CTE teachers « Advance CTE Blog

ECMCF Fellow Feature: Dr. Tempestt Adams

Monday, June 12th, 2023

In September 2022, Advance CTE and ECMC Foundation announced the second cohort of The Postsecondary State Career Technical Education (CTE) Leaders Fellowship at Advance CTE—Sponsored by ECMC Foundation. The Advance CTE — ECMCF Fellows include representation across multiple demographic categories reflecting the Fellowship’s goal of intentionally building a postsecondary leadership pipeline for underserved populations in Career Technical Education (CTE) that closes racial representation gaps and removes equity barriers to postsecondary leadership advancement. For this next blog in the ECMCF Fellow Feature series, we’re excited to feature ECMCF Fellow Dr. Tempestt Adams (NC) whose own experience in the classroom served as the inspiration for her Real-World Project topic. Dr. Adams is passionate about improving educator preparation programs and finding solutions that integrate learner voices into discussions about how institutions can increase retention rates.

“As a lifelong learner, I’ve always been intentional in my pursuit of professional development and growth in my career.”

Dr. Adams found the Fellowship through the recommendation of a colleague who saw the thread of equity throughout the curriculum and workshop topics as an opportunity for her to build upon her previous work in this space. Through the Fellowship, Dr. Adams has had the opportunity to engage with Career Technical Education (CTE) specific knowledge that she had not previously been exposed to. As a result, she feels more equipped and confident to use language and tools to support her ideas about becoming a more effective leader.

“Any researcher would say that you build confidence as you read and increase your exposure to new ideas. This is particularly true for learning about using an equity lens in CTE, and I’m grateful as this isn’t always the reality of my everyday work.”

Dr. Adams has seen the ways in which her participation in the Fellowship has helped her advance in her current role as an Assistant Professor at Appalachian State University and she’s interested in exploring additional opportunities to increase her leadership to expand her impact. Specifically, she’s learning more about programs that directly address issues impacting student success in undergraduate CTE or graduate certificate programs. The Fellowship has also piqued Dr. Adams’s interest in learning more about community colleges and how postsecondary CTE programs are leveraging learner data. As a transfer-friendly institution, data-sharing partnerships with community colleges would provide a more complete understanding of where students are coming from before they transfer. Dr. Adams sees an opportunity to use this data to better equip her instructors in their class preparation.

Dr. Adams became enamored with data during her doctoral program when she was exploring the national challenge of recruiting and retaining teachers of color. She noticed that there was more racial diversity among the second-career individuals entering the graduate certificate program than those choosing to enroll in her program. At the same time, she noticed that the retention rates of those enrolled in the graduate certificate program were much lower, and as a result, fewer teachers of color were completing the program. Through her Real-World Project, Dr. Adams is exploring the reasons for this drop in learner retention with the goal of improving institutional awareness of the challenges that learners are facing so that they can be addressed.

“Looking ahead, I’m interested in taking this work and the outline I’ve created to pursue a Spencer Foundation Grant. Additional funding would provide the opportunity to expand the number of students that I’m surveying in my Real-World Project and look more whole scale at black teachers and CTE in the state.”

If you have any questions, contact Dr. Adams by email at adamstr2@appstate.edu

Amy Hodge, Policy Associate

By Jodi Langellotti in Uncategorized
Tags: CTE Data, CTE Leadership, CTE teachers, Leadership Pipeline, North Carolina

Research Round-up: The Impact of the High School CTE Education Teacher Pathway Initiative Grant

Wednesday, May 31st, 2023

Advance CTE’s “Research Round-Up” blog series features summaries of relevant research reports and studies to elevate evidence-backed Career Technical Educational (CTE) policies and practices and topics related to college and career readiness. This month’s blog highlights a study produced by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education (OCTAE) on the impact of the High School CTE Education Teacher Pathway Initiative Grant. These findings align with Advance CTE’s vision for the future of CTE where each learner is supported by and has the means to succeed in the career preparation ecosystem.

In 2017, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education (OCTAE) launched the High School Career and Technical Education (CTE) Teacher Pathway Initiative (also referred to as CTE TPI). Last year, OCTAE published The Impact of the High School CTE Education Teacher Pathway Initiative Grant, a report on the outcomes of these three-year grants and the specific activities that the five grantees implemented to increase the pipeline capacity of high-school CTE teachers. These findings can inform state leaders on best practices for recruitment and retaining high-quality CTE instructors.

