District Leadership Case Study: How a rural Texas district partnered with The Stacer Group to connect classrooms to careers
A rural Texas district had mastered the classroom side of college and career readiness but lacked the employer connections to make it real for students. Partnering with The Stacer Group gave the district a structured system for building industry relationships, work-based learning experiences, and advisory conversations with a clear ask. The results were substantial: dual-credit participation roughly doubled, five coherent career pathways now replace the fragmented ones, dozens of students have earned industry certifications and associate degrees, and outcome-bonus funding gains have nearly repaid the partnership’s initial cost. As Shauna Lane describes it, the district turned “a haphazard skeleton” into a repeatable system it can sustain.
The Challenge: A Missing Piece
The district had built real strength in the classroom. Educators knew instruction. They knew dual credit. They knew how to move students toward college. What they were far less certain about was the career piece, the connection to employers and the hands-on, meaningful experiences that give a pathway its purpose.
Staff had tried to close the gap on their own, with teachers asked to contact guest speakers and set up worksite tours. They made a little headway. But without a structured system they could replicate year after year, the effort was hard to sustain, and easy to let slip in a building where every staff member already wore several hats.
That staffing reality is sharper in a rural setting. Larger districts often have dedicated positions to build and maintain industry partnerships; a small rural district rarely does. Dedicating the time it takes to develop those relationships, and to oversee the work once it exists, was a genuine constraint.
The cost of the gap showed up in students' choices. Fragmented pathways led learners to sample and jump around, which is understandable at 14 or 15, but often based on thin or inauthentic experiences. A student might enter a health-science pathway set on nursing, only to discover that the reality didn't fit, without ever having seen the wider range of careers the field actually offers. When pathways lacked real-world exposure, worksite visits, and hands-on work, students disengaged and made decisions without the information they needed.
The data made the stakes plain. By state measures, the district's graduates were counted as 100% college, career, or military ready. But when leaders looked more closely at a typical class of about 50, only around half were actively engaging in college or trade school, and only about half of those were finishing. That left roughly a quarter of graduates completing a real credential, while too many returned to work at the local dollar store or restaurants. There was, Shauna says, so much more they could do.
The Structured Partner Program
As the district worked toward becoming a P-TECH school, it was required to have an Educate Texas coach. Educate Texas, in turn, had contracted The Stacer Group to reach out to incoming P-TECH schools and help each one build a single pathway. The district received what felt like a random call and immediately recognized what was on offer.
“We were like, this is what we've been looking for. We didn't know there were people out there that did this.”
The specific weakness Stacer Group was suited to address was one the team already knew well. Teachers were reluctant to cold-call businesses, even when they had a personal contact, and district leaders felt the same discomfort, largely because none of them were sure what they should be asking employers for. The district's advisory meetings reflected the same gap. They functioned as reports: here is our program, here is what we're doing, here are the gains we've seen. The business leaders in the room appreciated the information but were left wondering what role they were being asked to play.
The Approach
The Stacer Group took on the legwork the district had struggled to sustain, such as making the calls to industry partners and bringing them to the table. The partnership also taught the district how to engage employers: what business partners really want to know, and how to arrive with a specific, useful ask rather than a general update.
“What I've learned from Stacer Group is what to target and ask industry for, how to look for what we need, and then what to go to them with as an ask.”
That reframing changed the advisory conversation entirely. Instead of reporting on the program, the district could now say: here are the students we have, here is what they're working on, would you come and speak, host a worksite tour, or consider an internship? The shift turned passive goodwill into concrete opportunities. A student moving through the electrical service specialist pathway, for example, was hired at a local wind farm.
The exposure reached into the classroom itself. Nurses came in to teach a math lesson, showing students exactly how the math they were learning is used in nursing. Teachers got out to worksites and built relationships in places they hadn't reached before. Students attended a hospital visit that included watching brain and heart surgery. Each of these moments did something the textbook alone could not: it kept students engaged and made the pathway feel real.
Underneath the individual events, the most durable contribution was the system. Rather than reinventing connections every year, the district now has a repeatable set of quality work-based learning experiences already in place, so the annual question becomes simply when to run them, not whether they can be built at all.
Implementation
Rollout began with the district's CTE teachers. Because the team had already laid some groundwork, the teachers were glad to learn that Stacer Group would handle the calls to industry partners that they had been reluctant to make themselves.
The partnership was not without friction, and the most instructive challenge was about communication. When someone else is making the connections, it is easy to assume the whole task is handled. In a few cases, Stacer Group worked hard to schedule site visits, but the district's own part (confirming logistics and getting students there) nearly slipped, simply because staff assumed it was already taken care of.
The fix was straightforward once the pattern was clear: clarify, in advance, exactly which responsibilities sit with the school once a connection is made. The district now builds that into its pre-work at the start of the year, so it isn't playing catch-up or apologizing for a missed visit later on.
One gap remains openly acknowledged. Internal buy-in is strong, and individual parents who experience the program are grateful. But the district recognizes it needs to do a better job telling the wider community what is happening, a challenge tied, again, to time and to the fact that the work is spread across so many people and places. Capturing the story and sharing it outward is itself a piece of work still to be built.
The Results
The clearest measure is engagement. The district paid for students to take dual credit and hands-on courses, and participation roughly doubled from about 20% of high schoolers taking a dual-credit class to somewhere in the 50 to 60% range. The district aims for 90% or more of students to earn a C or better in those courses, and has hit that mark every time.
“They rise to the challenge. They're hungry for something that's meaningful to them.”
Credentials followed. In a single senior class, the district saw roughly a dozen students graduate with an industry-based certification and six earn an associate degree, several even walking the college stage before they walked the high school stage, including one junior. Where pathways were once fragmented, the district now offers five, spanning fields such as health science and diagnostic and therapeutic services, industrial manufacturing and emerging technologies (IMET), and education and training.
There is a financial case alongside the human one. The work has driven measurable increases in the district's outcome-bonus funding and CTE funding. The increase in outcome-bonus funding alone has nearly reached, if not exceeded, the initial fee, a return on investment the district can point to if it ever needs to justify continuing the partnership without grant support.
The cultural shift may matter most of all. Students now see peers earning real credentials and conclude that they can do it too. At least two parents, having watched one child benefit, have told the next one plainly: you're going to take advantage of this while you're here.
What’s Next
Having built the foundation, the district is turning toward depth. The immediate focus is quality and making sure all five pathways deliver genuine, hands-on experience. The next chapter is internships, placements, and practicums, the step the district describes as a genuine game changer for students. With a new multi-year grant secured, leaders expect to deepen the partnership over the next three years and to grow the number of real placements and practicum experiences substantially. They are also exploring paid summer internships for teachers, so educators can bring authentic industry experience back into the classroom.
The longer path is toward independence. The district describes its starting point as a haphazard skeleton; with Stacer Group's help it now has the bones of a system it can manage and run itself, keeping the partner for specialist pieces or consulting rather than depending on it for everything.
The ultimate goal is simple to state: that employers recognize a student's potential before graduation and offer a place to plug in, and that every graduate leaves with the genuine opportunity to pursue high-wage, high-demand work.