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Washington, DC — The Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship (PAYA), an initiative of ������Ƶ, congratulates Maryland, Montana, North Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, and Washington on joining the National Governors Association Center (NGA Center) for Best Practices Policy Academy to Advance Youth Apprenticeship. These states will be awarded a $50,000 grant to expand opportunities that combine paid, on-the-job learning, related instruction, and industry credentials that count toward college.

As a part of the Center on Education & Labor at ������Ƶ, PAYA is pleased to announce this second academy cohort that will build on PAYA’s vision of making youth apprenticeship a mainstream pathway to economic mobility and stronger regional economies.

Young people are looking for new opportunities to learn skills that will open doors to the workforce while avoiding significant debt. Youth apprenticeship offers these opportunities and provides them pathways to the middle class, helping to mitigate long-standing inequities in our education system. State leadership, particularly at the governor level, will be critical to unlocking policy that builds on the growing momentum around this postsecondary strategy and to connecting high-need sectors with next-generation talent.

Through peer exchange and NGA’s expertise, each state will tailor their models to reflect local labor markets and refine specific action plans to strengthen and align their data systems. These policy changes will scale youth apprenticeship—and ultimately build better pathways into quality careers for young people. The NGA Policy Academy will begin in September, continuing through summer of 2026.

The NGA Center has served as a national partner since PAYA’s inception in 2018 and continues to help translate PAYA’s research-backed principles into practical, state-level policy.

“In this climate of growing inequity in the United States, youth apprenticeship provides young people an important gateway to postsecondary education while simultaneously enabling them to learn while they earn,” said Mary Alice McCarthy, the founder and senior director of the Center on Education & Labor at ������Ƶ.

As part of its mission to expand access to high-quality youth apprenticeship opportunities, PAYA also recently renewed investment in 10 Sustainability Grantees, or place-based partnerships working to scale and sustain youth apprenticeship programs, and awarded six new Development Grants to partnerships designing and launching new youth apprenticeship programs.

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