The study, conducted by the American Institutes for Research (AIR), focused on the following questions to examine the challenges and potential solutions encountered during grant implementation and to summarize grantee activities:

What do grantees see as the major factors contributing to shortages of secondary CTE teachers in their state or community?
How have grantees used CTE TPI funding to alleviate CTE teacher shortages?
What challenges have grantees experienced in implementing their CTE TPI activities, and what strategies are they using to overcome those challenges?
Are there early indicators of success in alleviating CTE teacher shortages?

Grants were awarded to two state departments of education, a regional education service center, a community college system and a school district:

Grantee Findings and Activities

In the first collection of data in 2019, grantees were surveyed about what they saw as the major factors influencing the shortages of secondary teachers in their state or community. The five major issues identified were:

Disparities in compensation and work-life balance between in-demand industry positions and teaching
Lack of higher education programs to train potential CTE educators
Challenges navigating the CTE teacher licensure process and requirements
The differentiated education and experience required to teach different CTE content areas
Exams in teaching skills or content areas

The table above shows the activities pursued by each grantee with the following outcomes:

New Jersey Department of Education: 53 industry professionals enrolled in an educator preparation program and 9 current teachers completed a program to help them transition to CTE teaching.
Tennessee Department of Education: 61 teachers enrolled in new school district-led educator preparation programs, and 39 teachers and 30 mentors piloted a new regional mentoring model.
Southeast Kansas Education Service Center: 165 new CTE teachers and 63 mentors participated in at least 1 year of a structured mentoring program.
Portland Community College: 48 industry professionals and 27 current teachers transitioning to CTE teaching enrolled in an educator preparation program and community of practice.
School Board of Broward County: 100 teachers gained certification in business education, computer science, or engineering and 23 teachers implemented a new CTE course.

Promising Practices for States

Chronic teacher shortages were only exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and without taking immediate action, these gaps may continue to grow. The findings from this study speak to the variety of strategies that state and local CTE leaders can employ to increase the number of CTE instructors:

Broad Professional networks: Establishing broader regional or statewide professional and/or mentoring networks through which new CTE teachers can access support from peers and more experienced CTE teachers is particularly important for new CTE teachers to combat what many teachers refer to as “professional isolation.”
Tailored Mentorship: Mentorship is clearly a needed support, particularly when it is aligned with new CTE teachers’ content areas or tailored to meet the individual’s professional needs.
Accessible Instructor Shortage Data: Grantees were unable to access systematic data regarding where and in what content areas high school CTE teachers are needed. This information must be collected from the district level, aggregated to the state level, and made accessible to coordinate an effective response to addressing staffing shortages.
Proactive Certification Planning: Educational institutions that are interested in recruiting current non-CTE teachers for CTE positions can make advance planning for moving teachers into those roles an explicit component of their strategy. The investment of preparing teachers for certification and licensure might be most impactful when accompanied by an institution-level commitment to directly translate teacher preparation into expanded CTE programs and an increase in CTE course opportunities for students.
Data Sharing through Partnerships: Whenever possible, grantees should solidify agreements with partners as partnerships launch or within grant applications that allow participant-level data sharing and a flow of information across organizations to monitor participant progress. This data sharing allows grantees to offer better support and enables flexibility in supporting CTE teachers.

For additional learning, visit Advance CTE’s Learning that Works Resource Center to access reports on how states can leverage Perkins V to Support Teacher Recruitment and Retention and State of the States 2022: Teacher Compensation Strategies.

Amy Hodge, Policy Associate

By Jodi Langellotti in Research
Tags: CTE Teacher pipeline, CTE teachers, Florida, kansas, New Jersey, Oregon, recruitment, tennessee

State CTE Policy Update: Building Diverse Educator Pipelines in CTE

Monday, January 23rd, 2023

Teacher preparation programs are an important aspect of building an educator pipeline. While recruiting and certifying CTE teachers may vary slightly depending on the state, one fact is true among all school districts and education platforms: learners, regardless of their own backgrounds, benefit from diversity among their teachers. With CTE’s pivotal role in providing real-world connections to career pathways, a diverse staff of educators elevates learners’ exposure to different approaches and links to future careers. As state directors dedicated to creating CTE Without Limits, ensuring the recruitment, retention and support of a diverse and culturally competent workforce is critical to ensuring each learner feels welcome and secure in their CTE ecosystem. The following are some ways to build a strategy that will help to diversify your CTE workforce.

