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Shaping Tomorrow’s CTE: State Policies Paving the Way

Thursday, October 31st, 2024

As we look to the future of Career Technical Education (CTE), Advance CTE continues to support high-quality CTE programs created through legislation that addresses key challenges and opens new opportunities for learners and educators alike. In this blog, Policy Associate Velie Sando highlights recent state policies that can play a crucial role in shaping a more dynamic, accessible, and industry-aligned landscape.

Breaking Down Barriers

Apprenticeships offer intensive, high-quality programs, but are often limited in availability and accessibility. South Carolina’s S.B. 557 tackles this issue by offering substantial tax credits to employers who hire apprentices. This incentive, which can amount to up to $4,000 per apprentice for four taxable years, encourages businesses to invest in on-the-job training and education. By making apprenticeships more financially viable for employers, South Carolina is expanding opportunities for learners to gain valuable work experience and industry-recognized credentials.

Empowering Educators

Addressing the shortage of qualified CTE educators and instructors in many states is crucial to expanding program quality and accessibility. Delaware’s S.B. 188 addresses this by enhancing educator mobility across state lines. By allowing CTE educators with valid licenses to obtain equivalent authorization in other member states, this legislation removes geographical barriers and expands the pool of qualified instructors. This not only benefits those looking for new opportunities but also ensures that learners have access to experienced educators with diverse backgrounds.

Hawai’i’s S.B. 2257 takes a different approach to the same problem by broadening the qualifications for CTE instructors. By considering candidates with associate’s degrees or even high school diplomas combined with relevant experience, Hawai’i is opening doors for industry professionals to bring their expertise directly into the classroom. This policy elevates skills-based hiring practices in CTE by recognizing that practical skills and real-world knowledge are invaluable.

Data-Driven Decision Making

Colorado’s H.B. 1364 demonstrates a commitment to understanding and improving CTE outcomes through comprehensive data analysis. The law establishes the Colorado state longitudinal data system governing board to support the development and implementation of the data system, which is created to improve data connectivity and analysis concerning education and workforce readiness statewide. The law also authorizes a cost analysis of postsecondary and workforce programs and credentials to local education providers. By commissioning a financial study on the costs and benefits of college credit opportunities, industry credentials, and work-based learning experiences, Colorado is laying the groundwork for evidence-based policy decisions.

Tomorrow’s CTE Puts Learners in the Driver’s Seat

By expanding apprenticeship opportunities, ensuring access to qualified teachers, and gathering data on program effectiveness, states are creating an environment where learners can make informed decisions about their educational and career paths. Simultaneously, the emphasis on industry credentials and work-based learning experiences ensures that CTE programs are closely aligned with the needs of today’s employers, preparing learners for success in the future workforce.

To access our state policy tracker and explore other innovative CTE-connected policies, visit Advance CTE’s State Policy Resources page.

Velie Sando, policy associate

By Layla Alagic in Public Policy
Tags: Access and Equity, Apprenticeships, Colorado, CTE instruction, Data Analysis, Delaware, Hawaii, South Carolina, state policy

Perkins Regional Meetings April and May 2023: Key Takeaways

Thursday, June 8th, 2023

Over April and May 2023, Advance CTE hosted three Perkins Regional Meetings across the country in Minneapolis, Baltimore and Phoenix, with over 200 leaders from across 40 states and territories which was made possible through support from the Gates Foundation. The agenda for the three meetings was designed for state leaders from secondary, postsecondary and workforce development to connect and collaborate on ways to enhance their current Career Technical Education (CTE) systems and programs.

States participated in keynote presentations, workshops, roundtables focused on supporting special populations and cross-state sharing sessions with the intent of building and strengthening the career preparation ecosystem for all learners across the nation. State leaders and our Advance CTE team were both energized by the engagement and inspired by the dedication of all those that attended the meetings and are working to create a high-quality and equitable system that supports all CTE learners.

While each state has its own unique challenges, accomplishments and opportunities, certain recurring themes emerged across multiple states. The national CTE landscape is one of great opportunity but will need support to provide access to high-quality experiences for all CTE learners.

Key Takeaways

Accomplishments

Strong partnerships and support between private industry, education and government leaders to support economic development
Implementation of needed improvements garnered from Comprehensive Local Needs Assessments (CLNA) at the state and local levels
Collaboration and cooperation among state workforce agencies and departments of education and higher education during the Perkins Regional Meetings
Work-based learning (WBL) program guidance on how to focus staffing and funding resources

Challenges

CTE instructor training, recruitment and retention
Staff turnover at both the local and state level
Data management, collection and utilization
Collaboration between secondary, postsecondary and workforce development
Capacity building to meet the demands of learners and region-specific needs

Using the information gained at these meetings, CTE leaders will be able to build upon the accomplishments and help provide resources, tools and support to address the challenges within the current system, with an eye towards how states will leverage the potential to revise or update their Perkins V state plans as their original four-year plans come to a close next spring. Advance CTE continues to be available as a resource to provide best practices, information on innovative policies on the horizon and technical assistance to states to achieve our shared vision of Without Limits: A Shared Vision for the Future of Career Technical Education (CTE Without Limits).

