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Posts Tagged ‘Georgia’

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This Week in CTE

Saturday, September 19th, 2020

We have compiled a list of highlights in Career Technical Education (CTE) from this week to share with you.

TWEET OF THE WEEK

STATE DIRECTOR OF THE WEEK

The Wyoming Department of Education State CTE Director, Michelle Aldrich, announced support in funding for the Natrona County School District (NCSD). Funding will allow for a mobile STEM lab to travel across the school district, sharing equipment and providing career exploration opportunities to middle and elementary school students. Aldrich noted that it is important to, “recognize people who go above and beyond the norm.” Read more in this article published by Oil City News. 

GRANT APPLICATION OF THE WEEK

Colton-Redlands-Yucaipa Regional Occupational Program (CRY-ROP), in partnership with the California Department of Education (CDE), is now accepting applications for the 2020-2021 CTE TEACH Mentor Grant. One grant per local education agency (LEA) will be awarded. Mentoring teachers will be provided resources and supports as they help to transition new CTE teachers from industry to the classroom. Read more about CTE TEACH’s objectives, requirements and application here. 

VIDEO OF THE WEEK

ApprenticeshipNC shares how these five steps can lead to the start of a registered apprenticeship program for your business. 

CAREER PATHWAY OF THE WEEK

The partnership between the Georgia Department of Education (GaDOE), the University System of Georgia (USG) and the American Transaction Processors Coalition (ATPC) has brought new opportunities to secondary learners in the state of Georgia. Since 2018, the Georgia FinTech Academy (GFTA) has provided over 1,900 learners with courses that lead to a career in financial technology (fintech). Aligned with the growing market demand for talent in fintech careers and with the help of an innovative virtual platform, GFTA now reaches every high school in Georgia that chooses to offer the pathway. Fintech college courses are also available for dual enrollment. Read more in this article published by the Atlanta Business Journal.

LEGISLATIVE UPDATE OF THE WEEK

On Thursday, the Democrats of the House Committee on Education and Labor released a proposal to reauthorize the National Apprenticeship Act. The new bill, the National Apprenticeship Act of 2020, would invest $3.5 billion in Registered Apprenticeships, youth apprenticeships and pre-apprenticeships over five years, and develop approximately 1 million new apprenticeships.

A fact sheet on the National Apprenticeship Act of 2020 can be found here, a section-by-section summary here and the full bill text here.

Follow Advance CTE’s legislative updates for more up-to-date information. 

RESOURCE OF THE WEEK

Advance CTE, with support from the Siemens Foundation, commissioned focus groups and a national survey to explore the attitudes of parents and students currently involved in CTE, as well as prospective CTE parents and students, to better understand the promise and opportunity of CTE. Making a Winning Case for CTE: How Local Leaders Can Communicate the Value of CTE provides ideas for how local leaders can use the messages and research from the Value and Promise of Career Technical Education report to effectively communicate the importance of CTE, especially to the most important audiences- students and parents.

View Making a Winning Case for CTE: How Local Leaders Can Communicate the Value of CTE in our Learning that Works Resource Center.

Brittany Cannady, Digital Media Associate

By admin in Advance CTE Resources, Legislation, Research
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This Week in CTE

Saturday, August 1st, 2020

We have compiled a list of highlights in Career Technical Education (CTE) from this week to share with you.

WEBINAR OF THE WEEK

This week, Advance CTE hosted a webinar providing a preview of the 2020 elections at both the national and state level and discussed how the results of the elections may impact policy overall, and specifically CTE-related policy. Panelists also discussed what state CTE leaders can do now to prepare for the elections in November. View the recording of the webinar and register for the next one: CTE’s Role in the Future of Work and our Economic Recovery.

SCHOLARSHIP AWARD OF THE WEEK

GRANT AWARD OF THE WEEK

The Rethink K-12 Education Models Grant will support states’ initiatives in creating innovative ways for learners to continue education in ways that meet their individual needs. States receiving the grant award include: Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, North Carolina, New York, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas. The awards range from $6 million to $20 million. View the press release here.

