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Posts Tagged ‘New Skills ready network’

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Getting to Know: Stakeholder Engagement at Advance CTE

Thursday, October 21st, 2021

The “Getting to Know” blog series features the work of State CTE Directors, state and federal policies, innovative programs and new initiatives from the Advance CTE staff. Learn more about each of these topics and the unique contributions to advancing Career Technical Education (CTE) that Advance CTE’s members work on every day.

Meet Dan Hinderliter! Dan is a State Policy Associate at Advance CTE and supports a number of different national projects. As a site liaison for the New Skills ready network, Dan works with two sites (Columbus, Ohio and Indianapolis, Indiana), providing resource and research support while also serving as a direct link to the national project team. He also works on site snapshots, the annual report and quarterly newsletters, as well as major publications that highlight promising national, state and local practices aligned with the principles of the New Skills ready network. 

Dan also supports the modernization of the National Career Clusters® Framework and spearheads the Year in Review, the annual aggregation of state policy impacting CTE. As part of the Year in Review process, Dan regularly tracks state-level legislation and other policy actions.

Q: Considering your work on the New Skills ready network initiative, how are the six sites leveraging stakeholder engagement to advance career pathways? 

A: Each of the six New Skills ready network sites is working to leverage stakeholder engagement in some capacity to advance career pathways. First, because each of the sites is composed of a variety of stakeholders, engagement with business and industry, postsecondary partners and K-12 institutions has to happen to ensure each voice is involved in and buys into the work of the site. Outside of the project teams, however, most sites are doing some level of stakeholder engagement involving learner and family communications practices. Some sites are surveying parents and learners to understand what resonates with them about available career pathways, while others have done focus groups to understand where there are gaps for learners in specific programs. Columbus, Ohio’s project team hired a minority-led communications firm, with roots in Columbus, to help share consistent messaging and work to understand how each stakeholder can be better supported.

View the 2020-2021 site snapshot for Columbus, Ohio here. 

Q: Earlier this year, Advance CTE and the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE) released State Policies Impacting CTE: 2020 Year in Review where industry partnership was a frequently addressed topic area. Are there any states that can serve as a model for policy actions around stakeholder engagement? 

A: Every year, states enact new legislation that impacts how each state engages with stakeholders, either through input gathering or through information sharing. Many states, including Colorado, Hawai’i, Idaho and Missouri (among others), passed legislation this year requiring a state agency to collect and disseminate information that allows learners to make more informed decisions about their futures, including information about in-demand jobs or industry recognized credential attainment. Other states are using legislative action to improve equity and access in part through stakeholder engagement; Oregon and Washington, for example, now require institutions to collect feedback or input from diverse or historically marginalized stakeholder groups to inform new practices and strategies that will increase access to high-quality CTE programs for those groups. At the beginning of 2022, we will release our state policy tracker for 2021 which includes the above legislative actions and others.

Q: One of the foundational commitments within CTE Without Limits is based on stakeholder engagement. How can states, through such partnerships, ensure each learner reaches success in a career of their choice? 

A: Advance CTE’s shared vision, CTE Without Limits, calls for CTE to be incredibly learner-centric and for programs to ensure that the learner voice is incorporated into each decision about career pathways or programs. As states continue to expand access and equity in their CTE programs and work toward dismantling systemic barriers in CTE, the learner voice must be an integral part of these conversations, as only the learner who participated in the program can fully understand the consequences of decisions made at each level. At the same time, states and local institutions can continue to expand offerings by building partnerships with community based organizations to offer learner supports or with business and industry to offer new or improved work-based learning opportunities. By including opportunities for stakeholder groups like learners, their families and local businesses to provide input into decisions surrounding CTE, states can ensure that their career pathways and CTE programs are truly aligned with the needs of their communities.

Q: Lastly, Advance CTE announced the modernization of The National Career Clusters® Framework. How has Advance CTE prioritized stakeholder engagement and the voices of the field in this work? 

A: Though we don’t yet know what our end product will look like at the conclusion of these modernization efforts, we did know the process had to be highly collaborative to ensure everyone buys into whatever the outcome happens to be. As such, we have included a lot of opportunity to incorporate feedback from the field; we convened an expert kitchen cabinet to provide insights about the purpose and uses of the Framework, opened a crowdsourcing portal to collect feedback from the larger field about critical changes they’d like to see, and held workshops to assist in the prototyping of a new Framework. In this next phase of work, we’re hoping to hold focus groups to discuss the future of the Framework. As we near a model for a new, modernized Framework, we are hoping to have many more conversations with stakeholders about how they can implement the Framework in their own state and community to ensure that the modernized Framework is implemented with fidelity.

