Twitter icon
Facebook icon
LinkedIn icon
YouTube icon



Advancing Equity in CTE: Administrative Policy Review – An Assessment of Equitable Practices

August 16th, 2023

This is the final blog in a four-part series on the Postsecondary State Career Technical Education Leaders Fellowship at Advance CTE – Sponsored by ECMC Foundation (The Fellowship)

Overview  

The Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act (Perkins V*) includes provisions focused on providing access to and success in Career Technical Education (CTE) programs for members of special populations and subgroups, including major racial ethnic groups in each state. States are fulfilling these requirements in various ways. Below are a few examples of how states are applying an equity-minded lens to administrative policies and practices to improve CTE ecosystems by emphasizing equitable access to and learner performance in CTE programs. 

Ohio

Administration of a CTE program with an equity lens begins with ensuring all learners have meaningful access to and substantial engagement in high-quality CTE programming which requires making these actions a priority. Ohio has created and applied equity-minded leadership principles within several initiatives, leveraging funds and resources to provide local administrators with supports to develop and sustain equitable practices and policies. 

  • Perkins V Reserve Fund – Equity for Each competitive grant
    • Ohio offers competitive grants, funded through its Perkins reserve fund, to local education agencies and postsecondary institutions to assist recipients with “identifying and promoting promising practices for improving equity in CTE delivery for students in special population groups and subgroups.” The grants prioritize collaboration between secondary and postsecondary institutions, the implementation of strategies to support programs of study aligned to high-skill, in-demand or high-wage occupations and improving data-identified equity gaps in access to and performance in CTE programs.
  • Equity Ambassador Program
    • Individuals work to improve equity in CTE and are deployed throughout the state after being provided with professional development facilitated by the Ohio Department of Education’s Office of Career Technical Education. 
  • Perkins V Equity Labs
    • Regionally offered to CTE administrators and instructors from each of the state’s CTE Planning Districts including participation by the Equity Ambassadors, the lab sessions provided each district with an Equity Data Report. Participants use the provided data to complete activities such as setting achievable goals, collaborating on best practices and sharing resources to improve equitable supports for learners in Ohio’s CTE programs. 

Indiana 

The application of equity-minded principles isn’t a one-time occurrence. It requires an ongoing systematic review of policies, practices and data to determine the effectiveness of the mitigating or transformational strategies being applied. Indiana engaged in this process by conducting a review of the CTE equity labs being offered in their state and using additional resources to measure goal attainment and to provide additional supports to local leaders. 

The state’s CTE team participated in equity lab debriefing sessions to improve their messaging on equity and access, awareness of using inclusive language and overall effectiveness of equity labs currently being offered with the assistance of the Great Lakes Equity Center. This work coincided with Indiana’s participation in the CTE Opportunity Gap Analysis Train-the-Trainer Workshop offered by Advance CTE. The workshop’s six months of community of practice monthly sessions conducted with nine states included completing one in-state workshop with workshop specific resources designed to support state leaders in examining their current policies and practices.

What’s Next

This blog series is a precursor to a forthcoming state CTE leadership pipeline toolkit due to be released in Fall 2023. The toolkit will provide a “plug and play” roadmap for states to use to create their own initiative to strengthen and diversify an equity-minded state leadership pipeline. The toolkit will draw upon Advance CTE’s experiences with facilitating the Fellowship and lift up vetted resources and techniques for states to apply. 

For additional support, check out Advance CTE’s resource Engaging Representatives of Learners with Special Population Status Through Perkins V.

*As amended by the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act

Dr. Kevin Johnson, Senior Advisor 

View previous blogs in this series:

Blog 1: Advancing Equity in CTE: Making the Case for Diverse Leadership Pipelines in Career Technical Education

Blog 2: Advancing Equity in CTE: A Review on the Current State of CTE Leadership Programs

Blog 3: Advancing Equity in CTE: The Equity-Minded Leadership Framework

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Advancing Equity in CTE | Comments Off on Advancing Equity in CTE: Administrative Policy Review – An Assessment of Equitable Practices

Advancing Equity in CTE: Elevating the Knowledge of a New Generation of Leaders

August 8th, 2023

Advance CTE is excited to introduce a collection of briefs that feature the original research conducted by select Fellows from our inaugural cohort of The Postsecondary State Career Technical Education (CTE) Leaders Fellowship – Sponsored by ECMC Foundation (Fellowship). These briefs cover different topics within the CTE landscape and alignment with Advance CTE’s CTE Without Limits’ principles for advancing equitable, high-quality CTE programs for every learner. 