Make Teaching Affordable

Teaching is not a high-wage job. In fact, there are some states who are losing the ability to use Perkins funding to subsidize their teacher training programs due to the historic low wage of teachers. CTE instructors, most of whom are often career changers coming from industries with higher pay are often hesitant for this very reason. While potential ways to improve teacher compensation have been addressed in this blog, there are other ways to mitigate some of the financial burdens teachers face. Student loan forgiveness and scholarship programs are attractive solutions that can be made through policy. Additionally, stipends and scholarships for teacher preparation programs can reduce some of the financial burdens on potential teachers and attract talent that may otherwise be hesitant to join.

Diversify the Applicant Pool

One of the best ways to attract diverse talent is to create “grow your own” teacher programs. This allows states to ensure they are hiring talent that reflects their learner population and makes targeted recruiting a more manageable task. Including people of color in the hiring and recruiting (and marketing) process can also help draw a more diverse pool of CTE instructor talent. Additionally, it is necessary to ensure that districts and those with hiring power are trained in racial bias mitigation and are intentional in their recruitment. Teacher preparation programs should also look to be intentionally inclusive of students from diverse backgrounds.

Build Inclusive School Environments

Creating state standards for leadership focused on creating inclusive school environments is a significant step state CTE directors can take to improve the cultures of their CTE programs. Principals and teachers can have mandatory in-service training that provides them with the strategies needed to create and sustain inclusive work environments and diverse recruitment, hiring and retainment strategies. Instructor and administrative preparation programs can also build those strategies into their curriculums.

If you would like to learn more about this subject:

Advance CTE is currently recruiting educators of color for a focus group on diversifying the CTE field. If you are interested, please sign up here.

Brice Thomas, Policy Associate

By Jodi Langellotti in Public Policy
Tags: CTE Policy, CTE Teacher pipeline, CTE teachers, state CTE policy update, Teacher Pipeline

Building a Legacy Based on Ethics: The Future of CTE

Monday, October 11th, 2021

Submitted by MBA Research & Curriculum Center, 2021 Fall Meeting Sponsor

As educators, can we influence the world 10,000 years from now?

The Long Now Foundation is in the process of building a 10,000-year clock. The idea is to help us think beyond our immediate future, and to imagine life and our potential impact beyond that of our generation, or our children’s generation, or even our children’s children’s generation. In education, and in Career Technical Education (CTE) specifically, adopting this mindset will help us make choices that last “beyond the ages” and continue to shape our world far into the future.

10,000 years ago dates back to the Middle Stone Age, or Mesolithic Period, when nomadic hunter/gatherers roamed the land and lived drastically different lives from our own. Life as we know it today resulted from the events of thousands of years in the past. The seeds of our reality were planted millennia ago, when agriculture was just being introduced—and our lives are a product of their germination.

So, the big question now is this: How will we look back at ourselves 10,000 years from now? I hope we look back with appreciation at the choices we make today.

CTE students now have so much to learn—the world is changing so quickly. It’s hard to think about the “long now” versus just “now.” We will never really know if we can make a 10,000-year impact. But just in case—just on the off chance that we can make a difference—why not infuse ethics education into our classrooms now in hopes of leaving a legacy based on ethical decision making (in business and in life) for generations to come?

MBA Research is working with the Daniels Fund in Denver, Colorado, to bring ethics education into classrooms in middle school, high school and community college. We have developed numerous resources for use in classrooms in CTE and beyond. The materials range from individual instructional modules to semester-long courses on ethics.

We also have videos highlighting the Daniels Fund Ethical Principles, an Ethics Boot Camp with immersive, interactive ethics-based learning activities. The boot camp also includes a free, certification-based assessment for use after ethics-based learning in the classroom utilizing our materials. The best part? All of these resources and materials are FREE to download and use in the classroom or for Career Technical Student Organization (CTSO)-based activities.

