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Posts Tagged ‘Articulation’

CTE Research Review: Youth Employment, Reverse Transfers and More

Monday, June 13th, 2016

We are back with another CTE Research Review. In this edition we explore business-facing intermediaries and a new study on reverse transfer students. And below the fold, we feature some studies and stories you may have missed in the last month.

How Intermediaries Create Shared Value by Connecting Youth with Jobs

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation is out with a new report in its Youth Employment Series titled Talent Orchestrators: Scaling Youth Employment through Business-Facing Intermediaries. The report challenges the notion that employer engagement is only a civic or philanthropic venture and outlines how business-facing intermediaries can create shared value by matching businesses with skilled youth. Already, intermediaries around the country are stepping up to the plate by managing employer demand, equipping youth with professional skills and job-specific training, and facilitating the onboarding process to connect youth with employment opportunities.

Consider STEP-UP Achieve, a career-track youth employment program started by Minneapolis-based intermediary AchieveMpls. The program partnered with the Minneapolis Regional Chamber to develop a curriculum and establish a certification endorsement for youth participants who successfully complete a pre-employment work-readiness program. This program, and others like it, created shared value by both preparing youth for the workplace and providing employers with a signal of job readiness. STEP-UP Achieve has provided more than 8,000 internship opportunities since 2004.

For Reverse Transfer Students, Going Backward Could Be the Best Path Forward

Speaking of alternative pathways to employment, a new research study from the Center for Analysis of Postsecondary Education and Employment (CAPSEE) examines academic and labor outcomes for struggling students who transfer from a four-year to a two-year postsecondary institution (aka “4-2 transfer students”). The study, Do Students Benefit from Going Backward? The Academic and Labor Market Consequences of Four-to Two-Year College Transfer, finds that struggling 4-2 transfer students are more likely to earn a postsecondary credential than similar students who do not transfer. What’s more, these students were no less likely than similar students to earn a bachelor’s degree and had similar earnings and employment rates. The outcomes of the study are promising because they suggest that struggling students can benefit from the flexibility and affordability of transferring to a two-year college without putting degree completion or future employment at risk.

ICYMI

And in case you missed it, here are some other studies and stories making a splash this month:

Austin Estes, Policy Associate

By admin in Research
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Interest in State CTE Policy Growing Across the Country

Thursday, February 5th, 2015

spr1For the second consecutive year, a significant number of states have developed and implemented new policies and programs to advance Career Technical Education (CTE) at the secondary and postsecondary levels.

In a new publication, “State Policies Impacting CTE: 2014 Year in Review,” legislative and regulatory bodies in 46 states and the District of Columbia approved roughly 150 policies relevant to CTE. The paper was jointly authored by NASDCTEc and the Association for Career and Technical Education.

This continued interest shows a growing awareness in using CTE as a means to increase postsecondary credential attainment, provide students with real-world experience and prepare a workforce with the knowledge and skills necessary to maintain the nation’s competitive edge, the paper argues.

The paper is the second installment in the “Year in Review” series. The inaugural paper from 2013 can be viewed here. The legislation and policies collected in these papers does not imply an endorsement by NADSCTEc, ACTE or state CTE leaders. Rather, the hope is that by collecting these policies into one document, NASDCTEc and ACTE can continue to inform the community and in turn lead to the adoption of positive CTE policies across the 50 states.

While funding activity grabbed the top spot for the second year in a row, industry partnerships and work-based learning emerged as a newly popular category, with 28 states passing legislation or approving policies designed to accelerate employer engagement with CTE and offer real-work experiences for students.

Policymakers maintained their interest related to high school students earning college credit as well as how credit transfers across institutions. States such as Nevada approved a new policy in 2014 to develop statewide articulation agreements for all CTE programs of study to ensure that earned credit in an approved program has total transferability.

While several of the policy areas that were active in 2013 were also prominent in 2014, there were a few exceptions, notably governance. Fewer states made changes to CTE governance structures or clarified regulatory authority in 2014 than in the year prior.

Andrea Zimmermann, State Policy Associate

By admin in Advance CTE Resources, Public Policy, Publications, Research, Resources
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CTE Research Review

Wednesday, August 27th, 2014

Research Image_6.2013As postsecondary institutions work to ease students through higher education with an increasing number of interventions such as statewide articulation agreements and common course numbering systems, students moving from one postsecondary institution to another still find that their earned credits often will not move with them.

Against the backdrop of increasingly complex transfer patterns, the National Center for Education Statistics has taken a closer look at a crucial piece of the transfer process – postsecondary credit transferability. This report focuses on transfers between postsecondary institutions not the high school-to-college credit transfer through dual enrollment and other agreements.

This new study examines how often, and under what conditions, students transfer from one postsecondary institution to another and how many of their earned credits will transfer with them. The study also considers to what degree institutional and student characteristics affect credit transfers. It should be noted that the study captures only first-time, full-time students.

Analyzing data from the 2009 Postsecondary Education Transcript Study, NCES found that 35 percent one-third of first-time beginning undergraduates transferred at least once in six years, and more than 10 percent of students transferred more than once.

The study found two factors consistently contributed to successful credit transfers – academic performance prior to transfer and the direction by which a student was transferring. Overall, when a student transfers in a way that the higher education system is designed to accommodate, a student’s credit was much more likely to transfer. More than half of transfer students started in community colleges, and were more likely to have successful credit transfers than “reverse or horizontal transfers,” when students move from a university to a community college or between institutions of the same type.

Be sure to check out the full 60-page report to take a closer look at the student transfer experience.

Andrea Zimmermann, State Policy Associate

By admin in Research
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Michigan: Statewide Articulation Agreement Joins Four-Year Private University

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

A recent move by a private four-year college in Michigan to engage in a statewide articulation agreement signals another step forward for career technical education (CTE). The plan, which allows students to earn up to 24 transferable academic credits while in CTE high schools and tech centers, is an indicator that education and policy leaders recognize the true value and quality of CTE courses and programs.

The agreement between Michigan Office of Career and Technical Education and Davenport University was featured in a recent Inside Higher Ed article, which noted that the articulation plan was not unique, but certainly atypical. CTE still has more traction to gain, but the recent news at a statewide scale is encouraging.

The article, In Michigan, All Hands on Deck, quoted David Fleming, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academics at Davenport University, who said “mythology persists that technical education is still wood shop, that students go into it to avoid taking some of the more rigorous academic courses, and that there’s no way that applied physics [taught in a career-technical program] can be as good as regular physics [taught at a traditional high school].”

 This articulation agreement counters that notion, he added.

 “But this idea that you can’t learn physics is busted when a university is ready to give credit for it. This changes the game, and from my point of view, it’s the reason we jumped at this,” Flanagan said in the article.

Such is the case in Pennsylvania, said State Director Lee Burket of the Pennsylvania’s Bureau of Career and Technical Education who noted a statewide articulation process in which all colleges must participate if they receive Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act funds. Through the articulation program, a handful of private two-year institutions and at least two independent four-year colleges accept academic credits from secondary programs that meet particular alignment standards.

The articulation agreement in Pennsylvania has demonstrated positive outcomes on a range of fronts, said Burket, noting that students have credited the articulation plans for creating pathways that encouraged them to pursue postsecondary education.

Given projections that postsecondary experience and accreditations will be of higher demand in coming years, it appears that states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania are on the right track with their CTE endeavors.

By admin in Public Policy
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