CTE PROGRAM OF THE WEEK

One local CTE program in Michigan has added a new teacher academy for their learners, which will begin this fall! With the help of a grant award from the Michigan Department of Education, Alpena Public Schools are looking to recruit their own educators for the future of their district. Read more in this article published by The Alpena News.

TOOLKIT OF THE WEEK

To assist state leaders in developing and expanding equitable youth apprenticeship programs, the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity (NAPE) and the Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship (PAYA) has developed a new toolkit, Equity in Youth Apprenticeship Programs. 

This toolkit strives to increase access and opportunities for high school students as they begin to transition into the workforce or a postsecondary institution. Read more here. 

RESOURCE OF THE WEEK

Advance CTE in partnership with The National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD) has published a new resource as part of the Making Good on the Promise series, which outlines the five steps state CTE leaders can take to ensure secondary and postsecondary students with disabilities have access to and the supports needed to thrive in high-quality CTE programs. 

View the resource in our Learning that Works Resource Center.

Brittany Cannady, Digital Media Associate

By admin in Advance CTE Resources, Resources, Webinars
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Middle Grades CTE: Data and Measurement

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2020

There is widespread agreement that high school is too late to begin to expose learners to careers and the foundational skills needed to access and succeed in careers, but there remains a lack of consensus about what CTE and career readiness should entail at the middle grades level.

Advance CTE, with support from ACTE, convened a Shared Solutions Workgroup of national, state and local leaders to identify the core components of a meaningful middle grades CTE experience. This collaboration resulted in Broadening the Path: Design Principles for Middle Grades CTE and a companion blog series exploring each of the core programmatic elements of middle grades CTE defined in the paper. In this seventh entry in the blog series, we will examine the core programmatic element of data and measurement.

As states and districts are working to expand their middle grades CTE programs, it is critical that they are able to measure the effectiveness of those programs to ensure continuous program improvement process and that resources invested are having the desired impact on student achievement. Yet, there are few policies and mechanisms in place to date to collect meaningful middle grades CTE data. As more attention and resources are focused on middle grades CTE, state and local leaders should dedicate time and attention to identifying effective strategies for measuring whether students have achieved established standards, gained skills and other key outcomes as a result of middle grades CTE courses and activities.

As part of its teacher evaluation system – DPAS II – Delaware requires all teachers to bi-annually develop goals for instruction based on the state’s framework for teaching. The state has created specific guidance and tools for middle grades CTE teachers on how they can establish clear, measurable goals that are aligned with their schools’ focus and priorities and CTE performance data. The system intentionally is linked to the state’s high school college- and career-ready accountability framework, and requires middle grades teachers to focus on goals around Perkins indicators and employability skills. Middle grades CTE teachers must also identify which populations of students will be impacted, which standards and skills will be taught and attained, and how they will assess student growth. The state provides the framework, but teachers work directly with their building administrators to identify and finalize those goals that will support their own professional growth, as well as the growth of their students.

As a way of monitoring and collecting critical information on instruction and skills development, Utah requires each local education agency to submit an End of Year Summary. This reporting mechanism requires local districts to describe how the College and Career Awareness requirement was delivered, how it was integrated with other subjects, what teachers were involved, how the required workplace skills were addressed and demonstrated by students, which Career Technical Student Organizations were explored and how, what work-based learning experiences were offered, and how teachers and counselors collaborated to advance middle grades students’ college and career awareness. Starting in 2021, districts will be required to upload artifacts to provide more evidence.

In terms of reporting and accountability, North Dakota includes participation data for both grades 9-12 and grades 6-8, disaggregated by the 16 Career Clusters, on its annual CTE fact sheet.  And, Georgia is one of the few states that includes some indicator of career readiness in its statewide accountability system, with the percentage of students earning a passing score in a career exploratory course at middle school level as one of the “beyond the core” readiness indicators for middle schools.

