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MOVING FROM GOOD TO GREAT [Techniques](Techniques Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Creating a High-quality CTE Program As college and career readiness moves to the center stage of education reform conversations, career and technical education (CTE) is being rediscovered. So what does CTE need to do to fit into the goal of preparing all young people to become successful, productive adults in the emerging work world? The essence of what CTE for the 21st century needs to look like is captured in the phrase, "high-quality CTE." Highquality CTE is how a growing number of national organizations are describing something more than a good high school Ag or marketing program. Rather the phrase is being used to describe a set of relationships that link CTE to a larger framework of career readiness. Behind this resurgent interest are several factors. Perhaps most compelling is an understanding that as a nation we cannot compete with less-developed nations on labor costs, which means we must compete on the quality of goods and services we produce. This requires a highly skilled workforce with a range of mid-level trade, technical and professional skills in addition to high-level skills associated with university education. The demise of traditional blue-collar jobs in the United States has been well-documented, and while manufacturing-the core of such employment-has shown a rebound, these are not the same kind or quantity of jobs that were lost during the 1970s and 1980s. Within this context, there is a growing recognition that CTE has the potential to play a key role in American economic competitiveness. Not surprisingly, there are many perspectives on what high-quality CTE means. For many classroom educators, high-quality CTE is what they do every day. And there is an abundance of evidence that what they do every day has a positive effect on the lives of students. The National Research Center for CTE (NRCCTE) has examined these effects over the past 15 years, and numerous studies have found that students who enroll in meaningful amounts of CTE coursework are more likely to finish high school, achieve at levels commensurate with other, similar students, and move on to postsecondary education at rates also commensurate with other, similar students. Plus, they leave high school prepared to move into career pathways.1 That is good, but it is not enough in today's world where our students are competing in a global marketplace and in a workplace increasingly dominated by smarter and smarter technology, digitized information and a relentless drive by business and industry to drive costs lower and lower. Prescriptions for what high-quality CTE should look like flow from two different sources. The first might be described as policy papers. These are produced by advocacy organizations, professional associations or universities that are weighing in on college and career readiness. The other source for determining what high-quality CTE might look like is organizations engaged in research and development, i.e., implementing their vision of high-quality CTE, testing new models. The best among them are refining their models based on rigorous evaluations. Following are a few examples of each. Policy Papers Many national organizations have offered policy or advocacy arguing for highquality CTE. Most by now are familiar with the "Pathways to Prosperity" report produced by Harvard University.2 Less familiar may be the more recent report from the College Board, working with the Business Roundtable and the Georgetown University Center on Poverty, Inequality, and Public Policy, in the 2013 paper, "The Promise of High-Quality Career and Technical Education."3 In it, the authors list a number of characteristics necessary to support high-quality CTE, and they identify a number of what they deem promising models and practices. The National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium (NASDCTEc) has issued several papers addressing this topic, including their identification of the Common Career Technical Core (CCTC)4 which is intended to parallel the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), a framework they suggest is necessary for high-quality CTE. Recently, they published the results of a study of how well states were aligning their CTE with the CCTC in the report, "The State of Career Technical Education: An Analysis of State CTE Standards."5 The short answer is: There is much work to do. The United Federation of Teachers rolled out the position paper, "A Quality Education for All: A Career and Technical Education Policy Agenda"6 as part of a national conference that included experts from industry, education and unions. In this paper, they argued for a policy agenda to ensure that all students have access to high-quality CTE. These organizations and others not cited here have come to the conclusion that more than 30 years of education reform has had the effect of transforming America's high schools into another middle school, which has not served the majority of American youth well. They have concluded that a critical part of the solution is to expand high-quality CTE. Research and Development