Can we make an impact 10,000 years in the future? We don’t know—but it’s absolutely worth a try.

Visit MBAResearch.org/Ethics to learn more about integrating our ethics materials into your classroom and to access the free resources available for students in your state.

By admin in Advance CTE Fall Meeting, Resources, Uncategorized
Tags: CTE teachers, CTSO, Fall Meeting

Unpacking Putting Learner Success First: Ensuring Quality Instruction

Thursday, August 3rd, 2017

A little over one year ago, Advance CTE launched Putting Learner Success First: A Shared Vision for the Future of CTE. This document, which was developed using input from a broad array of stakeholders, calls for a systematic transformation of the education system grounded in five principles. This blog series will dive into each principle, detailing the goals and progress made in each area.

For more resources related to Putting Learner Success First, including state and local self-assessments, check out our Vision Resources page.

All learning is facilitated by knowledgeable experts.

All learners deserve to have quality educational experiences facilitated by individuals with passion, experience and expertise. The need for experts qualified to help ensure students gain the real-world experiences they need for success has been increasing dramatically. Individuals with industry expertise provide a perspective to students that traditional academic teachers may be unable to do, and can also help students explore and connect with particular career opportunities.

State leaders face numerous barriers in fully achieving this principle, including geographical shortages of available industry experts, and the availability of professional development that provides industry experience to classroom teachers.

Those who have signed onto the principle have committed to accomplishing this objective through the following actions:

Modernize K-12 certification programs to ensure all learners have access to educators who are able to facilitate learning that prepares them for both college and careers;
Prioritize professional learning opportunities that focus on retention of quality instructors, contextualized teaching and learning, and learner engagement; and
Build and support a pool of experts that instructors may draw upon to supplement learning.

Since the launch of Putting Learner Success First, Advance CTE has been conducting research and policy scans to raise up examples and promising practices related to this principle. Now, when state leaders put their commitment to quality instruction into action, they have access to multiple resources related to instructor certification, teacher externships and professional learning.

Principle in Action

South Dakota: CTE Teacher Certification Rule Changes
- To address the serious teacher shortage being experienced by districts across the state, the South Dakota State Board of Education changed administrative rules for Career Technical Education (CTE) teacher certification in November 2015, introducing more consistency and flexibility to the certification process. Under the new rules, CTE teachers may receive certification at the Career Cluster or Career Pathway level. A career cluster endorsement requires teachers to pass a state certification exam or complete 15 credits of coursework and allows teachers to teach any course within a cluster, including all pathway-level courses. A career pathway endorsement requires teachers to pass the state certification exam, complete nine credits of coursework, or have 4,000 hours of work experience. With the pathway endorsement, teachers may teach any course within a career pathway, but must complete more coursework in order to earn an endorsement for an entire cluster.
Idaho: CTE Digital & Idaho Digital Learning Academy
- To address geographical challenges and expand access to CTE and advanced coursework more generally, the Idaho legislature in 2015 authorized Idaho Career & Technical Education to work with the Idaho Digital Learning Academy (IDLA), a fully-accredited online school serving students in all of the state’s 115 districts, to develop CTE Digital. Through IDLA, Idaho students all over the state can access online CTE coursework. Before a course can be designated as CTE Digital, a CTE certified teacher maps content to CTE standards and develops new content to meet the standards, as needed for existing courses/curriculum. For a new course development, a CTE certified teacher is hired by IDLA to create the course, which typically happens while they are teaching the same course in their district. In this way, the state can ensure that all learners are receiving quality instruction.

