success in high-value early postsecondary opportunities.
  • Deeper partnerships between secondary and postsecondary institutions to facilitate postsecondary transition.
  • Increases in the number of students who complete postsecondary education and successfully transition into the labor market.
  • Increases in high-quality work-based learning opportunities connecting students with employers.
  • Strengthening and/or development of high growth, high wage career pathways from secondary to employer.

READ NEXT: JPMorgan Chase Makes $7 Million Investment in the Future of Work in Nashville

Connect With the Chamber