The Fellowship strives to address the growing shortage of state postsecondary CTE leadership by closing racial representation gaps and removing equity barriers to leadership advancement. Through individualized supports, intentional networks and a real-world fellowship project, Advance CTE-ECMCF Fellows gain the skills and network to pursue leadership positions and advance high-quality, equitable state postsecondary CTE systems. The Real-World Project is a capstone of the Fellowship. By highlighting selected projects and citing Fellows’ research as contributions to the national CTE landscape, we aspire to elevate a new generation of CTE leaders. 

The first brief, Career and Technical Education and the Justice System: State Strategies to Improve Outcomes for Justice-Involved Learners in CTE Programs, features research from Fellows alumni Richard Crosby and Janelle Washington.

High-quality education opportunities for justice-involved learners have demonstrated a strong economic return; a study produced by the RAND Corporation found that, for every $1 invested in prison education programs, there is a $4-5 reduction in incarceration costs during the first three years post-release of a prisoner. Despite these benefits, only seven states are currently opting to allocate the maximum allowable amount of state leadership set-aside funds to improving outcomes for this population of learners. This brief offers actionable recommendations for state leaders to address systemic barriers through changes to funding, administrative and program quality policies to have a long-term and lasting reduction impact on recidivism.

 

The second brief, a Policy Review of the Impact of House Bill 444 on Career and Technical Agricultural Education Dual Enrollment at Technical College System of Georgia (TCSG) Institutions, highlights the research of Fellowship alumni Dr. Kristin Corkhill.

Dual enrollment is a popular education initiative that has contributed to increased postsecondary enrollment across the Technical College System of Georgia. These programs represent early opportunities for learners to gain industry-aligned skills and develop confidence and awareness of how to be successful in postsecondary programs and generate a highly skilled workforce pipeline to continue to grow the state’s economy. This brief offers recommendations for state leaders on how to continue to support improved enrollment trends.

 

The third brief, Non-Traditional Learner Participation in Postsecondary Career and Technical Education Programs features research by Fellowship alumni Jean Claude Mbomeda.

The non-traditional gender occupational divide weakens state economies by decreasing economic productivity and reducing diversity in decision-making. By creating gender parity in which “women participate in the labor force at the same rate as men, work the same number of hours as men, and are employed at the same levels as men across sectors,” the United States would see an estimated $4.3 trillion increase in the gross domestic product in 2025.1 Check out this brief to learn ways that state leaders can strengthen policies to ensure equitable access and outcomes for every learner and better meet the needs of the state’s economy and labor market. 

These briefs are the first part of the larger Building a Diverse Leadership Pipeline series, set to be released later this year, that aims to increase leadership stability and achieve more demographically representative state CTE leadership, by providing resources, tools and examples to help state leaders establish a talent pipeline and provide training, mentorship and opportunities for aspiring CTE leaders.

Amy Hodge, Membership & Policy Associate

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Advancing Equity in CTE | Comments Off on Advancing Equity in CTE: Elevating the Knowledge of a New Generation of Leaders

Advancing Equity in CTE: The Equity-Minded Leadership Framework

July 18th, 2023

This is the third blog in a series of four blogs about the Postsecondary State Career Technical Education Leaders Fellowship at Advance CTE – Sponsored by ECMC Foundation (Fellowship) and provides Career Technical Education (CTE) leaders with a framework by which to develop equitable CTE ecosystems, a foundational approach to ensuring all learners have access to high-quality programs aligned to in-demand high-wage occupations. 

Overview

The Postsecondary State Career Technical Education Leaders Fellowship at Advance CTE – Sponsored by ECMC Foundation is anchored in the construct of “Equity-Minded Change Leadership” which posits that in order to transform education systems and engage the operations of and organizational structure of education institutions, a lens of “equity-mindedness” has to be clearly defined and used to evaluate learner outcomes. To clearly determine a challenge, adaptive leadership is necessary. The combination of the adaptive leadership theory and the concept of equity-mindedness is the foundation of equity-minded change leadership. Advance CTE chose this framework of equity-minded change leadership because it can support CTE leaders in fostering change and addressing the effects of inequitable systems on learners who have been underserved by education institutions.  