For resources and tools to increase stakeholder engagement in CTE, visit the Learning that Works Resource Center.

Brittany Cannady, Senior Associate Digital Media 

By admin in Uncategorized
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New Skills ready network Site Highlight Blog: Nashville Career Advising Framework

Thursday, September 30th, 2021

In 2020, JPMorgan Chase & Co. launched the New Skills ready network across six domestic sites to improve student completion of high-quality career pathways with a focus on collaboration and equity. As a national partner in the New Skills ready network, Advance CTE strives to elevate the role of state capacity and resources in advancing project priorities and gain a unique perspective on promising practices to strengthen state-local partnerships across the country.

This blog series highlights innovative tools and initiatives produced across the six sites that advance the initiative’s four key priorities and serve as a guide for state leaders in their work to create cohesive, flexible and responsive career pathways.

For this post, Senior Policy Associate Jeran Culina interviewed two leaders from the Scarlett Family Foundation, Consultant Jenny Mills McFerron, and COO Tom Parrish to learn more about the career advising framework in development for four Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) high schools with the goal to scale it to all MNPS-zoned high schools in future years. 

Purpose and Components 

Too few learners in Nashville have access to consistent advising experiences across secondary, postsecondary and community-based levels. When systems fail to provide students with equitable and high-quality career advising, they make it challenging for students to skillfully navigate a path to career and college success. Additionally, education leaders lack access to fully integrated data to track and evaluate learner outcomes. 

With this in mind, Nashville’s New Skills ready network team is creating a career advising framework that seeks to provide a seamless and consistent career advising experience across K-12, postsecondary, and community offerings through shared language and practices as well as intentional spaces for counselors and other advising professional to share best practices as the framework is implemented. 

At the same time, Nashville is pursuing an initiative to place college and career counselors at secondary and postsecondary institutions, with equity being a leading factor in the pilot schools’ selection. Four college and career advisors have been placed at the four high schools participating in the New Skills ready network grant to advance high-quality advising with the intention of eventually scaling these efforts to all Metro Nashville public school high schools. These positions will support the existing advising staff and actively share their experience with site partners to inform the career advising framework. 

Unique Features 

Nashville’s approach to this work is unique in several respects: 

Vision for Success

The Scarlett Family Foundation strives to facilitate the development of a framework across the K-12, postsecondary, and community systems that would support each Nashville learner’s ability to successfully access high-wage, high-demand jobs. 

For the framework itself, McFerron strives for this model to create consistent and systemic advising transition points for each learner from middle school, high school and postsecondary stages, provide adequate support for learners to smoothly navigate these transition points, and ultimately improve student outcomes. She also elevated the importance of involving more stakeholders in career advising support, including teachers and administrators, to provide much-needed capacity for advising.  

“We want to see continuous improvement over the very long term and have that success sustained and built upon over time, and helping students successfully navigate [key education] transition points is critical to that.” – Jenny Mills McFerron, Scarlett Family Foundation 

Next Steps and NSrn Impact 

The next phase will focus on collecting input from a variety of stakeholders, including learners and their families. Three affinity groups consisting of K-12, postsecondary, and community organization leaders will provide during the formulation and execution of the framework as a draft is written over the next six months.

Parrish praised the New Skills ready network’s focus on long-term, sustained change as a key benefit of the site’s involvement that he hopes will reverse the recent cycle of short bursts of progress that are not realized for each learner. 

“I think doing this grant over five years with its intentional focus, you are forced to come back to talk about what’s working and what is not working, and over time you spread and institutionalize some of these practices, tweak them as needed, and ultimately provide the evidence that this model is working even as other initiatives and people come and go.” – Tom Parrish

For more information about the early accomplishments of Nashville and the five other sites that are part of the New Skills ready network, view Advance CTE’s Year One snapshots. Previous entries for this series highlighting Indianapolis’ pathways evaluation framework can be found here. 

For more resources on advancing quality and equity in career advising, visit the Learning that Works Resource Center.