Key reflection questions for state and local leaders as they build or evaluate this element of middle grades CTE programs include:

For additional resources relevant to CTE educators in the middle grades, check out the Middle Grades CTE Repository, another deliverable of this Shared Solutions Workgroup.

By Kate Blosveren Kreamer in Middle Grades CTE
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Middle Grades CTE: Teachers and Leaders

Tuesday, June 16th, 2020

There is widespread agreement that high school is too late to begin to expose learners to careers and the foundational skills needed to access and succeed in careers, but there remains a lack of consensus about what CTE and career readiness should entail at the middle grades level.

Advance CTE, with support from ACTE, convened a Shared Solutions Workgroup of national, state and local leaders to identify the core components of a meaningful middle grades CTE experience. This collaboration resulted in Broadening the Path: Design Principles for Middle Grades CTE and a companion blog series exploring each of the core programmatic elements of middle grades CTE defined in the paper. In this sixth entry in the blog series, we will examine the core programmatic element of teachers and leaders.

Delivering quality CTE experiences in the middle grades is contingent upon a cadre of educators with the necessary content knowledge and pedagogical skills. Educators working with middle grades students need specific, relevant content knowledge about career pathways as well as skills for working with middle grades students. While there are often shortages of CTE teachers at all levels of education—a situation that will likely be exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic—creativity and flexibility related to licensing and scheduling can help address this need. Professional development and other supports are critical not only for educators and administrators, but also for counselors, advisers and other career development professionals who provide career advisement to middle grades students.

States have implemented a variety of requirements and supports to facilitate quality instruction in middle grades CTE. In Ohio, middle grades students have access to both career exploratory courses and, in eighth grade, courses that are the equivalent of high school CTE introductory courses. For these high-school-equivalent courses, instructors must hold the appropriate subject-area-specific CTE teaching credential, but for other middle school CTE courses, only a standard teacher license is required. This allows the state to access a broader pool of teachers and alleviates some concerns about teacher shortages. To ensure that they possess the skills and knowledge to effectively teach middle school CTE courses, these teachers must complete online modules that cover the pedagogy of a CTE class and CTE standards.

To integrate grade 6-12 education and career planning more holistically across the education system, Georgia has developed a Teachers-As-Advisors Framework. The framework is linked to the National Career Development Guidelines and includes goals organized by grade level and by three domains: career management; academic achievement, educational attainment and lifelong learning; and life skills. For instance, career management goals for grade 6 address understanding decision-making processes, locating career information sources and trends, and identifying key 21st-century employability skills. The framework enables teachers and other professionals in the school system to support students in their career development.

In Arizona, AZ GEAR UP has partnered with the AZ College Access Network to provide online training focused on postsecondary access and career planning. Module 4: College and Career Advising in the Middle Grades addresses the skills and knowledge required to counsel middle grade students for college and careers, including career exploration, planning and transition, and the value of postsecondary education. Middle school teachers, administrators and counselors are encouraged to participate in this module, which is offered by AZ GEAR UP for free.

As you reflect on this element of middle grades CTE in your state, district or school, consider such questions as:

For additional resources relevant to CTE educators in the middle grades, check out the Middle Grades CTE Repository, another deliverable of this Shared Solutions Workgroup.

By Kate Blosveren Kreamer in Middle Grades CTE
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How States Are Leveraging ESSA to Advance Career Readiness

Monday, April 1st, 2019

By now the consensus in the education community is clear: in addition to a strong academic foundation, students should be able to access other experiences in high school — physical education, the arts, Career Technical Education (CTE) — that provide added value to their education and increase the likelihood of postsecondary success.

The notion that high schools should provide a “well-rounded education” was codified in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015. The law, which Congress passed with bipartisan support, provides several opportunities for integrating CTE and other well-rounded learning opportunities into the traditional high school experience, which Advance CTE has covered extensively on this blog and in our publications. More than four years after the law was passed, some states have begun to leverage these opportunities to advance career readiness  in high school.