As states work to address the challenges they face, Advance CTE has numerous resources available below and through the Learning that Works Resource Center to assist with goal set and challenges identified during the meeting:

Perkins V Supports Teacher Recruitment and Retention
This resource discusses the mechanisms in Perkins V that support teacher recruitment and retention, an overview of how this appears in Perkins V state plans and examples of how states are tackling the challenge of recruiting and retaining qualified and diverse CTE instructors.
Championing High-Quality Data
This brief addresses the importance of a unifying vision for education and workforce that draws upon and regularly uses postsecondary CTE data to measure progress and guide state policy and practice.
Beyond the Numbers: Design Principles for CTE Data Reporting and A Toolkit for Communicating CTE Data
This report, developed with input from a shared solutions workgroup of national and state experts, provides nine principles for developing effective and accessible CTE data reporting tools. A companion toolkit contains guidance, best practices and tools that CTE leaders can use to create communications to help stakeholders better understand and act on CTE data.
Coordinating Across Perkins V and the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act
This guide looks at six opportunities to promote coordination across Perkins V and WIOA as states develop and implement plans under Perkins V.
Strengthening Career Pathways Through the Power of State and Local Partnerships
This resource is the third in a series of policy briefs centered on strengthening career pathways. It offers promising practices for leveraging the strengths of state and local leaders to cultivate sustainable, scalable partnerships and advance high-quality career pathways.

Save the Date for our next in-person opportunity to connect and receive support from Advance CTE! Our 2023 Fall Meeting: Elevating CTE’s Impact, will be held October 16-18 in Baltimore, Maryland.

Paul Mattingly, Senior Policy Associate

By Layla Alagic in Uncategorized
Tags: career pathways, CLNA, CTE instruction, CTE Without Limits, Data Collection, data quality, Industry Collaboration, Learning that Works Resource Center, Perkins, Perkins V, Postsecondary Education, Secondary, turnover, WIOA, work-based learning, workforce development

State of CTE: CTE Instructors in Perkins V State Plans

Thursday, January 14th, 2021

In October 2020, Advance CTE released “The State of Career Technical Education: An Analysis of States’ Perkins V Priorities,” which examines how states have leveraged the development of the Strengthening Career Technical Education for the 21st Century Act (Perkins V) state plans to expand quality and increase equity within their Career Technical Education (CTE) systems.

Attracting and retaining qualified and diverse CTE instructors remains one of the most persistent challenges facing states. Last year, ACTE held a Teach CTE Summit to more closely examine teacher pipeline challenges, surfacing numerous key issues and recommendations. According to previous Advance CTE research on this issue, 86 percent of State Directors reported a moderate or severe CTE teacher shortage in at least one Career Cluster at the secondary level, and a further 60 percent indicated the same at the postsecondary level.

The underlying causes for these shortages most often relate to the difficulties CTE programs have in competing with the private sector for the same pool of qualified instructors, along with the fact that many universities have closed their CTE teacher preparation programs in recent years. As is the case in other sectors of the economy, the CTE teacher workforce is also aging rapidly.

At the same time, the demands on CTE instructors are rigorous. CTE instructors need strong technical knowledge and industry expertise, effective classroom management and pedagogical skills, and cultural competency to support and engage each learner on an individual basis.

Without a qualified pool of CTE professionals, one that is responsive to the needs of each learner, our country cannot effectively educate learners and prepare the future workforce. Attracting, retaining and fully developing a strong cadre of CTE professionals is therefore a crucial ingredient CTE systems need for success, and this need is reflected throughout states’ Perkins V plans.

Based on Advance CTE’s analysis of state Perkins V plans:

Nearly three-quarters of all states (36 total) are providing targeted professional development for specific groups of educators, administrators or other CTE professionals.
Forty-five percent of states are including quality instructors in their definitions for size, scope and quality (SSQ).
Forty-seven percent of states are going beyond the requirements laid out in the law to prioritize supporting CTE professionals in their comprehensive local needs assessment (CLNA).
Twenty-seven percent of states are developing explicit CTE instructor recruitment plans.
At least seven states are addressing licensure barriers and/or are developing new pathways to licensure as an approach to strengthening CTE instructor pipelines.