Relevant Resources

The State of Career Technical Education: Increasing Access to Industry Experts in High Schools
- This report from Advance CTE, in partnership with the Center on Great Teachers and Leaders at the American Institutes for Research, examines the shortage of industry experts in secondary classrooms and how to address it. The report draws on data from two national surveys — one of 47 State CTE Directors and one of 260 local CTE teachers and administrators from 26 states — to identify common barriers and innovative strategies. While many states use alternative certification policies to bring industry experts into schools as full-time teachers, this report explores other strategies that meet the available capacity of industry experts still working in their field, such as allowing experts to teach part-time or co-teach with a fully certified teacher of record.
Faculty Qualification Policies and Strategies Relevant to Dual Enrollment Programs: An Analysis of States and Regional Accreditation Agencies
- This 50-state report from the Education Commission of the States (ECS), co-authored by the Midwestern Higher Education Compact, explores policies related to dual enrollment faculty qualifications and identifies four strategies: accreditor-approved qualifications, equivalent faculty qualifications, requirement of a master’s degree, and graduate credit requirements. The report further details state strategies to help classroom instructors meet dual enrollment qualifications.
Improving the Quality of Career and Technical Alternative Teacher Preparation: An Induction Model of Professional Development and Support
- The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), in partnership with the National Research Center for Career Technical Education (NRCCTE), developed an induction model for new CTE teachers pursuing an alternative route to certification that increases their career commitment, competency and self-efficacy. This report presents key elements of the CTE teacher induction model and provides findings from a five-year field test.
CTE Teacher Licensure Requirements: 50 States and District of Columbia
- This document, produced by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) in 2013, provides state-by-state information on teacher licensure policies for Career Technical Education (CTE) teachers. It includes data on CTE-related teacher certification, certification routes, length of teacher certifications or renewal, professional development and recruitment for all states and D.C.

Upcoming Resources

Industry Expert Working Groups
- Advance CTE has partnered with the AIR Center on Great Teachers and Leaders (AIR GTL) to run two working groups as a follow-up from the December 2016 State of CTE report. The first group will focus on exploring innovative roles for industry experts, such as co-teaching and part-time teaching, and the second group will explore the strategies available for secondary and postsecondary partnerships. In early 2018, AIR GTL will publish summary reports on the activities of both working groups.
Brief on Recruiting Teachers in Rural Areas
- As part of a series of briefs on the challenges unique to providing quality CTE in rural areas, Advance CTE will be drafting a brief specifically on recruiting and retaining teachers in rural areas.

Ashleigh McFadden, State Policy Manager

By admin in Uncategorized
Tags: CTE Teacher pipeline, CTE teachers, Idaho, industry experts, professional learning, Putting Learner Success First, South Dakota, teacher certification

Playbook Offers Upskilling Models to Help Companies, Employees and Communities

Tuesday, July 11th, 2017

UpSkill America, part of the Aspen Institute’s Economic Opportunities Program, recently released its Upskilling Playbook. This document highlights promising practices and examples of employer upskilling strategies, and offers guidance on how other employers can implement these practices. Through upskilling, an employer can invest in the long-term competitiveness and success by encouraging existing employees to gain new skills and advance through a company. Research shows that upskilling can help company bottom lines, and increase employee retention, as most employees expect some version of upskilling as a benefit of employment.

The playbook offers several models for companies to adopt, including apprenticeship, pre-employment training, as well as providing support and incentives for completion of certifications and postsecondary degrees. One example cited is Amazon’s Career Choice Program, which will pre-pay 95% of tuition and fees for an employee to earn a certificate or associate degree in a high-demand occupation.

Even companies who already provide tuition assistance may not be fully realizing the potential of upskilling, according to recent research carried about by UpSkill America. Many companies see these benefits merely as recruitment tools when looking for new hires. The playbook argues that companies should imbed upskilling as a cornerstone of company culture.

Report Explores Effective Teacher Professional Development Models

A new report from the Learning Policy Institute (LPI) explores the question of effective professional development for teachers through a review of 35 methodologically rigorous studies that have demonstrated a positive link between teacher professional development, teaching practices, and student outcomes. Their research found that effective professional development, including professional learning communities, incorporates the following elements:

Is content focused
Incorporates active learning
Supports collaboration
Uses models of effective practice
Provides coaching and expert support
Offers feedback and reflection
Is of sustained duration

Unfortunately, realities within institutions can hinder effective professional development, including insufficient resources (in both time and funding), as well as a poor school climate. LPI recommends evaluating the use and time of school schedules to create more opportunities for professional learning, as well as regularly conducting needs assessments and gathering feedback from educators to determine the areas of highest need for professional learning.

Odds and Ends

The American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF) has been creating and compiling resources related to foster, juvenile justice and crossover youth. Included in those resources are several recorded webinars detailing promising practices in providing career pathways for systems-involved youth. While there are many challenges and barriers to success for these youth and the organizations devoted to helping them, several institutions have uncovered some promising strategies worth exploring further.