Expanding Opportunities for Each Child in Ohio

One often overlooked opportunity in ESSA is the Direct Student Services (DSS) provision. DSS allows states to set aside up to 3 percent of their basic Title I grants to help local education agencies expand access to advanced coursework and CTE. Only two states — Louisiana and New Mexico — opted to use the allowance in their submitted ESSA plans. But they were soon joined by Ohio, which decided in 2018 to leverage the DSS allowance to launch a new grant program called Expanding Opportunities for Each Child.

The program has two primary objectives: developing and expanding access to career pathways that culminate in high-value credentials and promoting access and success in advanced coursework such as Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB). These objectives are aligned with Ohio’s strategic priorities for secondary education, which emphasize postsecondary readiness and preparation for college and career. Ohio’s decision to use the DSS allowance was based on the idea that freeing up additional resources would help local education agencies better support student achievement and transitions to post-high school pathways.

In July 2018, Ohio awarded more than $7.2 million in three-year grants to 17 recipients. Fourteen will be conducting career pathways development and three will be expanding access to AP and IB courses. A second round of applications is expected to be issued later in the 2018-19 school year.  

Building Capacity for STEM Learning in Georgia

Though the Title IV Student Support and Academic Enrichment grant program, Congress authorized funding to the tune of $1.6 billion to enhance well-rounded education, school safety and the effective use of technology in schools. While the program has not been fully funded by Congress, it still provides significant resources to help schools deliver a well-rounded education, including CTE and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education.

While most states have left the determination of how to spend Title IV funds up to local leaders, some have issued guidance or put together trainings to help schools leverage their resources in service of statewide priorities for career readiness.

Georgia is one such example. In its ESSA plan, the state committed to using Title IV funds to strengthen school counseling, computer science and STEM. Since then, Georgia has used Title IV funds to hire two full-time STEM coordinators, one in the southwest region and one in the southeast region. The coordinators are working to build STEM learning opportunities for schools and strengthen STEM pipelines in their areas. Additionally, Georgia has allocated Title IV funds to develop an online STEM incubator learning pathway to help district and school leaders navigate the process for certifying STEM schools.

Curating CTE Open Educational Resources in Nebraska

Another state that is using Title IV funds to boost career readiness is Nebraska. Leaders in the state are using Title IV funds to recruit CTE teachers to curate and develop educational resources aligned with college and career content area standards. This is a key feature of the state’s new Open Educational Resources (OER) Hub, which was launched in February 2019 and provides open access resources aligned with Nebraska’s college and career ready standards.

The work is still in the early stages, but Nebraska hopes to build out the CTE resources in the OER Hub later this summer by engaging CTE teachers to share, curate and develop rigorous digital resources that can be adopted and modified in the classroom. The state will provide stipends and cover travel expenses for participating CTE teachers. While this work is starting with three career areas — business, marketing, and management; communication and information systems; and human sciences and education — Nebraska plans to expand the resources to the remaining three state-identified career areas soon.

States made bold commitments in their ESSA plans to expand access to advanced coursework and career pathways. This is best demonstrated by the fact that 40 states are now measuring career readiness in their state and federal accountability systems. But few states are going the extra mile to align ESSA implementation with their plans for career readiness. Ohio, Georgia and Nebraska demonstrate three different approaches states can take to advance career readiness through ESSA.

Austin Estes, Senior Policy Associate

By admin in Public Policy
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New Resources: Designing Meaningful Career-Ready Indicators (Part 2)

Tuesday, August 21st, 2018

Earlier this summer, Advance CTE in partnership with Education Strategy Group (ESG) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), released two profiles highlighting how states were integrating career-ready indicators into their accountability systems, specifically Progress towards Post-High School Credential and Assessment of (college and career) Readiness.