Stacy Whitehouse, Senior Associate for Communications and State Engagement

By admin in Uncategorized
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New Skills ready network Site Highlight Series: Indianapolis Pathways Evaluation Framework

Wednesday, July 21st, 2021

In 2020, JPMorgan Chase & Co. launched the New Skills ready network across six domestic sites to improve student completion of high-quality career pathways with a focus on collaboration and equity. As a national partner in the New Skills ready network, Advance CTE strives to elevate the role of state capacity and resources in advancing project priorities and gain a unique perspective on promising practices to strengthen state-local partnerships across the country.

Our newest blog series will highlight innovative tools and initiatives produced across the six sites that advance the initiative’s four key priorities and serve as a guide for state leaders in their work to create cohesive, flexible and responsive career pathways. 

For this post, Policy Associate Dan Hinderliter interviewed Jennifer O’Shea, Postsecondary Readiness Officer for Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) to learn more about their career pathway evaluation framework used to measure the quality of their 42 pathway programs. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Purpose 

O’Shea shared that developing a pathway quality framework rubric had several purposes: 

Ultimately, the project team is aiming for all IPS students to be “future-ready” graduates with a significant portion completing and earning credit for early postsecondary credit through CTE, Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, and Early College programs. 

Framework Composition 

The framework was created by a consulting firm using the foundations of the Association of Career and Technical Education’s (ACTE) Quality CTE Program of Study Framework and Naviance’s college, career and life readiness framework to create program quality criteria.  

Both qualitative and quantitative feedback was incorporated into this framework. In addition to considering existing CTE programs of study requirements, feedback regarding program quality was collected from families, school counselors, administrators, instructors and industry partners. In addition to the rubric, evaluators will also examine enrollment and completion data disaggregated by race to identify enrollment disparities as a quality indicator. 

Framework Use 

After the evaluation was completed for all 42 pathways, each pathway component each was coded red, yellow or green. The coding was then used to decide to sunset, merge or enhance each pathway. Five pathways had a substantial number of green components and identified as already achieving substantial alignment with the quality criteria.

Five pathways were chosen as an initial focus group for enhancement as part of Indianapolis’ New Skills ready network priorities in consultation with local two and four year institutions that will partner with IPS to create more seamless postsecondary transitions and early postsecondary opportunities. The five career pathways chosen were Business Administration, Construction Trades, Digital Manufacturing, Engineering, and IT Tech Support & Services.

Benefits of New Skills ready network Partnership 

While the district’s work to evaluate and improve pathway program quality began prior to joining the New Skills ready network, O’Shea shared that participating in the initiative has made the process more impactful and collaborative. She cited the initiative’s focus on collaboration as a means to utilize lessons learned from other sites as well as create a more comprehensive framework based on input from K-12, postsecondary, industry and workforce leaders rather than operating in a silo. The initiative’s funding also allowed for long-term investments to evaluate and maintain program quality through the addition of a data analyst, employer engagement manager, and a new college and career exploration course for middle grades.  

For more information about the early accomplishments of Indianapolis and the five other sites that are part of the New Skills ready network, view Advance CTE’s Year One snapshots. For more resources on strengthening career pathways, visit the Learning that Works Resource Center. 

 

By Stacy Whitehouse in Uncategorized
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Getting to Know Advance CTE and Early Postsecondary Opportunities

Thursday, June 17th, 2021

The “Getting to Know” blog series will feature the work of State CTE Directors, state and federal policies, innovative programs and new initiatives from the Advance CTE staff. Learn more about each one of these topics and the unique contributions to advancing Career Technical Education (CTE) that Advance CTE’s members work on every day.

Meet Christina Koch! Christina serves in the role of Policy Associate for Advance CTE. Christina works on projects related to state policy, including the New Skills ready network, initiatives related to Without Limits: A Shared Vision for the Future of Career Technical Education (CTE Without Limits) and supports Advance CTE’s equity initiatives, which currently includes the CTE Learner Voice Shared Solutions Workgroup.

Q: This month, we are sharing resources and best practices for states engaging in Early Postsecondary Opportunities (EPSOs) for learners. How do you define EPSOs? 

A: EPSOs include dual enrollment, dual credit, concurrent enrollment and other related opportunities. I would define them as opportunities designed to give each learner a head start on college courses while still in high school to make postsecondary credential and degree attainment easier and more affordable.

Q: How does the shared vision for CTE call for states to create opportunities for each learner to have access to equitable EPSOs?

