Posts Tagged ‘NCES’

CTE Research Review

Thursday, April 30th, 2015

teachersToday in CTE research … a scan of career pathway models, a peek into employers’ views on competency-based education, recommendations to strengthen the teacher pipeline, and research into the labor market’s return on investment for higher education.

First up – MDRC’s new research, “New Pathways to Careers and College: Examples, Evidence, and Prospects”

Over the years, the high school reform debate has evolved to view CTE as a means to prepare all students for success in college and careers, and CTE programs are changing along with it. More programs are emerging that blend CTE, rigorous academic coursework and opportunities for career exploration. With that in mind, MDRC researchers took a first-ever scan of the most prominent career pathway models and their underlying principles, the localities where they are most popular, and some evidence of success.

At least one career pathway model can be found in high schools in virtually every state and most large cities, the researchers argue, and yet still only a small percentage of students are enrolled in pathways that include the key elements of success. Much work remains to scale programs that are anchored by infrastructure that ensures high-quality implementation, sustainability and continuous improvement.

NASDCTEc Executive Director Kimberly Green and Oklahoma State CTE Director Marcie Mack were among the national experts interviewed for this report.

The Pipeline of Teachers

ACT and the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) have published new research that takes a closer look at the pipeline of future
teachers as well as how they fare during their first five years in the classroom.

In “The Condition of Future Educators 2014,” ACT examines which students are expressing interest an education career from administration to classroom teachers, and found that the number of students interested in becoming educators continues to drop significantly – just five percent of all ACT-tested graduates. There continues to be a lack of men and diversity among those who expressed interest in the profession. The study was based on the 57 percent, or 27,000 students, of the U.S. graduation class who took the ACT test in 2014.

Among the findings, just one percent, or 224 students, planned to make CTE teaching a focus of their postsecondary pursuits.

The report offered three recommendations to help drive more high-achieving and diverse students into the teacher pipeline:

At NCES, researchers provided a first look at the results of a nationally representative study of 2,000 teachers who entered the profession in 2007-08. After five years in the field, 17 percent of the teachers were no longer teaching, the study found. Salary was one of the greatest reasons why teachers remained in the profession. Education level had little impact. Those teachers who started with a $40,000 salary were more likely to still be teaching a year later.

Competency-based Education

Competency-based education (CBE) is gaining traction in communities across the country, particularly within higher education. But what do we know about how employers see it?

The American Enterprise Institute recently published a first-of-its-kind survey of 500 hiring managers to better understand how employers view CBE. The study found:

Andrea Zimmermann, State Policy Associate

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CTE Research Review

Wednesday, February 25th, 2015

Nursing Shortage Projected

Select figures from the report, “Making Skills Everyone’s Business: A Call to Transform Adult Learning in the United States.” Georgetown University’s Center for Education and the Workforce (CEW) has released a new report, “Nursing: Supply and Demand Through 2020,” which says the country will soon face a shortfall of 193,000 nursing professionals. Yet despite the coming shortage and a growing interest in the nursing profession from young people, the report finds that postsecondary programs reject up to half of qualified applicants.

The researchers cite inadequate faculty, facilities and clinical placements as barriers to training all of the qualified applicants. Programs providing training for Associate’s Degree in Nursing rejected 51 percent of qualified applicants, while programs for a Bachelor’s in Nursing rejected 37 percent.

New PIAAC report: Making Skills Everyone’s Business

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE) has launched a new report, “Making Skills Everyone’s Business: A Call to Transform Adult Learning in the United States.” Using data from the 2013 Survey of Adult Skills report, the report renews the call to “upskill” those 36 million U.S. adults with low skills in numeracy, literacy and problem solving in technology-rich environments.

As a result of a nationwide listening tour to solicit feedback on the state of U.S. adult education and the 2013 survey findings, this new report takes a deeper look at the 2013 data and outlines seven strategies to transform U.S. adult education. The recommended strategies are:

In Case You Missed It

Image Caption: Select figures from the report, “Making Skills Everyone’s Business: A Call to Transform Adult Learning in the United States.”

Andrea Zimmermann, State Policy Associate

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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

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New NCES Tables Focus on CTE Students

Monday, December 5th, 2011

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released recently six tables with statistics for 2009 public high school graduates who participated in Career Technical Education (CTE).

The new tables include information such as the percentage of graduates who earned credits in CTE overall and in specific occupational areas, and the average number of CTE credits earned in each area. Half of the tables focus on 2009 high school graduates, and the remaining tables provide participation trends from1990 through 2009.

The tables also show that public high school graduates earn, on average, 3.57 credits in CTE. However, the average number of CTE credits earned by public high school graduates has decreased over time from 4.2 credits in 1990, 4.0 credits in 2005, and 3.6 credits in 2009.

View the new CTE tables here.

Kara Herbertson, Education Policy Analyst

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