The National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education (NCWGE) recently released a report about the history and progress of Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally funded education programs. While the report covers many topics, there is an entire section devoted to gender disparities Career Technical Education (CTE). The report finds that though progress has been made in CTE, large gaps remain, and there is certainly more work to be done.

Two publications have recently ranked institutions that effectively fight the nation’s skills gap. The first, from The New York Times, describes seven postsecondary institutions that take innovative approaches to supporting students through completion. The second, from Forbes, ranks two-year institutions based on the same “return on investment” focus of their rankings of four-year institutions.

Ashleigh McFadden, State Policy Manager

By admin in Uncategorized
Tags: CTE teachers, juvenile justice, professional development, skills gap, Title IX, upskilling

Alternative Certification Alone Will Not Solve CTE Expert Shortage

Friday, December 16th, 2016

New Report Describes State Efforts to Increase Access to Industry Experts in High Schools

As interest in Career Technical Education (CTE) continues to increase, the need for experts qualified to help ensure students gain the real-world experiences they needÂ for success increases as well. Individuals with industry expertise provide a perspective to students that traditional academic teachers may be unable to offer, and can also help students explore and connect with particular career opportunities. Unfortunately, there is a national shortage of these experts working in schools. Â Â

Today Advance CTE released a report examining the shortage of industry experts in secondary classrooms and how to address it. This report was developed through the New Skills for Youth initiative, a partnership of the Council of Chief State School Officers, Advance CTE and the Education Strategy Group, generously funded by JPMorgan Chase & Co. Advance CTE, in partnership with the Center on Great Teachers and Leaders at American Institutes for Research, carried out two surveys: one of 47 State CTE Directors and one of 260 local CTE teachers and administrators from 26 states.

The surveys revealed that, while many states use alternative certification policies to bring industry experts into schools as full-time teachers, those policies do not fully address the problem. Alternative certification policies may work well for industry experts who are already willing to change careers and go into the classroom full-time, but there are other options that better meet the available capacity of industry experts still working in their field. These strategies include allowing experts to teach part-time or co-teach with a fully certified teacher of record, which gives students the benefit of their industry-specific knowledge without requiring the expert to give up their job in industry or go through the same rigorous and time-consuming preparation of a fully certified teacher.

Other states have policies that encourage experts to give their time in non-instructional roles, such as through career coaching and mentorships. Many states have articulation agreements with postsecondary institutions and use those to share faculty, which can include industry experts. Fewer states use incentives to attract experts to the teaching profession.

Using the data collected from the surveys, Advance CTE developed several recommendations for state leaders to consider. First, states should develop policies and initiatives that go beyond full-time alternative certification policies to allow for a broad range of options for industry expert involvement. States can do more to leverage their articulation agreements with postsecondary institutions to give secondary students access to industry experts teaching at the postsecondary level. Importantly, states must work to increase awareness of all of these opportunities within industry. Finally, states should consider how to deliberately coordinate and streamline disparate recruitment strategies so as to maximize their collective impact.

For more information, look out for an invitation to a webinar discussing this paper, which will take place on January 9 at 3 pm ET and feature an in-depth look at Nebraskaâ€™s strategies for increasing access to industry experts.

Ashleigh McFadden, State Policy Manager

By admin in Advance CTE Resources, Publications, Research, Resources
Tags: Alternative Certification, CTE teachers, Employer Engagement, industry experts, New Skills for Youth, State of CTE

NASDCTEc Legislative Update: Focus Shifts to Higher Ed as ESEA Work Continues Amid Duncan Retirement

Friday, October 16th, 2015

A lot has happened over the past few weeks on Capitol Hill, particularly with regards to Congressional efforts to reauthorize key pieces of legislation for K-12 and postsecondary education. With fall in full swing, we wanted to take a moment to re-cap all of the activity over the past few weeks as we look ahead for what the rest of the year has in store for the Career Technical Education (CTE) community. Below is Part II in a two-part series of autumnal legislative updates.

Senate CTE Caucus Highlights Importance of CTE within HEA

Late last month, the Senate Career Technical Education (CTE) Caucus hosted a briefing for congressional staff titled â€œPostsecondary Pathways to Success: Strengthening Career and Technical Education in the Higher Education Act.â€ John Cech, Deputy Commissioner for Academic and Student Affairs for the Montana University System who is also a NASDCTEc member and State CTE Director for Montana, participated in this briefing.