Key Innovations

Oregon aims to recruit teachers from cultural and linguistic backgrounds that reflect the state’s learner population. To achieve this goal, the state plans to partner with the Educator Advancement Council, a statewide education network focused on ensuring that the state has high-quality, well-supported and culturally responsive educators. Through this partnership, Oregon aims to create a comprehensive strategy focused on recruitment efforts in underrepresented and underserved communities. In addition to this work, the state is clarifying alternative pathways that lead to the CTE teaching profession as a means to attract industry experts and potentially further diversify the field.
Oklahoma is dedicating more than half a million dollars annually to provide targeted scholarships for individuals seeking teacher and administrator certifications. As part of its wider efforts in this space, the state has developed a new teacher institute that provides a full year of training, coaching and mentoring for new CTE instructors. Oklahoma also makes use of a statewide learning management system — CareerTech’s Master Educator platform — to structure and provide professional development that promotes continuous learning and improvement of its CTE teachers. Finally, the state is working with local universities to provide shorter-term courses and online programs conducive to incumbent CTE teacher needs.

The Work Ahead

One area of future work is ensuring that the CTE instructor workforce is representative of the learners they serve. Only five states included any explicit recruitment activities focused on diversifying the CTE teaching field in their Perkins V plans.

Recruiting, developing and retaining qualified teachers and faculty are critical for CTE programs to be successful. As noted previously, instructors are among the most important in-school factors that contribute to the success of learners. No single policy or strategy will fully address the challenges facing states with regards to this issue. Some of these challenges have to do with issues outside the realm of CTE, such as broader terms negotiated by labor and management (e.g., teacher/faculty pay scales or tenure requirements), lack of teacher preparation programs at universities, and accreditation requirements or limitations. Only through a coordinated set of approaches can states begin to make progress on this critically important topic. Through the Perkins V planning process, states have certainly started to make significant progress in this area.

Resources

Christina Koch, Policy Associate
Alisha Hyslop, Senior Director of Public Policy, Association for Career and Technical Education
Catherine Imperatore, Research Manager, Association for Career and Technical Education

By admin in Uncategorized
Tags: CTE instruction, Oklahoma, Oregon, Perkins, Public Policy

High-quality State Policy is Crucial for Ensuring Program Quality

Tuesday, October 3rd, 2017

Advance CTE has just released a Policy Benchmark Tool that will allow states to evaluate and improve their program approval policies. In this tool, Advance CTE has defined and described the non-negotiable elements of an effective policy for approving and evaluating programs of study, which encompass both secondary and postsecondary CTE.

Any policy – be it regulatory, legislative or programmatic – related to ensuring high-quality CTE programs are developed and implemented should include and/or address the following core elements. While there may be other elements within a CTE program approval policy, if a state does not address the list below, its CTE program approval policy will not be able to sufficiently ensure that all CTE programs are high-quality.

Rigorous course standards and progressive, sequenced courses: All CTE programs must be comprehensive, aligned with rigorous standards and prepare learners for opportunities in high-skill and in-demand fields
Secondary and postsecondary alignment and early postsecondary offerings: All CTE programs must vertically align across the secondary and postsecondary education levels to ensure seamless transitions for learners, and allow learners to earn credentials of value, including postsecondary certificates and degrees.
Industry involvement: Industry partners at the state and local level must play an active role to identify, develop and regularly review CTE programs of study.
Labor market demand: CTE programs must prepare learners for careers in high-skill and high-demand fields.
High-quality instruction: Any CTE program must have appropriately certified instructors in place before being approved by the state. Ensuring instructors have the necessary academic content, knowledge of pedagogy and industry expertise must also be a top priority.
Experiential learning: High-quality CTE programs must provide opportunities for learners to engage in authentic experiential learning both inside and outside of the classroom.

State leaders can use the CTE Program Approval Policy Assessment Rubric to identify gaps in their current state policy on these six criteria and prioritize policies that validate potential programs of study in a way that shows they are high-quality and are aligned with the state’s vision and definition of success. Once state leaders have completed an assessment of their state’s CTE program approval policies, they can begin planning for implementation using the templates and prompts. After they have completed these sections, state leaders can then examine the CTE Program Evaluation Policy Criteria for potential criteria to inform CTE program re-approval, evaluation and potentially phasing out CTE programs that are not deemed high-quality.

To support its members in using this tool, Advance CTE has also created a facilitation guide for the rubric, and is eager to provide virtual and/or in-person assistance to a select number of interested states. Email Ashleigh McFadden at [email protected] for more information.

Ashleigh McFadden, State Policy Manager

By admin in Advance CTE Resources, Publications, Resources
Tags: business and industry, course standards, CTE instruction, experiential learning, labor market demand, Program Quality, secondary postsecondary alignment

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