Devyn Maguire · 6/26/2026
The Last Mile: What a Decade in Education Taught Me About the Future of Work
From the Founder
In 2014, my hometown of Ottawa, Illinois cut its building trades program.
The backlash was immediate. Mike Rowe got involved. Students walked out.
Parents and tradesmen showed up. Local business owners sent food to the kids standing their ground. As Rowe put it at the time:
“When the vocational arts got cut, no one made a peep. And that was a big, fat mistake that the country is paying for in a huge way.”
That was also the year I started teaching, as an elementary teacher in Ottawa. I watched my community fight to protect a class that taught young people how to make things and build a life from it.
I've spent the decade since chasing the question that fight raised: how did we get so good at telling kids that one kind of future counts and another doesn't?
This isn't really a story about me. It's a story about what's happened to workforce education in this country, and the gap we still haven't closed. My path just happens to be the window I saw it through.
What I Watched Happen
After Ottawa, I taught in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, where I led an effort to build a competency-based report card. It was hard to align on, not for lack of desire, but because of the sheer weight of data it takes to do well.
The question I kept returning to: why would we ever give a third grader an A in reading?
An A doesn't tell a young person what to improve or where they're excelling. It sorts them into a category of student and hands them an identity built on a few assessments and a lot of subjectivity. In K–2 we do better. We break learning into approaching, meeting, and exceeding: skills a kid can actually move on, without a label attached.
From there I moved into edtech, working with university professors trying to undo years of that same damage. Students arrived focused entirely on the outcome, never the competencies underneath it. Later, in leadership roles, I saw where the pattern ends: how hard it is to grow someone who can't receive feedback, because they've fused who they are with how they're scored.
It compounds. A kid who never learned how to improve toward mastery becomes an adult who can't see their own strengths, their path, or the full range of ways they could apply what they're good at.
What the People Doing the Hiring Actually Want
Here's what makes the Ottawa cut so costly.
I've spent months on a listening tour with leaders across skilled industries. The
number one thing they hire for isn't reading scores or SAT results. It's character, commitment, and culture fit.
Travis Williams of the Central Midwest Carpenters Regional Council said it better than I could:
“I consistently say when I talk to young kids: I'm in the business of building leaders, not just carpenters. So if you want to become a leader, this is the organization you want to become a part of. The skills and the knowledge - everything else is going to come with time. Because when you build leaders, that's how you get young people becoming foreman, general foreman, superintendents, and company owners. That's why I say we're in the business of building leaders.”
That's the whole thing. The industries with real upward mobility aren't asking for a transcript. They're asking: Is this someone willing to grow, work hard, and get better?
The Tide Is Turning
Set Ottawa in 2014 next to my new hometown today, and you can feel the shift.
A few weeks ago, 45 Wauwatosa students signed into careers in the skilled trades, committing to real futures with companies like Mortenson, JP Cullen, and Staff Electric, through a state-certified pre-apprenticeship program. Ten years ago, a small town fought to keep a shop class. Today, a district celebrates kids signing into the trades like the win it is.
We're building systems that support competency-based learning. And while there's real anxiety about the future of work, I see this generation responding with resilience, charting their own paths and building their own brands, because they already know employers can't always promise loyalty back.
The narrative is changing. So is the infrastructure around it.
The Gap That Remains
So if the tide is turning, what's left to do?
The last mile.
We are getting better at preparing young people. We are getting better at
celebrating the choice. But the stretch between a kid who's ready and a career that's actually theirs is still where too many of them fall through: the connection, the match, the first real step.
That's the part of the journey Runwayz exists to close.
I'm the CEO of Runwayz, and we built it for that last mile. Not as another job board, but as a way to take a whole-human view of a young person, their interests, their durable skills, their verified progress, and connect it directly to the industries investing in them. We support the organizations doing tireless work on the ground: Build Chicago, Chicago Hope Academy, and the partners building young people up and getting them ready. And we partner with industries that are betting real dollars on the next generation.
One of them is CCAI. As executive director Anne Goyer said when we launched our partnership earlier this year:
“Our industry is the 'hidden gem' of manufacturing, requiring a unique blend of technical knowledge and a high level of precision. By working with Runwayz, we are reaching students who value these traits and showing them how they lead to successful, long- term careers.”
Why This Still Matters
Ten years ago, a town fought to keep a shop class and mostly lost the argument. The country paid for it. Mike Rowe was right.
We don't have to keep paying. The pieces are finally connecting: the educators, the unions, the employers, the genuine celebration of the choice. What's been missing is the connective tissue that connects a kid who has potential to the industry that needs them. That's our work.
Optimism is resistance. We're looking for more resistors.