College and Career Pathways is an educational policy initiative widely acclaimed as a common-sensical and effective measure to ease students’ transitions between secondary and postsecondary education and into the middle-skill jobs. This article investigates the internal dynamics of the Path-ways’ curricular model as well as its underpinning assumptions and implications. First, it situates this development within the broader context of school-to-work reform efforts and explores its connec-tions to the neoliberal ideological thinking. Drawing on Leonardo’s (2012) critical raceclass theory of education as a conceptual lens, and with close attention to the new order of job categories, it then examines the rise of Pathways in light of the realities of class, race, and the asymmetrical power rela-tions that characterize the modern nation state. The article concludes that pathways is best understood when situated within the dynamics of production and reproduction of a new class of workers for the new racio-economic structure of the 21st century. © American Educational Studies Association.
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