How Career-Connected Literacy Inspires Students, Supports Educators, and Improves Outcomes

Why Linking Literacy to Life Goals Is the Accelerator Students Have Been Waiting For

Across the country, educators are grappling with a reality that feels both urgent and hopeful: students need stronger literacy skills than ever before, and they also need learning experiences that feel relevant to their future. When those two forces come together (when reading ability connects with personal purpose), students don’t just grow. They accelerate.

That was the resounding message from The Path to Brighter Futures Starts with Reading Today, a two-part webinar series co-hosted by MetaMetrics and Beable. Spanning state policy, district innovation, classroom practice, and student voice, the series illuminated a simple truth: career-connected literacy is no longer a “nice to have.” It is the strategy that motivates students to read more, persist longer, and imagine bigger possibilities for themselves.

Why Career-Connected Literacy Matters Now More Than Ever

As former state education chief Jillian Balow reminded participants in session one of the webinar series, jobs today, and especially jobs of the future, require “dynamic and flexible skill sets based on a strong foundation of reading proficiency.” Yet national literacy levels continue to decline, with eighth-grade reading performance at historic lows.

At the same time, students are trying to understand why literacy matters. They ask classic questions like, “When am I ever going to use this?”

Career-connected literacy offers an answer: You’re going to use it in the life you choose to build.

By linking reading growth to students’ interests, strengths, and career aspirations, schools can help them see both the purpose and the payoff of literacy. And when students recognize that their Lexile measure is not a label but a tool, a “dress for success,” as Beable CEO Saki Dodelson put it, they begin to take ownership of their growth.

A Dual-Framework Approach: Connecting Literacy Skills to Career Pathways

A core insight across both webinar sessions was that students flourish when two complementary models work together: one that measures where they are as readers, and one that illuminates who they are as learners. When the Lexile Framework for Reading and the RIASEC interest model operate in tandem, they create a catalytic effect that helps students connect their identity, their aspirations, and the literacy skills required to reach their goals.

The Role of Lexile Measures: Turning Measurement Into Momentum

In webinar session two, Matt Spindler, MetaMetrics SVP of Product, explained how the Lexile scale enables schools to pair a student’s reading ability with the complexity of texts and the literacy demands of specific careers. With that information, students can see not just their current level, but the path ahead.

This transforms reading from an isolated task to a meaningful step toward the future a student envisions.

The Role of RIASEC: Helping Students Understand Who They Are

Beable integrates the Holland RIASEC model (realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, conventional personality traits) to help students uncover their natural preferences and strengths. As Shea Lindblad, a fifth-grade teacher, shared, students light up when they see themselves represented in a positive, strengths-based code:

“It’s celebrating kids in the sense of who they are within themselves… and that is beautiful.”

Why the Combination Works

When these frameworks are combined, something powerful happens. Students understand themselves more deeply. They see career paths that align with their interests, and they recognize the literacy skills required to access those opportunities.

The result is a shift from compliance (“I have to read this”) to purpose (“I need to read this to become who I want to be”). Students begin making choices that reflect ambition, clarity, and ownership, an effect that educators across the sessions repeatedly described as transformative.

From Insight to Impact: What Happens When Students Own Their Path

Lindblad’s school, Britt David Magnet Academy within the Muscogee County School District in Columbus, Georgia, is now in its third year of implementing Beable. She provided a compelling account of her students’ impressive results:

• Students exceeded expected Lexile growth by wide margins.
• Every student met or surpassed their individualized growth goal.
• Students who previously felt stuck transformed into motivated readers.

But the quantitative gains were only part of the story. When asked what shifted most, she emphasized student buy-in:

“The kids rose to the challenge. They were so excited to show their teachers, ‘Look, I grew five points.’ When there’s buy-in, that’s half the battle.”

The turning point? Students choosing careers aligned to their RIASEC profiles, like architect, welder, video-game designer, chemistry teacher, and seeing the literacy demands those careers require. Suddenly, the question wasn’t, “Why do I have to read this?”  It became: “What do I need to read to become who I want to be?”

Scaling Success: What Happens When Schools, Families, and Communities Unite

A recurring theme across both webinar sessions was that isolated pockets of excellence are not enough.

As Dr. Andy Melin, Executive Director, Central Indiana Service Center, former superintendent, and previous Chief Innovation Officer for the state of Indiana, explained in session one of the webinar series, Indiana has spent years building a statewide network of business partnerships, intermediaries, and regional collaboratives so that every student, not just those in innovative districts, has access to career-connected learning.

He emphasized that:

• The majority of students (“the backbone kids”) often receive the least attention, even though they show up, work hard, and have untapped potential.
• Systems, not one-off programs, determine whether all students receive equitable access to pathways.
• Relevancy is the most powerful antidote to student disengagement.

Schools that pair the Beable platform with community engagement see radical shifts. Lindblad’s school held RIASEC family nights where parents discovered their own profiles alongside their children. Engagement and Lexile growth jumped dramatically after parents understood how literacy connected to life trajectories.

It was, as Lindblad put it, “a game-changer.”

Technology as the Great Connector

Across both webinars, presenters agreed: AI and technology aren’t replacing teachers; they’re enabling personalization at a scale that simply wasn’t possible before.

Technology makes it possible to:

• Build a learner profile rich with strengths, interests, goals, and reading data.
• Automatically suggest career paths that align with both interest and literacy levels.
• Forecast growth and help students understand exactly what it will take to reach their goals.
• Personalize reading assignments so students encounter texts they want to read and are ready to read.

As one student named Sammy shared in a Beable spotlight, knowing both his RIASEC code and his Lexile measure helped him recognize that, “There’s a big possibility for me to be a superintendent.”

Relevance becomes motivation. Motivation becomes progress. Progress becomes possibility.

A Map to a Brighter Future

The career-connected literacy series made one thing clear: Students do not lack ambition. They lack a roadmap to guide them.

When educators stitch together literacy, interests, identity, and career exploration, supported by reliable measurement frameworks like the Lexile scale and powered by platforms like Beable, students begin to see futures they didn’t know existed. This work is no longer experimental or aspirational. It is happening, at scale, in classrooms and districts today. And as the data shows, it is working.

The path to brighter futures truly does start with reading today. But students will walk that path when they understand why it matters and when they can see where it leads.

Interested in learning more about the Lexile Framework for Reading and our career-connected literacy tools? Contact us.