 

Defining the Challenge 

In order to transform or mitigate the effects of an inequitable system, the problem has to be clearly defined and categorized to determine the approach leaders should take and which solutions to apply to enhance learner success. “Adaptive challenges linked to differences in how students experience and benefit from education, systematically advantaging some while disadvantaging others, must be recognized and addressed to change education in ways that reduce and eventually resolve systemic equity gaps”.1 Equity-minded change leadership. Seattle, WA: Bragg & Associates, Inc. Retrieved on April, 12, 2018.[/efn-note] As part of a mandatory real-world research project, each fellow identified a challenge, collected data to describe the scope of the challenge, applied a solution to the challenge, reported on the impact of the intervention, as well as offered recommendations using the adaptive change leadership theory. 

A few examples of research topics explored include: 

  • Advancing Equitable Access to CTE Programming in Illinois Correctional Facilities
  • The Impact of House Bill 444 on Career Technical and Agriculture Education Enrollment at Technical College System of Georgia Institutions
  • Eliminating the Educational Assessment Score Requirement for Enrollment in Postsecondary Education CTE Programs in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice
  • Exploring Equity Gaps and Achievement in the Agriculture Cluster at Rural Community Colleges in Northern California
  • Increasing the retention rate among African American Males at Greenville Technical College

Analyzing the Gap

How challenges are initially framed are important and essential to applying the appropriate solution to a problem. Equity-mindedness takes into account the current systems, policies, cultural norms and everyday practices being applied in an education institution or agency and evaluates the impact, intentional or unintentional, on individuals or groups. A starting point for the Fellows was to disaggregate data by the special populations and subgroups identified in the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act (Perkins V) and analyze learner outcomes for a subset of this group. This analysis revealed gaps in access and outcomes, which were then mapped to root causes that likely require systemic interventions and remedies.

Building Solutions

Equity-minded change leadership offers state leaders an evidence-based approach to deliberately and systematically evaluate impact for learners. In doing so, it holds the potential to be a transformational lever to achieve, fully, the aspirations of CTE Without Limits. During the Fellowship, Fellows applied this framework to their real-world projects with much success. Fellows evaluated equitable access to CTE programming for justice-involved learners, Black males in South Carolina’s technical college system and women in rural communities, among others. CTE has always been a system that was required to be responsive to the needs of industry. As state leaders strive to build high-quality CTE systems, they must also be responsive to the needs of our nation’s increasingly diverse learner population. 

Blog 1: Advancing Equity in CTE: Making the Case for Diverse Leadership Pipelines in Career Technical Education

Blog 2: Advancing Equity in CTE: A Review on the Current State of CTE Leadership Programs and Diversification Efforts

Blog 4: Advancing Equity in CTE: Administrative Policy Review – An Assessment of Equitable Practices

Dr. Kevin Johnson, Sr., Senior Advisor and Kimberly Green, former Executive Director

1. Bragg, D., & McCambly, H. (2018). Equity-minded change leadership. Seattle, WA: Bragg & Associates, Inc. Retrieved on April, 12, 2018.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Advancing Equity in CTE | Comments Off on Advancing Equity in CTE: The Equity-Minded Leadership Framework

Advancing Equity in CTE: A Review on the Current State of CTE Leadership Programs and Diversification Efforts

May 16th, 2023

This is the second in a series of four blogs about the Postsecondary State Career Technical Education Leaders Fellowship at Advance CTE – Sponsored by ECMC Foundation and offers a review of several states’ Career Technical Education (CTE) leadership training initiatives and current efforts to diversify the pool of qualified candidates, specific to racial diversity. 

In the first blog of this series, Advancing Equity in CTE: Making the Case for Diverse Leadership Pipelines in Career Technical Education, we shared data that highlighted the increase of diversity of learners in CTE programs and in comparison, the reality that state CTE leadership has remained mostly White, with approximately 13 percent of State CTE Directors identifying as non-White. As we seek to achieve a more demographically representative state CTE leadership, as called for in Without Limits: A Shared Vision for the Future of Career Technical Education (CTE Without Limits), this blog reviews the state of the CTE leadership pipeline in three states – Pennsylvania, Texas and Ohio. These states can both serve as exemplars and a starting point to evaluate the needs of state CTE systems to create more robust and diverse talent pipelines. 