Today, we are releasing the final two of these profiles aligned with the remaining categories in  Destination Known: Valuing College AND Career Readiness in State Accountability Systems: Co-Curricular Learning and Leadership Experiences and Transitions Beyond High School. The Co-curricular Learning and Leadership Experiences profile focuses on how states like Georgia, Oklahoma and South Carolina are measuring work-based learning within their accountability system, while the Transitions Beyond High School profile explores how Colorado and Missouri are holding schools accountable for learners’ post-high school success in college and careers. While these are newer indicators and less likely to be included in states’ accountability systems, they are a critical to measuring college and career readiness in learners.

Read all four of the Career-Focused Indicator Profiles here and stay tuned for an update to Making Career Readiness Count (3.0) soon:

Kate Kreamer, Deputy Executive Director

By Kate Blosveren Kreamer in Advance CTE Resources, Uncategorized
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Getting to Know… Georgia

Monday, February 27th, 2017

Note: This is part of Advance CTE’s blog series, “Getting to Know…” We are using this series to help our readers learn more about specific states, State CTE Directors, partners and more.

State Name: Georgia

State CTE Director: Dr. Barbara Wall, State CTE Director, Career, Technical and Agricultural Education, Georgia Department of Education

About Georgia: Georgia CTE is delivered through a combination of comprehensive high schools, charter schools and technical colleges. CTE students in the state are active and high achievers. More than 150,000 students participate in Career Student Technical Organizations (CTSO), and in 2015, 95 percent of CTE concentrators graduated from high school — a considerable achievement compared to a statewide graduation rate of 79.2 percent.

Currently, the Department of Education is working in partnership with the Governor’s office to align CTE programs with Georgia’s 12 economic development regions. This work is part of Gov. Nathan Deal’s High Demand Career Initiative. Gov. Deal launched the initiative in 2014 in an effort to bring together both private sector employers and higher education leaders to learn from one another and discuss opportunities to align education priorities with workforce needs. This work not only illuminated the priority skills and industries for Georgia’s future economy, but also spurred new strategies, such as a workforce needs assessment, sector partnerships, and industry-specific task forces, to help align education with workforce needs. CTE has been at the table throughout this process, listening to and learning from business leaders across the state.

Programs of Study: Georgia offers programs of study in 17 Career Clusters. These are based on the 16 industry sectors in the national Career ClustersⓇ framework plus an additional Cluster focused on energy. While programs of study are developed and delivered locally, the state recently designed frameworks that can be adapted and delivered according to local needs. The state has also worked to increase local flexibility and empower district-level decisionmaking by rolling back rigid regulations on state capital equipment grants.

Postsecondary Counterpart: Funding from the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006 is split almost evenly between the secondary and postsecondary sectors in Georgia. As such, Dr. Wall has been working to strengthen the relationship between the Department of Education and the Technical College system to create more seamless pathways for students. Recently, parties from both sectors engaged in an effort to examine high school and postsecondary CTE courses and identify connections and opportunities for alignment.

Notable in Georgia: In addition to Georgia’s strong partnerships, high graduation rates and CTSO participation, the state is notable for its efforts to provide professional learning opportunities to CTE teachers and administrators and to engage students in career planning.

Compared to other states, Georgia’s professional development system is unique. Local education agencies can set aside five percent of their Perkins allotment to feed into a statewide professional learning consortium that provides resources and trainings for CTE teachers and administrators. This consortium, called the Career, Technical and Agricultural Education Resource Network (CTAERN), provided training for more than 7,900 professionals in the 2015-16 school year alone. By pooling resources across the state, CTAERN is able to provide professional learning supports and resources at scale.

Additionally, each eighth grade student in Georgia is required to develop an Individual Graduation Plan (IGP) that identifies coursework and opportunities aligned with that student’s academic and career goals. The IGP is required under HB400, or the Georgia BRIDGE Act, which was passed in 2010. In addition to the IGP, the BRIDGE Act requires local education systems to provide students with career counseling services, career awareness activities and information to guide their academic and career planning.

