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Newark
Schools That Can (STC) Newark is doing ground-breaking work in support of our citywide, innovative work-based learning ecosystem designed to prepare students for post-secondary success at a time of urgent need for solutions.
What We Do
STC Newark has been serving historically marginalized K-12 students in Newark since 2007. In SY2024- 2025 it is launching its innovative citywide approach to building a work-based learning ecosystem in Newark. This initiative includes integrating Schools That Can's award-winning career readiness curriculum reaching 10 district and charter schools serving close to 700 historically marginalized youth in Newark. Schools That Can has recently been recognized by the federal Department of Education as one of only ten organizations in the country offering the most exemplary work-based learning programming (and the only such organization in the state of New Jersey).
Schools That Can has been contracted by the Newark Board of Education to embed its career readiness curriculum into eight high schools at the same time as taking a lead role working with Career Student Technical Organizations (CTSO's) and CTE Advisory Committees. Schools That Can is also piloting its English Language Learners (ELL) rubric as Newark faces an explosive growth of non-English language families. These approaches represent a powerful combination of critical problem-solving innovative ways to prepare students citywide for post-secondary success. Schools That Can will also be working with at least two charter schools with a goal to increase this sector's participation by the Spring.
Programs Offered
Career Skills: Career Pathways Programs
STC Newark is taking a lead role working with 18 Career Technical Student Organizations (CTSO) and 17 CTE Advisory Committees to provide support to Newark schools in alignment with STC’s award-winning career readiness curriculum. This unique building of a career connected ecosystem including bringing together our classroom curriculum taught by our trained facilitator specialists with Newark’s CTE Advisory Committees and CTSO’s represents an innovative problem-solving approach to the critical need for preparing students for post-secondary success.
Career Readiness Curriculum
Our Career Readiness Curriculum consists of 6 experiential, student-centered units to prepare young people for post-secondary success. These units represent 125 hours of award-winning exemplary curriculum designed to prepare 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th grade students for the world of work.
Schools That Can has been recognized as a finalist winner of the Career Z Challenge by the federal Department of Education in 2024 in recognition of its exemplary work-based learning curriculum.
Design Challenge
Our first Design Day launched in Newark in 2015 was an innovative approach to engaging middle school students with experiential and interactive student learning. This was an integral part of our career readiness approach introducing middle school students to real-world learning in an engaging way. Every year until the pandemic we held exciting Design Day’s with such iconic hosts as Panasonic, the Newark Symphony Hall, NJIT and Rutgers Newark. With the pandemic these impactful events were canceled. In the post-pandemic period, we did not relaunch these events because our career readiness curriculum work became a crucial priority. We hope by the next school year that we will relaunch Design Day based on the prior success of this program and the continued need for middle school students to experience this fun way of real-world learning.
English Language Learners
The growth of non-English speaking households in Newark has led to a substantial increase in English Language Learner students in public schools. Facilitating our career readiness curriculum has allowed Schools That Can to recognize what a challenge this adds to our goal to prepare students for post-secondary success. Addressing this real issue, in SY2023-4 Schools That Can Newark translated all curriculum slides to Spanish and piloted a unique proprietary ELL rubric in a Spanish speaking class formed by one of our facilitators at a Newark district school with great success. In SY2024-25, STC will pilot an updated version of this program at a middle charter school and up to two district high schools in Newark. We hope effective ELL teaching practices will become part of our career readiness curriculum best practices in the coming year.