A: Many aspects of CTE Without Limits focus on removing barriers for learners to reach success in the career of their choice. For example, Principle 2: Each learner feels welcome in, is supported by and has the means to succeed in the career preparation ecosystem, calls for all learners to have equitable access to opportunities so that they can be successful in their career pathways. Increasing equitable access to EPSOs could include making postsecondary credit free to learners and removing grade point average requirements. On the local level, it also means doing targeted outreach to learners from special populations to ensure they are made aware of these opportunities and understand the potential benefits of getting a head start on college courses.

Principle 4 of CTE Without Limits: Each learner’s skills are counted, valued and portable also touches on an important part of ideal ESPOs, in that the credit earned by learners is portable and counted toward their chosen career pathway. It is important that states ensure there are EPSOs available for learners within every career pathway and that credit is easily transferable among public postsecondary institutions. 

Q: How are sites that make up the New Skills ready network leading in providing EPSOs? 

A: Ensuring that EPSOs are available within every career pathway is definitely a topic of interest among the New Skills ready network sites and some already have really strong initiatives in their states. For example, Nashville, Tennessee is one of the sites in the New Skills ready network and has been expanding their EPSO program for nearly a decade. The state identified EPSOs as one of the most significant ways in which high schools across the state could help prepare learners for postsecondary success and began developing a portfolio of EPSOs. As part of the portfolio approach, all high schools must offer two or more types of EPSOs to ensure that the opportunities are accessible to all high school learners. 

Q: Are learners interested in EPSOs? How can states communicate the benefits of EPSOs to increase learner interest? 

A: Recent communications research revealed that more than 80 percent of families involved in CTE were satisfied with opportunities to earn college credit and take advanced classes compared to 60 percent or less of families not involved in CTE. 

Learners are interested in EPSOs but the challenge is that many do not know that these opportunities are available to them or how to navigate the process of earning postsecondary credit that would be useful to them in their education and career pathway. 

New tools and messaging resources are available to help states and local CTE leaders communicate the benefits of EPSOs for secondary learners and recruit families.

 

Brittany Cannady, Senior Associate Digital Media 

By admin in Advance CTE Resources, CTE Without Limits, Publications, Research, Resources
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New Skills ready network Year 1 Reports Highlight Early Innovations and State Support to Advance Quality and Equity in Career Pathways

Tuesday, June 15th, 2021

Today, Advance CTE and Education Strategy Group (ESG) released an annual report and site snapshots for the first year of the New Skills ready network initiative.  The five-year initiative, part of JPMorgan Chase and Co.’s $350 million global New Skills at Work program and $30 billion commitment to advance racial equity, aims to improve student completion of high-quality, equitable career pathways to gain skills needed for the future of work, particularly among learners of color and other historically marginalized learners. 

The New Skills ready network focuses on six domestic sites as illustrated in the graphic below. As a partner in this initiative, Advance CTE strives to elevate the role of state capacity and resources in advancing project priorities and gain a unique perspective on promising practices to strengthen state-local partnerships across the country. 

One key step highlighted across the snapshots is each site’s approach to connecting systems and creating a common vision and definitions. Boston, Massachusetts, centered on a shared definition of cultural wealth as a framework to discuss equitable practices in career pathway design. Denver, Colorado created the Pathways Data Framework, a shared process for defining, collecting and analyzing data across partners to fully measure progress in achieving equitable career pathways. 

Dallas, Texas, is leveraging their Dallas Thrives initiative to draw on capacity from across their region to work towards a common vision. As an early step, Nashville, Tennessee’s leadership team agreed upon common definitions of systemic racism, implicit bias, educational equity and more and has provided racial equity training to over 300 stakeholders to ground their work in a foundational understanding in what racial equity really means in their community and institutions. 

The report and snapshots also explore how sites are utilizing state leadership, capacity, and existing initiatives to guide the focus of their first year and to map future work. For example, several schools in Indianapolis, Indiana will serve as pilots for the state’s Next Level Program of Study initiative, which aims to improve quality and consistency of CTE program instruction as part of Indiana’s Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act (Perkins V) implementation strategy. 