Johnâ€™s remarks grounded the panelâ€™s discussion with a sense of relevancy and urgency saying, in part, â€œ. . . the basic infrastructure of our society depends largely on our nationâ€™s ability to produce new graduates at the two-year college level, in addition to the university degrees that are the traditional focus of the national postsecondary dialogue.â€

The panel had four overarching recommendations for the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA) which would infuse the law with a much-needed focus on CTE:

Expand Title IV financial aid access to support shorter-term CTE programs that lead to high-growth, high-demand industries and careers
Reinstate year-round Pell and introduce other provisions that expand student access to federal financial aid to accelerate student learning and increase rates of completion
Ensure that the next iteration of HEA supports innovative practices in postsecondary education such as competency-based education
And finally, give strong consideration to dedicated funding opportunities within HEA for two-year colleges similar to the now expired Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grant program

Duncan Makes for the Exit as ESEA Work Continues

Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced that he will resign from his post at the end of the year. Duncan is the longest serving cabinet member in the Obama Administration and came into the position after serving as CEO of Chicago Public Schools for seven years.

John B. King Jr., who has been Deputy Secretary of Education since January of this year, will replace Duncan as the next Secretary of Education pending Senate approval.

Duncanâ€™s tenure as the head of the U.S. Department of Education (ED), particularly the ESEA flexibility system granting waivers to states from many provisions contained in No Child Left Behind (NCLB), has been one of the main motivations behind Congressional activity to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) this year.

As we have shared previously, both Chambers of Congress were successful in passing rewrites of the law earlier this summer. Currently, lawmakers from the Senate and House Education Committees have been engaged in conference negotiations to reconcile the differences between the two bills. These discussions are still ongoing.

More recently, Democratic Senators Murphy (D-CT), Warren (D-MA), and Booker (D-NJ) hosted a roundtable discussion with Secretary Duncan and Deputy Secretary King focused on accountability issues within ESEA reauthorization. Holding states and local communities accountable for student achievement has been one of the most polarizing issues during the reauthorization process for ESEA and many Congressional Democrats, along with the White House, hope to strengthen such accountability provisions in a final bill when conference negotiations wrap-up.

Despite the progress being made in ESEA conference negotiations, a pathway forward for a bill containing stronger accountability requirements than what is currently in either the Senate or the House rewritesâ€” something the Obama Administration and many Democrats would like to seeâ€” remains an uphill battle. As with much of the Congressional agenda this fall, the outcome of the race to replace Speaker Boehner will likely have a significant impact on ESEAâ€™s chances of passage in the 114^th Congress. As the Thomas B. Fordham Institute points out, ESEAâ€™s chances are a hard â€œmaybeâ€ at this point.

Obama Administration Pushes Forward on a Number of Higher Ed Initiatives

Congressional efforts to reauthorize HEA are still ongoing and in lieu of a comprehensive proposal from Congress, the Obama Administration has continued to prioritize higher education issues. For instance the Office of Management and Budget, recently released the Admisntrationâ€™s final set of â€˜Agency Priority Goalsâ€™ which outlines EDâ€™s objective to increase the percentage of adults aged 25-34 who have an associateâ€™s degree or higher to nearly 50 percent by 2017.

Late in September, ED also released much anticipated guidance for experimental sites who are pursuing innovative models of awarding federal financial aid for competency-based education (CBE) programs. These sites were first announced in 2014 as part of the experimental sites initiative authorized under HEA. The new â€œCBE Experiment Reference Guideâ€ can be used both for the institutions and accrediting bodies participating in the initiative, as well as for institutions who might like to pursue CBE programs in the future. More information on the guidance can be found here. U.S. Undersecretary of Education Ted Mitchell has also announced that ED intends to expand this initiative by the end of the year.

Another round the experimental sites initiative was announced earlier this week. Named the â€œEducational Quality through Innovative Partnershipsâ€ (EQUIP) experiment, ED is currently soliciting applications to support partnerships between colleges and universities and â€œnon-traditionalâ€ providers of education, such as shorter-term job training programs or Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Eligible programs would need to lead to a degree or certificate, articulate to academic credit, and be aligned to high-demand, high-growth economic sectors. More information on the announcement here.