In January 2017, Georgia’s partnership with business and industry leaders culminated in the launch of the Career Pipeline Tool, a web-based platform that enables students and families to identify accessible career pathways in their local schools and map those opportunities against corresponding in-demand industries in their region. The tool also provides information to employers about the workforce competencies of the local student population, helping them make critical decisions about staffing and training needs.

Moving forward, Dr. Wall’s office plans to develop and launch an economic development certificate program to recognize school districts that have effectively engaged business and industry partners in their region. This program is designed to build upon Gov. Deal’s High Demand Career Initiative Work and strengthen partnerships between education and employers at the local level.

Austin Estes, Policy Associate

By admin in Public Policy
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Advance CTE Releases Guide for Building and Scaling Statewide Work-based Learning Systems

Friday, October 14th, 2016

WBL_GuideIn a recent nationwide education poll, 90 percent of surveyed Americans said it is extremely or very important for schools to help students develop good work habits. In turn, state education agencies have begun to focus on both college and career readiness to help prepare students for their futures. One popular strategy is work-based learning, which allows students to reinforce and deepen their classroom learning, explore future career fields and demonstrate their skills in an authentic setting.

Today, Advance CTE released a comprehensive guide — building on the “Connecting the Classroom to Careers” policy series — to help policymakers develop and implement a statewide vision for work-based learning. The guide provides key considerations and guiding questions to walk state policymakers through the steps of building and scaling a high-quality work-based learning system, drawing on examples from states such as Tennessee and West Virginia to highlight innovative solutions to common challenges. The paper not only builds upon earlier briefs in the “Connecting the Classroom to Careers” series, but also ties them together into one comprehensive and easy-to-use guide.

To get started, states must develop a statewide vision for work-based learning and get buy-in from all relevant stakeholders. Tennessee, for example, embarked on a campaign to overhaul its work-based learning programs and establish a framework that would be more inclusive and relevant for students in the state. This resulted in a new, shared vision that prioritizes career exploration, career advisement and hands-on learning for all students — not just those enrolled in Career Technical Education (CTE) classes.

Yet setting a vision is only the first step. To ensure the vision is implemented successfully, states must create a policy environment that allows work-based learning programs to thrive. One of the biggest challenges that states face in expanding work-based learning opportunities is overcoming legal barriers, such as child labor laws and safety requirements, that make businesses reluctant to hire high school students. New Jersey demonstrates how state agencies can work together to develop a regulatory framework that supports, rather than inhibits, work-based learning opportunities. One product of inter-agency collaboration in the state is the New Jersey Safe Schools project, a comprehensive health and safety training for CTE teachers.

The guide further explores how states can expand work-based learning by partnering with intermediaries to facilitate partnerships between educators and employers for the ultimate benefit of a student’s career exploration and skill development. Intermediaries can be either independent organizations or, in the case of Georgia’s Youth Apprenticeship Program (YAP) Coordinators, individuals who are based within the school or district. Georgia’s YAP Coordinators are funded by a competitive state grant and help support the full range of work-based learning activities for local students.

WBL GraphicOnce a statewide vision is in place and early implementation has begun, state policymakers should consider how to measure and scale work-based learning. There are two common approaches states take to building a comprehensive measurement and data-collection system: a systems-level approach that examines and evaluates the quality of the program, and a student-level approach that measures student learning and skill attainment. Through its School to Career Connecting Activities Initiative, Massachusetts has built a system to collect pre- and post-evaluations of student skills to determine both the professional and technical skills that students gain over the course of their work-based learning experience. This allows the state to assess difficult-to-measure student outcomes such as accepting direction and constructive criticism or motivation and taking initiative.

Collecting and evaluating program data enables states to not only identify promising practices but also to scale them statewide so that all students can access high-quality work-based learning experiences. One example profiled in the guide is West Virginia’s Simulated Workplace program, which began in 2013 as a pilot program in 20 schools across the state. The Department of Education gradually scaled the program, spending time evaluating and refining processes and policies along the way, to reach 60 schools — and more than 500 classrooms — by 2015.

