A New Bill in California Could Expand Career Pathways for Thousands of Students. The Bigger Opportunity Is What It Invites Us to Rethink.
August 2026
Co-authored by Dr. J. César Morales (Partner, Learner-Centered Collaborative) and Javier Guzman (CEO, Center for Powerful Public Schools)
California's AB 542 gives continuation high schools more scheduling room for workforce learning. The deeper question it raises is what we choose to count as learning in the first place.
What actually counts as learning? Not what counts on a transcript or a bell schedule, but what counts as relevant, real-world learning?
The future of education isn't solely about asking where students spend their time. It's about recognizing where, how, why, and with whom meaningful learning happens, then redesigning assessment systems and learning models that support deep, place-based learning and “count” learning wherever it occurs. This type of redesign doesn't belong to any one program or population. It belongs to every system trying to prepare students for a world that doesn't organize itself into 50-minute periods.
California just handed us a concrete, current example of this bigger shift in motion with Assembly Bill 542. The one-sentence summary is that AB 542 gives continuation schools legal room to schedule the school day differently. The big headline is this isn’t just a continuation school story. It's a systems story that continuation schools happen to be given legislative backing to pursue first.
Signed on October 13, 2025, AB 542 gives continuation high schools more room to build workforce learning into the week. Schools can now offer "youth workforce development programs" one or two days a week without penalizing a student's attendance credit, as long as that student stays enrolled in at least 15 hours of class attendance overall.
Districts have to track attendance and participation in these programs (this isn't a loophole, it comes with accountability). The programs themselves must run through a real partner such as a community college, an adult education program, a regional occupational program, a WASC-accredited workforce provider, or an organization offering industry-recognized certifications.
AB 542 creates operational flexibility. Schools can now legally rearrange the calendar around workforce learning. This is particularly important for learners who are denied access to afterschool opportunities like internships because they have families to take care of or jobs to work. AB 542 is an invitation to consider more broadly how we design learning flexibility into the school day. It doesn't, by itself, tell schools how to teach or credit differently. Some schools were already finding that room before the law existed.
At Rudsdale Continuation High School in Oakland, students spend part of their week welding, blacksmithing, and glassblowing through a paid partnership with The Crucible, receiving professional-level training that culminates in their selling their own work at community events.
At Dewey Academy, another group is working toward medical assisting and phlebotomy certifications through a health-pathway program paired with community internships. Different schools, different trades, same pattern: real, workforce-connected learning, already happening, without any state law requiring it.
If we dig a layer deeper, it’s important to highlight that when learners in these pathways have been interviewed, there’s a split between those who say they value the program and those who would love to explore other paths their school doesn’t yet offer. AB 542 makes room for both learners. For those who enjoy the path they’re on, they can go deeper. For those still exploring, more pathways can now be made available.
The scheduling allowance AB 542 offers is a great step forward, but it isn’t the biggest story here. The bigger story is how we will recognize and credit learning regardless of where it happens. How might we design for authentic workforce and community experiences that are connected to outcomes, and credited by what a student can actually do, not by how many hours they sit in a room?
The teams at Learner-Centered Collaborative (LCC) and Center for Powerful Public Schools (CPPS) think about this question every day and create tools and experiences (born from real-world partnerships with schools and districts) that address it head-on.
This kind of shift to anywhere, anytime learning that counts is embedded in Learner-Centered Collaborative's School Redesign Framework, which emphasizes real-world learning, or “Regularly sanctioned time and structures for learners to engage in authentic work, across disciplines, and with community partners” as a core component.
Similarly, Center for Powerful Public Schools (CPPS) calls this building "powerful schools and powerful pathways." This is a phrase that draws on the organization’s decades of work launching small, innovative schools and helping districts build and integrate career pathways. More recently, CPPS has turned its attention to options schools, where it sees the greatest potential for a reimagined school system.
We've seen what this work looks like at scale. On a recent visit to John J. Cairns Continuation High School in Lindsay USD, part of LCC's CCEE Secondary Redesign work, the evidence was everywhere.
Strong advisory systems and restorative practices back a school where, as Principal Lopez put it, "we are building a coalition around each student." Interdisciplinary modules connect to real-world inquiry and exhibitions of learning. Students set their own goals inside flexible, competency-based pathways. Support systems are integrated and family-facing, and the whole school is organized around learner potential rather than deficits. Teachers collaborate, leadership is distributed, and Board Policy has shifted to lock the model in for good — this isn't a pilot that ends when the grant does.
One moment captured it best: at the school's "ringing of the bell" ceremony, a graduating student stood in front of family, staff, and peers and reflected on their own journeys, out loud, in public.
None of this waited for AB 542, and none of it is unique to continuation schools. It's proof that redesign at this depth is achievable now, in any system willing to ask the harder question. AB 542 is a welcome, sensible piece of policy — but it's a scheduling fix. The real opportunity, for every secondary leader reading this, not just those running continuation or CTE programs, is the one we opened with: stop asking where students spend their time, and start asking whether learning is happening, wherever it occurs. Look at what already counts as learning in your own system and ask what might count, if you think beyond conventional processes.
Center for Powerful Public Schools and Learner-Centered Collaborative would like to especially thank Dan Posel and Ben Posel for believing in the enormous potential of continuation school students and for their generous support in funding this critical work, which reimagines what school can be.
Comments