October is National Co-op Month, and we’re excited that it marks five years of , a partnership between the CHS Foundation and Ģ����ý! Over the course of those five years, over 1 million students have learned about agricultural co-ops and explored the business model behind their success. They’ve worked on skills they need to collaborate with others who share the same interests. And they’ve taken that bring different aspects of agriculture and agricultural co-ops to life in engaging ways.

It seems especially appropriate to celebrate this anniversary when fall harvest season is in full swing across the U.S. Depending on the region, right now include pumpkins and gourds, cabbage, sweet potatoes, pears, apples, tomatoes, sweet corn, grapes, and melons. While students may understand the seasonal nature of food availability, they may not understand the role that agricultural co-ops play in growing crops and getting them from farms to the marketplace.

With the release of the 2026–2027 Education Insights Report, Ģ����ý hosted a webinar for educators and education leaders to dive into the report findings and discuss their implications. Justin Karkow, Vice President of Teaching & Learning at Ģ����ý, kicked things off with an overview of what would be covered: when students start thinking about their future, where perspectives on career readiness differ, and how schools can make career connections a key part of daily instruction.

Who among us has followed a perfectly straight career path? When I reflect on my professional journey from college coaching to nonprofit leadership to Ģ����ý, I’m reminded how important it is for students to have the same freedom to explore their interests and learn about different careers. And that exploration should start early. Not because students need to choose an occupation sooner, but because they deserve the time and experiences to discover what matters to them and where they want to make a difference. Many of today’s students will follow their own uniquely winding path, and all would benefit from a clearer sense of the terrain ahead.

If you could identify a period of time or experience that had a strong influence on your choice of career, would middle school come to mind? It’s certainly a time of significant changes and growth, physically and mentally, for students. Teaching and learning also look quite different from elementary, with added depth that can nurture curiosity while challenging understanding. But based on middle school student responses in the 2026-2027 Education Insights Report, career connections are not commonly visible in instruction—only 10% reported frequently learning about careers in class.

We know from research that students aren’t waiting until high school to imagine future possibilities. They start noticing different careers, forming interests, and asking questions about what professional options they might have as early as elementary grades. Looking at our report data on when students said they discovered a career of interest, 78% of the time it was elementary or middle school.

While early career interest is welcome, educators and the students themselves are concerned that they don’t have enough information before high school to really understand all of the choices they can make. Let’s explore why middle school is a missing link to stronger career readiness and spotlight some practical ways that educators can add career exploration to instruction.

Our 2026-2027 Education Insights Report states that 56% of educators surveyed put “STEM, computer science, or IT among the top three career paths for today’s students.” This certainly makes sense, given that technology and the science, math, and engineering behind it play a huge role in shaping our personal and professional lives. What’s more, workplace projections identify the greatest job growth and strongest wage expectations for STEM and technology-related fields in the next 10 years.����

Does this translate into high student interest? Research tells us that although many students do express interest in STEM careers, fewer would rate this as their first choice. Depending on the grade level of students, the percentage varies. For example, high school students are over six times more likely to say they want to go into technology or software development than elementary students.����

This suggests that more consistent exposure to STEM career possibilities would help students understand what STEM work requires, gain confidence in their ability to develop key skills, and imagine themselves in those careers.����

Every year Ģ����ý conducts research into a topic that’s particularly relevant in K–12 education and turns that research into our Education Insights Report. It guides us as we continue to develop programs and resources to support effective teaching and learning, and we hope education leaders will also find it valuable.��

This year we partnered with Hanover, a third-party research organization, to ask over 1,000 educators, education leaders, families, and students about their experiences with and opinions on the state of K–12 education. What we found in their responses—and what we’ve also seen in education-related articles, government policies, and teaching communities—was a strong interest in prioritizing career readiness. We can also see this in the fact that over 40 states reported at least one career-focused indicator in either federal or state accountability systems in 2025, up from 14 states in 2014.��

As we examined the research further, it became clear that perception gaps about career readiness exist among the different groups in education.��

As recent technological developments and related industry responses change what K–12 career readiness means now, education leaders across the U.S. may want to take a closer look at their school or district’s approach to it. One significant change is in the types of skills students need to be successful in the workplace: durable, transferable skills like collaboration, communication, and problem-solving. And it’s become evident that it’s never too early to begin career-connected learning, especially if you want to build and sustain interest in STEM professions.

While there’s no single solution that will fit every school’s needs, adopting a new program that counts career-connected learning as part of its foundation may be a good option. In this article, we’ll walk through how to evaluate a career readiness program, so you can give your team the right resources to support effective instruction.