Overview

The current state of CTE leadership training programs vary based on state requirements to become a CTE administrator and how states and organizations without certification or licensure requirements decide to offer training opportunities. As of 2017 only 16 states require CTE administrators to attain a certification or licensure to teach at the secondary level.  In the postsecondary space, the number of institutions of higher learning offering coursework specific to administrating and leading a CTE program are consistently declining; just nine states offer formal preparation programs 1. Administrative training for CTE is increasingly being offered in the form of mentorship programs, contracted hybrid virtual training typically modules, conference workshops or training academies offered by state CTE agencies and CTE affiliated organizations. 

Pennsylvania

The state offers leadership training through centers supported by the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) at three sites, the state’s eastern site is located at Temple University, the central site is located at Penn State University and the western site is located at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. The programs offer a CTE Director’s Certificate for grades 7-12 which can be completed in two years and a Master of Education degree option in a virtual setting with a window of completion of two to three years. Additional or alternative training in the form of mentorship programs and conference workshops is also available through the Pennsylvania Department of Education Bureau of Career and Technical Education (BCTE) and the Pennsylvania Association for Career and Technical Administrators (PACTA). These efforts are bolstered by the requirement as mandated by the Pennsylvania Legislature and facilitated through the PA Inspired Leadership (PIL) Program for a CTE administrator to complete a certification process, Praxis Series School Leaders Licensure Assessment. A recent effort to establish CTE leadership standards is the development of a set of knowledge and skill core competencies (KSCC) resulting from the triangulated research conducted at Penn State University 2. The core competencies addressed are:

  • Workforce Education Management
  • Curriculum and Instructional Leadership in Workforce Education
  • Fiscal and Facilities Management
  • Ethical Issues in Workforce Education
  • Administering Personnel Services
  • History and Philosophy of Workforce Education
  • The Law and Education

To date, the PDE has requested alignment between the research-developed KSCCs and the CTE Director Certificate offered in Pennsylvania. 

Texas

Secondary CTE administrator training in Texas is offered by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and the Career & Technical Association of Texas (CTAT). The New CTE Administrator and Counselor Sessions, professional training modules provided to local education agencies by the TEA at no cost, focuses on preparing administrators to develop CTE systems aligned to the state’s college, career and military readiness (CCMR) standards ensuring access and equity in CTE programming. The NextGen Administrators, training designed for mid-level administrators such as CTE coordinators, specialists and instructional coaches with less than five years of experience, is a virtual option offered by CTAT with aspiring leaders meeting on a monthly basis for 13 months. The program explicitly lists as session topics Terminology and Best Practices in Cultural Diversity and Differentiated Instruction for Special Populations. The state agency no cost training was provided through the use of the state’s Carl D. Perkins Act leadership funds. 

Ohio

The Ohio Association for Career and Technical Education supports CTE administrators for secondary and postsecondary leadership through the Byrl R. Shoemaker CTE Institute. A one-year hybrid program which includes beginning and ending with a legislative seminar, site visits to secondary LEAs and local higher education institutions, conference attendance, networking opportunities with local and state leaders and the completion of a team project.  

Diversification of the CTE Talent Pipeline

While the states reviewed do not specifically outline a process to recruit diverse aspiring CTE administrators, leadership pipeline training opportunities are accessible and prominently featured on state and CTE support organizations’ websites. As identified in the first blog of this series and in alignment with CTE Without Limits Principle 2, the nation’s rapidly changing demographics create a sense of urgency related to the intentional recruitment of diverse leaders into the currently limited administrator pipelines available to CTE professionals. 

In the next blog in this series, we will explore how state CTE leaders can (and why they should) lead with an equity lens. To learn more about the need for equity in CTE, visit Making Good on the Promise: Understanding the Equity Challenge in CTE in the Advance CTE Resource Center.

Read the full blog series

Blog 1: Advancing Equity in CTE: Making the Case for Diverse Leadership Pipelines in Career Technical Education

Blog 3: Advancing Equity in CTE: The Equity-Minded Leadership Framework

Blog 4: Advancing Equity in CTE: Administrative Policy Review – An Assessment of Equitable Practices

Dr. Kevin Johnson, Sr., Senior Advisor

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Achieving Equitable and Inclusive CTE, Advancing Equity in CTE | Comments Off on Advancing Equity in CTE: A Review on the Current State of CTE Leadership Programs and Diversification Efforts

Advancing Equity in CTE: Making the Case for Diverse Leadership Pipelines in Career Technical Education

March 2nd, 2023

This is the first in a series of blogs about the Postsecondary State Career Technical Education Leaders Fellowship at Advance CTE – Sponsored by ECMC Foundation (Fellowship), including what contextual factors led Advance CTE to establish the Fellowship and what we are learning as we lead this important work.  