Other organizations have created and implemented approaches to improving the design and delivery of what we might call high-quality CTE. The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) is developing a series of "Advanced Career"7 course sequences with a focus on advanced technical programs like aerospace engineering, advanced manufacturing, informatics, food and nutritional science, automated materials joining and clean energy technology. In many ways, these four-course sequences are analogous to advanced placement for CTE. They are designed to blend learning in mathematics, science, literacy and technical areas with a focus on strengthening the habits of mind and behavior necessary for success in both careers and further education. National Academy Foundation (NAF)8 academies operate primarily in urban public school districts, but they are also found in suburban and rural communities. The NAF academies are organized around one of five career themes: Finance, Hospitality and Tourism, Information Technology, Health Sciences and Engineering. In addition to core academic courses, students take industryspecific classes related to these themes and participate in work-based learning activities to put their lessons into action. California's Linked Learning9 initiative is a foundation-supported effort focused on developing career pathways that incorporate challenging academics, demanding technical content, work-based learning and support services. Linked Learning shares many characteristics of other programs, including ties to academic and industry standards, a focus on college and career readiness, teacher collaboration, curriculum alignment and problemor project-based learning. Student support services are a unique component of the Linked Learning approach. The Emergent Model of High-quality CTE One way to summarize what these organizations are arguing for or implementing focuses on engaging kids in learning, building mastery of needed academics through the occupational expression of academics, focusing on transition to work and learning beyond high school, and providing supports needed for that. What they share is an approach to high-quality GTE that builds on a system linking crucial partners offering programs that address industry needs and employing pedagogies that meet student needs. High-quality CTE: A Systems Approach The current Perkins IV federal legislation10 provides a beginning framework for the necessary system to support highquality GTE. The legislation introduced programs of study (POS) to the CTE community. POS are the most recent effort in the United States to improve the transition of youth from high school to the workplace. Unlike most other industrialized nations, the U.S. educational system lacks the formal structures-like apprenticeships-that facilitate this transition. Indeed, the United States has no national system linking education and the workforce, but it is rather a patchwork of state, federal and private initiatives. Nonetheless, the legislation building on the history of tech prep, school-to-work and youth apprenticeship required the following: * Secondary and postsecondary elements. * Technical content that is aligned with academic standards and offered in a coherent, coordinated and non-duplicative progression that begins in secondary, leading on seamlessly into postsecondary education, where students engage in more advanced learning and acquire more advanced industry credentials. * Rather than just a collection of courses, the focus in this system should be on obtaining industryrecognized credentials. Such credentials may be short-term like an AWS welding certification, NIMS certifications or a two-year RN or Applied Associate degree in advanced manufacturing. Other credentials may require degrees from professional schools in colleges and universities. Acquisition of credentials can begin in high school, with more advanced credentials offered in the postsecondary setting. Ideally, these credentials would be stackable, i.e., each would articulate into the next to facilitate student development over time as the workplace and personal circumstance might require. * The opportunity for obtaining postsecondary education credits through dual or concurrent credit is encouraged. The use of dual credits has grown over the past decade, and graduating high school also with a college transcript, as well, is a terrific motivator to continue education beyond high school. The most exhaustive and current research on POS has been conducted by the NRG GTE. Multiple studies on POS may be found at www.nrccte.org. The most recent longitudinal study11 found that POS students outperformed their peers on the number of credits they earned in STEM and AP classes, while also earning higher GPAs in their GTE classes. POS research conducted by the NRGGTE has shown the need for and benefits of career guidance and counseling to be quite clear. Developing a career identity and building a career pathway is a process that should begin no later than middle school. Unfortunately, not enough attention is paid to assisting young people in engaging in thoughtful, thorough career development. One of the issues facing schools is that students are often