John Fischer has served as the President of the Advance CTE Board of Directors, State CTE Director and Deputy Secretary in Vermont, and most recently as Senior Program Officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. We talked to Fischer about his reflections on education and specifically Career Technical Education (CTE) over the past 40 years.

How did you begin working in CTE? How and why have you connected with and stayed involved with Advance CTE throughout your career?

During my tenure at the community college level, I engaged with the Carl Perkins Act during the reauthorizations in 1984, 1990 and 1998 before I moved to K-12 state administration. During the 2006 Perkins implementation, I became the state CTE director and engaged with Advance CTE (then NASDCTEc). I was at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation during the 2015 reauthorization and fortunate to once again engage Advance CTE to support states in planning and implementation of Perkins V. This organization proved to be and still is one of the most valuable partnerships I have experienced in over 40 years in all sectors of education, workforce, and philanthropy.

What did Career Technical Education (CTE) look like at the start of your career, and how has it changed over time?

In the 1980s, the “voc-ed” model persisted, meaning that there was an opportunity to raise the rigor of the programming and to better connect CTE with traditional high school academic programming on one end, and state-level workforce and economic development plans on the other end – a process that took about 15 years and continues in some ways today.

What role has Advance CTE played in that evolution?

Advance CTE has been instrumental in influencing the federal conversation and moving the conversation beyond the old way of doing things. The organization’s influence was especially meaningful during Perkins [V] reauthorization, framing the narrative and helping states make changes to the way they implemented CTE.

How do you envision the future of CTE?

In the 1980s and 1990s, there were changes in workforce demands brought on by rapid technological changes, for example, the shift from minicomputers to, eventually, microprocessors & desktop computers, which changed occupational areas students could learn about – different types of manufacturing, electronics, robotics and computer repair. We’re entering a similar cycle now with the advancements in artificial intelligence and automation. This will stress the educational system and workforce training system to meet employer demand. But, just as happened a few decades ago, this type of challenge pushes CTE programs in a positive direction. We will need to continue to address equity issues, access and opportunities in CTE across the country.

What advice do you have for future CTE leaders?

Educators must continue to break down silos and work across systems, building relationships with parents, the community, employers and government to advance policy and funding. State governments need to lead by example by co-designing education programs addressing in-demand careers.

Ann Benson has a long and impressive Career Technical Education (CTE) journey, which began in a home economics class in Oklahoma during her freshman year of high school. Her passion continued and she was inspired to go on to pursue both a bachelor’s teaching certificate and a master’s degree in home economics. She taught home economics, as it was called then, for four years before joining the Oklahoma Department of Vocational and Technical Education as a Curriculum Specialist in 1972, working on curriculum development for three years. From there, Benson became the first director of a multistate consortium, the Mid-America Vocational Curriculum Consortium, leading a working group of a dozen or so states to develop mutually needed instructional materials. Benson continued to hold increasingly important leadership positions in the CTE field, and in 1999, she was named State CTE Director in Oklahoma, a position she held for four years. 

In Benson’s early days, CTE was very traditional, with instruction focused on just a few skill areas, such as home economics and agriculture. Over time, Benson witnessed CTE’s evolution in her state to include a greater emphasis across all clusters on career preparation and better integration with academics. Benson credits the creation of Oklahoma’s first-class area technical centers – and a commitment to the maintenance and evolution of that status – as a major reason CTE enjoys a widely held, positive image in her state.

When reminiscing on her decades-long history with Advance CTE (which of course was called the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium at the time), Benson reflected fondly on the sense of congeniality at the first meeting she attended when she was starting the multistate consortium in the 1970s. Benson remembers that during her tenure, she was often the only woman in the room among CTE leaders from each state, leading the way for future female State Directors. Benson served as a respected leader in the State Director community, serving as the president of the Board of Directors, and also led a project to engage state CTE leaders in the development and launch of Career Clusters in the early 2000s, a framework that we still use to this day. Benson recognized that across her CTE career, Advance CTE has consistently been a leader, and served as a voice and advocate for CTE on Capitol Hill.

Benson looks forward to a future of CTE with well-trained educators, and a system of high-quality programs that connect learners to high-wage and in-demand careers.

We are celebrating 100 years of Advance CTE! Throughout the year, we’ll feature interviews with past State CTE Directors, Board of Directors members, partners, CTE leaders and more. 

Rich Katt, Career Education and Workforce Policy Consultant began his journey in Career Technical Education (CTE) decades ago as a student in high school. After graduating, he became an educator for six years. Following this, Rich went on to serve as a Career Technical Student Organization (CTSO) state advisor, then a CTE program director, and ultimately the State CTE Director in Nebraska. An impassioned advocate for CTE’s impact, Rich traces his inspiration back to mentors like Ann Benson of Oklahoma, individuals he considers pillars of the CTE leadership. Although he recently entered retirement, Rich remains heavily involved in the CTE community and is committed to empowering future leaders in the community. Learn more in the interview below.

What did CTE look like when you entered the field?
I started off as a product of CTE and then became a teacher. At this point, we were really under the vocational education system and driven by the traditional disciplines.

One of the most significant things Advance CTE did back then was implementing the Career Cluster Model. I am not sure we State Directors knew exactly what to do with the clusters when they first came out, but thanks to some strong leadership and great conversation it became apparent that the model really was a framing structure for us to make CTE more relevant and to broaden our instructional base. This has been one of the significant changes that have really expanded the field’s perspective and created a much tighter alignment with workforce needs and economic priorities, both on the state and national levels.

How has Advance CTE’s role evolved?
When I started, Advance CTE was more like a convener. I think the organization saw its role as getting the State Directors together and then seeing what they wanted to talk about. What it has morphed into under Kim’s [Kimberly Green, Executive Director] and the Board of Directors leadership is to say, we are going to position this organization to be the CTE organization, the one that produces the resources that are needed, the one that guides and develops policy and law. This is a much stronger leadership position than what we had back when I started.

There was an absolute need for Advance CTE to provide this leadership, too. I think it really brought us around a more central mission and vision for what CTE needs to be, and the net result is a more coherent CTE system on the national level.

What is your vision for where CTE is going, where do you want it to go?
Career Technical Education can deliver more than its history. I think in some cases some of our curriculum probably focuses too much on the past and knowledge that I can google. So the question is how do we make it more relevant? I think that is the kingpin that we can really tie ourselves to, the relevance of how students use this.

That is one piece of it. I think the other piece is continuing to be relevant in terms of our alignment to jobs of the future. This means partnering with businesses and industry even more than we have to talk about what are the needed skill-sets, and what do we need to have students know and be able to do as they exit CTE. If we could position them for lifelong learning and to understand how to transfer knowledge and skills to what they are immediately asked to do in the job, then I think we’ve accomplished something. So it is a shift in the mindset that we aren’t done pursuing.

What CTE does is really lite the fire and start the process of lifelong learning. We are going to teach you how to learn, so that you can continue to do that on that job and be even more successful as an employee, manager, entrepreneur, or whatever you choose to do.