In 2018, Advance CTE began to explore and acknowledge the systemic issues resulting in  inequity, particularly racial inequity, in Career Technical Education (CTE). Our first steps involved starting a learning journey through the Making Good on the Promise Series and our organizational equity statement approved by the Advance CTE Board of Directors, both of which anchored our initial work. 

The more we learned and deepened our knowledge about systemic barriers to equitable CTE, the more intentionally we were able to center multiple dimensions of equity in Advance CTE’s work. The 2021 CTE Without Limits vision, which also serves as Advance CTE’s organizational vision, emboldens our voice and action to lead equitable CTE programs, including guiding our work to ensure every learner  has access to, feels welcome in and has the supports to be successful in their chosen career pathway. More specifically, the second principle of this vision calls upon “(s)tates and institutions …. to commit to building recruitment strategies and talent pipeline programs that attract diverse CTE instructors, administrators and leaders who are demographically representative of the learners they teach.”  

This call to action to address state CTE leadership representation gaps was inspired by the  changing demographics of both our nation and enrollments in CTE programs. Advance CTE was formed over 100 years ago and in that time the vast majority of State CTE Directors have historically been White. Today, that is still true with just 13 percent of State Directors identifying as non-White. Yet, the learners served by the CTE community are much more diverse.

The Leaky State CTE Leadership Pipeline

The state CTE leadership pipeline, like many industries, is struggling. The coronavirus pandemic  exacerbated a surge of state leadership transitions that occurred just prior to the reauthorization of the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act (Perkins V). Today, just five State Directors have seven or more years of tenure and only two have more than ten years. At Advance CTE’s 2022 Spring State Leadership Retreat, a straw poll of the attendees (all state CTE leaders) revealed that a slight majority of the participants had less than three years of experience in their roles. In fact, several state agencies experienced a 100 percent turnover of the CTE state agency team.  

The cost (both direct and indirect) of these massive transitions is significant. Leadership instability often results in reduced morale, capacity, institutional knowledge and organizational effectiveness. Exacerbated by the fact that state agencies struggle with recruitment, generally, recruiting a qualified and diverse applicant pool is an even more difficult challenge. The pipeline of state CTE leadership is not always vertical; however, candidates commonly come from the local level. Given that the majority of CTE instructors are White (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), “Public School Teacher Questionnaire,” 2007–08), it follows that the majority of CTE administrators are White. Therefore, current CTE leadership pipelines are systematically perpetuating representational inequities, and new solutions must be pursued to break this cycle.  While Advance CTE is not directly responsible for hiring state agency staff, we are hoping to be part of the solution to strengthen and diversify the pool of applicants for state leadership positions through the Postsecondary State Career Technical Education Leaders Fellowship at Advance CTE – Sponsored by ECMC Foundation (Fellowship).

Hope for the Future

The inaugural cohort of the Fellowship, launched in November of 2021, included 15 Fellows from 13 states and 80 percent of the participants identified as members of marginalized or underrepresented populations. The second cohort, launched in September of 2022, with an additional 15 Fellows from 13 states and 72 percent of the participants identified as members of marginalized or underrepresented populations. Through a combination of intensive workshops, support from coaches and the creation of a real-world project, these aspiring leaders built knowledge, network and experience. Additionally, Advance CTE is building a suite of resources to help state leaders on their learning journey to be equity-minded leaders and to support the creation of initiatives that can expand, diversify and strengthen CTE leadership pipelines.

We hope you’ll explore more about the Fellowship and join us on the learning leadership journey. In the next blog in this series, we’ll explore what states are doing to expand, strengthen and diversify their state leadership pipelines. 

Dr. Kevin R. Johnson, Sr.,  Senior Advisor and Kimberly A. Green, Executive Director

Read the rest of the series

Blog 2: Advancing Equity in CTE: A Review on the Current State of CTE Leadership Programs

Blog 3: Advancing Equity in CTE: The Equity-Minded Leadership Framework

Blog 4: Advancing Equity in CTE: Administrative Policy Review – An Assessment of Equitable Practices

 

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Achieving Equitable and Inclusive CTE, Advancing Equity in CTE | Comments Off on Advancing Equity in CTE: Making the Case for Diverse Leadership Pipelines in Career Technical Education

 

Series

Archives

1