confronted with career and life decisions at an early age with limited opportunities for career exploration. Too often, students are offered few opportunities to engage in career exploration and given little useful information on postsecondary options.12 The result is that career development is often a by-product of the educational curriculum, with a "figure-it-out-as-yougo-along" mentality prevalent among educators and students regarding career exploration. An effective, high-quality GTE system would address this. A successful career pathway system that serves the needs of many, if not all students, requires supportive state policy and a well-articulated system. Such a system must bring together key institutions in effective partnerships grounded in extensive and intensive career development staffed by knowledgeable and effective educators who teach a worldclass technical curriculum. If we assume that the GGSS will continue to shape the traditional core academic subjects, what is the role of GTE curriculum in preparing youth for careers and continued learning beyond high school? High-quality CTE: Relevant Programs The curriculum for an occupationally oriented program ought naturally to begin with the career pathway and the knowledge and skill demands required for successful entry into and advancement within that pathway. The framework for identifying the requisite knowledge and skills may be thought of as career readiness. This is a part of the larger discussion of college and career readiness13 that has come to dominate public discourse around the purposes of public education. In applying this larger framework to the question of creating world-class curricula, three kinds of knowledge and skills emerge that ought to be the foundation of occupationally oriented programs. Stone and Lewis14 defined these as the occupational expression of academics, occupational or generalizable employability skills, and technical skills. Each domain of knowledge and skills must be part of a high-quality GTE program (Figure 1). To build on this basic framework provided by the GGTC, CTE programs should access state or regional sector analyses and then use joint (high school and community college) technical advisory committees to further refine programs to ensure the curriculum is aligned with real-world labor market opportunities for graduates. High-quality CTE: Effective Pedagogy Secondary CTE is more than a jobtraining program. While it is important to align the curriculum with industry practices, it is equally important to align the pedagogy with sound learning theory focused on meeting student needs as well. High-quality CTE should employ three pedagogical strategies: classroom instruction, work-based learning and CTSOs. In the classroom, CTE teachers should emphasize contextual learning in which students learn how to apply academic content in a real-world context (e.g., learning how electricians use algebra to solve job-related problems) in the classroom. According to the report "Capitalizing on Context: Curriculum Integration in Career and Technical Education," published in 2010 by the NRCCTE Curriculum Integration Workgroup, the integration of curriculum in GTE should support the understanding of academics and technical content. As the authors note, "rigor resides in combining GTE and academic skills as applied to real-world problems."15 Project-based learning in this context ap- pears to be particularly useful. Beyond the classroom, high-quality CTE programs must actively involve employers in the training and education of youth (work-based learning). Both the OECD report "Learning for Jobs"16 and the Harvard University "Pathways to Prosperity"17 report describe such involvement as a necessary part of preparing youth for successful adulthood. Work-based learning has the potential to build the kinds of skills and behaviors that research is increasingly showing are critical to success in many fields of human endeavor, including the workplace and college. It is quite clear that learning within a community of professional practice provides students unparalleled opportunities to learn adult behaviors necessary to prosper in today's workplace, college and communities. Almost all successful GTE programs have an active student organization. CTSOs are co-curricular, with some activities taking place during regular classes and others outside of school hours. Because of their integration of rigorous academic and technical content and focus on preparation for a career, CTSOs complement many elements of the programs of study required under the 2006 reauthorization of Perkins. Students also learn skills related to specific occupations and develop their technical literacy through exposure to the general concepts of their chosen field. A national study18 by the NRCCTE found that in comparison to comparable students not enrolled in CTSOs, CTSO participants reported higher academic motivation, academic engagement, career self-efficacy and college aspirations. Some of the positive experiences identified by CTSO members include teamwork, decision-making, competition, leadership, community awareness, career awareness, and personal and social development. While the Perkins legislation