There is no single way to build and scale work-based learning programs, but Advance CTE’s latest publication, “Connecting the Classroom to Careers: A Comprehensive Guide to the State’s Role in Work-based Learning,” can help states get started. The guide identifies essential strategies in work-based learning programs across the states and provides key takeaways and guiding questions to help states tackle common barriers. While work-based learning is a proven strategy to help students build technical and professional skills, policymakers should draw on examples from other states to thoughtfully build and scale a high-quality work-based learning system.

Austin Estes, Policy Associate and Ashleigh McFadden, State Policy Manager

By admin in Publications, Research, Resources
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This Week in CTE

Friday, July 29th, 2016

TWEET OF THE WEEK

WEBINAR OF THE WEEK

The Appalachia Regional Comprehensive Center and Advance CTE are co hosting a webinar, Kentucky Gets Students on TRACK with Youth Apprenticeship, to discuss TRACK, Kentucky’s Tech Ready Apprentices for Careers in Kentucky youth pre-apprenticeship program. Speakers will provide information about registered apprenticeship and pipeline needs and issues from employer and student perspectives, including outcomes and lessons learned.

RESOURCE OF THE WEEK

Check out our latest installment of Connecting Classroom to Careers: Leveraging Intermediaries to Expand Work-based Learning. This brief explores the role of intermediaries at the school, region and state levels, who coordinate between educators and employers to develop critical work-based learning opportunities for students taking an in-depth look at South Carolina and Georgia.

RESOURCE OF THE WEEK: PERKINS

Earlier this month, the House Education and the Workforce Committee unanimously passed legislation to reauthorize the Perkins Act. With the Association for Career and Technical Education we developed a summary and analysis of this legislation available here.

Katie Fitzgerald, Communications Associate 

By admin in Advance CTE Resources, Legislation, News, Resources, Webinars
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State Policy Update: Iowa Passes Bill to Modernize CTE (and More!)

Thursday, June 2nd, 2016

Since our last update, an additional nine states have completed their legislative sessions (16 states, five US territories and DC remain in session), locking in a new wave of policies related to Career Technical Education (CTE). While it’s too early to determine any national trends, we can certainly highlight a few new pieces of legislation. In this edition, we share some state policy updates as well as a few helpful resources.

In Iowa last week, Gov. Terry Branstad signed HF 2392 into law, supporting his Future Ready Iowa goal of ensuring 70 percent of the state’s workforce has postsecondary education or training by 2025. This new law, which passed the state legislature unanimously, codifies recommendations from the Secondary CTE Task Force and updates the state’s framework for CTE that has been in the Iowa Code since 1989. The major policy changes that the law enacts include:

Meanwhile Georgia, building off of the 2014 Work Based Learning Act, passed a law incentivizing employers to offer work-based learning opportunities for students aged 16 and older. The law provides a discount for workers’ compensation insurance policies in an effort to reduce the burden on employers.

In Missouri, the state legislature passed a combined bill that directs the board of education to establish requirements for a CTE certificate that students can earn in addition to their high school diploma (notably, with a provision to ensure that students are not “tracked” based on academic ability). It also modifies the composition of the state’s Career and Technical Education Advisory Council and permits the commissioner of education to appoint members. The bill has passed the legislature and awaits Governor Nixon’s signature. Once signed, the CTE certificate requirements will go into effect during the 2017-18 school year.

And with Colorado’s 2016 legislative session now closed, all is quiet on the western front. The Colorado legislature passed four bills originating from the bipartisan Colorado 2016 Ready to Work package, including the creation of the Career Development Success Pilot Program, which provides financial incentives to school districts and charter schools for each student who completes “industry-credential programs,” internships, apprenticeships or Advanced Placement coursework in high-demand fields.

Odds & Ends

While that concludes our legislative update, we would be remiss to deny you these resources and papers from some of our partners:

Austin Estes, Policy Associate

By admin in Legislation, News, Public Policy
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