Earlier this summer, the White House celebrated innovation within CTE and First Lady Michelle Obama announced that ED and her officeâ€™s â€œReach Higher Initiativeâ€ would work together to launch a mobile app development challenge to create a user friendly tool for students to learn more about career pathways and other educational opportunities available to them. This month the First Lady officially launched the competition, making available $225,000. Applications are due no later than December 6, 2015â€”more information on the challenge can be found here and here.

Odds & Ends

More than eighty colleges and universities announced their collective commitment to a new, more holistic, college application process that focuses more on student portfolios of work and less on entrance exams. More on the effort here.
Senators Bennet (D-CO) and Rubio (R-FL) introduced the Higher Education Innovation Act, a bill that would create a five-year pilot program that offers an alternative pathway, focused on student outcomes, for institutional accreditation and related access to federal financial aid. Read the press release here.
Senate CTE Caucus co-chairs, Kaine (D-VA), Portman (R-OH), and Baldwin (D-WI), along with Senator Capito (R-WV), introduced the â€œCreating Quality Technical Educators Actâ€. The bill would expand HEAâ€™s teacher residency grant program to support more schools in recruiting and preparing CTE teachers by strengthening partnerships between secondary and postsecondary institutions. NASDCTEc endorsed and supported this legislation and more on the bill can be found here.
The STEM Education Act was signed into law by President Obama late last week. The legislation formalizes computer science within the statutory definition for â€œSTEM educationâ€ which is used for grant making opportunities through many federal agencies. More on the bill can be found here.
The Association of Community Colleges (AACC), the Association of Community College Trustees (ACCT), and Higher Ed for Higher Standards (HEHS) announced yesterday that they will partner together to implement higher academic standards in secondary school to more effectively prepare students for college and career success. More information is available here and here.

Steve Voytek, Government Relations Manager

By Steve Voytek in Legislation, News, Public Policy
Tags: Accreditation, Arne Duncan, competency-based education, CTE teachers, ESEA, Experimental Sites, HEA, No Child Left Behind, Reach Higher Initiative, Senate CTE Caucus, STEM, Title IV

CTE Research Review

Thursday, April 30th, 2015

Today in CTE research â€¦ a scan of career pathway models, a peek into employersâ€™ views on competency-based education, recommendations to strengthen the teacher pipeline, and research into the labor marketâ€™s return on investment for higher education.

First up â€“ MDRCâ€™s new research, â€œNew Pathways to Careers and College: Examples, Evidence, and Prospectsâ€

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 â€œThe Condition of Future Educators 2014,â€ 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 â€“ 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:

Recruit high-achieving college students who are undecided about their future careers;
Promote alternative pathways to teaching; and
Improve educator benefits.

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:

Overall employer awareness of CBE was low despite engagement efforts;
Those who were aware of CBE, a small minority, generally viewed the model and its graduates favorably;
The lack of awareness correlated to employersâ€™ lack of understanding the benefits of hiring graduates of CBE programs;
Employers struggle to articulate discreet needs as competencies, and rather continue to hire based on generalizations of a new hireâ€™s â€œfitâ€, which makes it difficult to create an effective competency map;
Two-thirds of employers believe they could be doing a better job of identifying students with the specific skill set required for the job.

Andrea Zimmermann, State Policy Associate

By admin in Research, Uncategorized
Tags: ACT, AEI, career pathways, competency-based education, CTE teachers, MDRC, NCES, Oklahoma

Posts Tagged ‘CTE teachers’

ECMCF Fellow Feature: Dr. Tempestt Adams

Research Round-up: The Impact of the High School CTE Education Teacher Pathway Initiative Grant

State CTE Policy Update: Building Diverse Educator Pipelines in CTE

Building a Legacy Based on Ethics: The Future of CTE

Unpacking Putting Learner Success First: Ensuring Quality Instruction

Playbook Offers Upskilling Models to Help Companies, Employees and Communities

Alternative Certification Alone Will Not Solve CTE Expert Shortage

NASDCTEc Legislative Update: Focus Shifts to Higher Ed as ESEA Work Continues Amid Duncan Retirement

CTE Research Review

Series

Archives