provides a basic framework, what the think-tanks and the research and development efforts have done is to add to the systems thinking. Each of these either argues for or is attempting to implement an integrated system that includes: * Horizontal integration of academic and occupational education within high schools. * Vertical integration between secondary and postsecondary education programs. * Strong connections in the form of partnerships with business and industry. * A robust career development process that begins in the early grades and continues through high school and beyond. With these components in place, we can begin to build high-quality GTE programs that will better serve students and the communities in which they live. Tech James Stone will be presenting, "Programs of Study: Do They Work?" at ACTE's CareerTech VISION 2014. For more information, visit www.careertechvision.com. ENDNOTES 1. Stone, J. R. Ill, & Lewis, M. (2012). College and career ready for the 21st century: Making high school matter. New York, NY: Teacher's College Press. 2. Symonds, W. C., Schwartz, R. B., & Ferguson, R. (2011, February). Pathways to prosperity: Meeting the challenge of preparing young Americans for the 21stcentury. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Graduate School of Education. Retrieved from: www.gse.harvard.edu/ news_events/features/2011/Pathways_to_ Prosperity_Feb2011. pdf 3. Holzer, H.J., Linn, D. & Monthey, W. (2013, October). The promise of high-quality career and technical education: Improving outcomes for students, firms and the economy. The College Board and the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty, Inequality, and Public Policy. 4. National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium. (2012). Common Career Technical Core. Silver Spring, MD: Author. Retrieved from: www. careertech.org/sites/default/files/CCTC_ Standards_Formatted_2014.pdf 5. National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium. (2012). The state of career technical education: An analysis of state CTE standards. Retrieved from: http://careertech.org/sites/default/files/ State-CTE-Standards-ReportFINAL.pdf 6. United Federation of Teachers (October, 2013). Policy platform presented at the UFT Career & Technical Education Conference: A quality education for all: A career and technical education policy agenda. New York, NY. 7. Southern Regional Education Board, (n.d.). Advanced Career. Retrieved from: www.sreb. org/page/1608/Advanced_Career.html 8. National Academy Foundation (2004, 20013). National standards of practice for career academies. Retrieved from: http:// casn.berkeley.edu/resource_files/national_ standards.pdf 9. To learn more about Linked Learning, visit: http://irvine.org/grantmaking/our-programs/ youth/linked-learning 10. Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Improvement Act of 2006 (Public Law 109-270). (Perkins IV). Retrieved from: www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-109s250enr/ pdf/BILLS-109s250enr.pdf 11. Castellano, M., Sundell, K. E., Overman, L. T., Richardson, G. B., & Stone, J. R. III. (2014, April). Rigorous tests of student outcomes in CTE programs of study: Final report. Louisville, KY: National Research Center for Career and Technical Education. 12. Dykeman, C., Wood, C., Ingram, M., Gitelman, A., Mandsager, N., Chen, M-Y., & Herr, E.L. (2003). Career development interventions and academic self-efficacy and motivation: A pilot study. St. Paul, MN: National Research Center for Career and Technical Education, University of Minnesota. 13. ConnectEd. (October, 2012). College and career readiness: What do we mean? Berkeley, CA: Author. Retrieved from: http:// connectedcalifornia.org/direct/files/resources/ RevED_CACRF%20paper_final%20txt_v4.pdf 14. Stone, J. R. Ill, & Lewis, M. (2012). College and career ready for the 21st century: Making high school matter. 15. National Research Center for Career and Technical Education Curriculum Integration Workgroup (2010). Capitalizing on context: Curriculum integration in career and technical education. Louisville, KY: National Research Center for Career and Technical Education, University of Louisville. Retrieved from: www. nrccte.org/resources/publications/capitalizingcontext-curriculum-integration-career-andtechnical-education-0 16. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2010). Learning for jobs. Paris, FR: OECD Publishing 17. Symonds, W. C., Schwartz, R. B., & Ferguson, R. (2011). Pathways to prosperity: Meeting the challenge of preparing young Americans for the 21st century. 18. Alfeld, C., Stone, J. R., Aragon, S. R., Hansen, D. M., Zirkle, C., Connors, J.,... Woo, H.J. (2007). Looking inside the black box: The value added by career and technical student organizations to students' high school experience. St. Paul, MN: National Research Center for Career and Technical Education, University of Minnesota. James R. Stone III, Ed.D., is the director of the National Research Center for Career and Technical Education at the SREB. Dr. Stone is an internationally recognized scholar in college and career readiness and CTE. He can be contacted at [email protected]. (c) 2014 Association for Career & Technical Education |