Grounded in lessons from Bettendorf Community School District’s Career Center model

A Proven Work-Based Learning Framework

School districts everywhere face the same challenge: expanding access to work-based learning without losing control of it as participation grows. This framework distills a repeatable set of best practices for building a work-based learning management system that works for students and staff alike. It’s organized around five pillars, each paired with concrete practices, a real example from Bettendorf Community School District’s Career Center model, and reflection questions districts can use to evaluate their own program. Bettendorf, a Kuder partner advancing career readiness through work-based learning in Iowa, offers a clear picture of what this looks like in practice.

For Bettendorf, that system-building work starts with a simple belief about why career learning matters in the first place:

“Career learning is not an option, it’s something every student must be part of to meaningfully prepare for their futures. Kuder Navigator powers that career-connected learning in a meaningful way for our students and has made the work-based learning management much easier for our staff!”

Haleigh Hoyt, Career Readiness Coordinator, Bettendorf Community School District

Use the framework below however fits your district’s stage: as a planning guide when designing or redesigning a work-based learning system, or as a self-assessment tool if a program is already in place.

Key Pillars of Work-Based Learning Management

Pillar 1: Centralized Visibility

Every active opportunity, workplace tours, college visits, guest speakers, and more, lives in one system that students and staff can both see, rather than scattered across emails, paper sign-ups, or individual staff inboxes.

Best Practices

• Maintain a single system of record for all active opportunities.
• Keep opportunity volume high enough that students have real choices, not just one option at a time.
• Make the system easy enough that browsing it becomes routine, not a special task.

Bettendorf Best Practice in Action

Bettendorf runs its program through a centralized digital hub, Kuder Navigator, keeping roughly 17 opportunities active at any given time and posting nearly 70 unique mass opportunities in a single school year.

Ask Yourself

Could a student or staff member see every active opportunity in one place today or would they need to check multiple sources?

Pillar 2: Consistent Access Habits

Access only translates into participation if checking for opportunities becomes a built-in part of the school day, not something students have to remember on their own.

Best Practices

• Attach opportunity discovery to an existing routine, such as an advisory period, rather than creating a new process to increase accessibility.
• Set a clear, repeatable expectation for how often students should check for new opportunities.
• Let students request participation directly within the system, removing email, who they know, or paperwork as the bottleneck.

Bettendorf Best Practice in Action

Bettendorf students are expected to log into their platform at least weekly during advisory to review new opportunities and submit requests directly, a habit that has driven 1,000+ student requests in a single year.

Ask Yourself

Is checking for new opportunities part of students’ regular routine, or does it depend on staff reminders?

Pillar 3: Assessment-Informed Placement

Career assessment data should do more than sit in a student file, it should actively connect students to the opportunities most relevant to them, while leaving room for staff judgment.

Best Practices

• Ask students to reflect on why certain interest areas keep recurring for them, not just what the results say.
• Have staff cross-reference assessment results against upcoming events to identify well-matched students.
• Treat assessment data as a starting point for equitable access, not a replacement for local knowledge as some events represent more careers than a system’s categories capture, such as a career fair representing multiple industries or roles within a business.

Bettendorf Best Practice in Action

When Bettendorf plans an activity, field trip, or guest speaker, staff review which students’ assessment results align with that opportunity, then layer in their own knowledge of the local career landscape before extending invitations.

Ask Yourself

Are placement decisions data-informed, purely staff-driven, or a deliberate combination of both?

Pillar 4: Operational Tracking & Accountability

Educators need real-time visibility into work-based learning requests, capacity, and attendance to manage a growing program without administrative guesswork.

Best Practices

• Track requests, approvals, and completed attendance in the same system, not across separate spreadsheets.
• Monitor capacity in real time so staff know when an opportunity is nearing its limit.
• Distinguish between students who requested an opportunity and students who actually completed it.

Bettendorf Best Practice in Action

Bettendorf’s system distinguishes between the total student requests submitted and the requests that were actually completed, giving staff a clear, trackable picture of real engagement rather than expressed interest alone.

For Sara Husser, Bettendorf’s Career Center Manager, that shift solved a problem she used to feel every time a trip filled up:

Before, we had no reliable way to know how many students were actually going on a trip or how much more we could say yes to. Now we can see requests, capacity, and attendance in one place; it’s changed how confidently we can say yes.”
Sara Husser, Career Center Manager, Bettendorf Community School District

Ask Yourself

If asked right now, could your team report exactly how many students completed a work-based learning experience this year?

Pillar 5: Continuous Growth & Evaluation

A work-based learning system should keep expanding in sophistication, from tracking attendance to tracking outcomes like hours, wages, and reflection.

Best Practices

• Identify the next layer of data worth capturing, such as time worked, wages earned, or employer feedback.
• Build in structured evaluation so opportunities can be assessed and improved over time.
• Regularly share participation data and outcomes with leadership to sustain investment in the program.

Ask Yourself

What is the next data point your program needs to capture to tell a more complete story?

Closing Takeaway

Bettendorf’s experience shows that expanding access to work-based learning can happen for a district of any size, with dedicated staff and robust supporting solutions. Districts that centralize visibility, build consistent student habits, connect assessment data to placement, track outcomes closely, and keep evolving the system will be positioned to scale work-based learning without losing control of it.

To learn more and evaluate your work-based learning program, download this playbook!

 

About Bettendorf Community School District

Bettendorf CSD is a public school system in Iowa serving an estimated 4,400 PK-12 students across five elementary schools, one middle school, and one high school. The district leads career readiness in Iowa and maintains excellent work-based learning programming through its dedicated Career Center. Bettendorf CSD has been a partner of Kuder since 2024 and has continued to grow its college and career readiness programming through this partnership. You can find out more about Bettendorf’s Career Readiness program here.