Columbus, Ohio will leverage statewide articulation and transfer agreements as well pre-existing statewide programs to advance equity and access to postsecondary opportunities in career pathways, including the College Credit Plus program, Career-Technical Assurance Guides, the Choose Ohio First scholarship program. The Ohio Department of Higher Education has also established an internal project team to provide state support to the larger cross-sector project team. Nashville, Tennessee’s local efforts are tapping into the state’s Tennessee Pathways’ Designation Process 

Visit Advance CTE’s New Skills ready network series page to read the full annual report and a snapshot of each site’s innovative partnerships and early accomplishments across the four project priorities. Our New Skills ready network collection page provides additional resources for strengthening career pathways.  For more information about the New Skills ready network initiative, read the Getting to Know interview with Senior Policy Associate Jeran Culina. 

By Stacy Whitehouse in Uncategorized
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New Resource Strives to Strengthen Collaborative Partnerships Between State and Local Partners

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2021

Intentional and early collaboration between state and local leaders is vital to ensuring success in high-quality career pathways for all learners. Strengthening partnerships between local entities and state agencies helps each partner achieve its mission and amplify its reach. 

Given the state’s vital role in creating aligned systems, leaders in education, workforce and public policy must commit to breaking down silos and building up trusting, collaborative relationships. This means that leaders at both the state and local level must work together to create shared visions and mindsets and align their work to better support all learners. 

Strengthening state and local partnerships is a critical strategy to advance mutual interests that benefit learners and the entire career pathways system as a whole.  Advance CTE’s latest publication, Strengthening Career Pathways through the Power of State and Local Partnerships, suggests five strategies states can take to build, refine and sustain partnerships across state and local parties — with a specific focus on the challenges that exist in beginning and sustaining those partnerships. Each section of the report describes what the strategy looks like in practice and provides state and local examples of promising practices across the country.

Those strategies include:

Leveraging federal and state funds to fuel local innovation, using state criteria as guidelines for quality. 

For example, Tennessee leveraged Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act (Perkins V) reserve funds and provided technical assistance to help Wilson County build and scale a special program for biotechnology that would meet the state’s criteria for approval. After initially approving the program in 2018 as a “special program of study,” the Tennessee Department of Education worked to scale the biotechnology program into the now statewide BioSTEM program of study in the 2019-2020 school year.

Providing meaningful technical assistance to help local administrators define roles and establish shared definitions, goals and strategies.

For example, the Nebraska Department of Education’s reVISION process lays the foundation for strong state and local partnerships through direct technical assistance and support for local education agencies through the use of a state-level reVISION coordinator to collaborate with on the work.

Sharing knowledge, ideas and best practices by extending expertise and leveraging convening power. 

This approach helps local leaders identify proven strategies to overcome challenging barriers. For example, the Colorado Community College System recognized the importance of flexibility, relationship development and collaboration when working on the strategic planning process for Perkins V. This included sharing information on the CTE visioning and strategic planning process, collecting feedback on how to improve the state CTE system as a component of Colorado’s talent strategy, and establishing mutually beneficial relationships with stakeholders for feedback.

Strong state and local partnerships are a key component of any high-quality Career Technical Education (CTE) program. As state leaders begin implementing their Perkins V plans, they have a responsibility to build partnerships with local leaders across their state. States can do this by building trusting and collaborative relationships with local leaders and leveraging economies of scale to provide innovation funding, offer technical assistance and share best practices. This report, and the strategies included, is one tool designed to support state leaders in this endeavor. 

Visit Advance CTE’s Learning that Works Resource Center for more resources on systems alignment and access and equity to CTE. Visit the New Skills ready network series page to read all three policy briefs with promising practices to strengthen career pathways. 

 

By Stacy Whitehouse in Uncategorized
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Getting to Know: Advance CTE’s work to build better career pathways

Thursday, May 20th, 2021

The “Getting to Know” blog series will feature the work of State CTE Directors, state and federal policies, innovative programs and new initiatives from the Advance CTE staff. Learn more about each one of these topics and the unique contributions to advancing Career Technical Education (CTE) that Advance CTE’s members work on every day.

Meet Jeran Culina! Jeran serves in the role of Senior Policy Associate for Advance CTE, supporting state policy and technical assistance work. Jeran’s work has a focus on supporting states and communities to create, share, use and manage information about national efforts to expand high-quality and equitable career pathways. She also supports the development of policy tools and resources leveraged by state and local leaders, national partners and other key stakeholders to help ensure each learner has access to supports, resources and skills needed to be successful in the careers of their choice. 

Q: What is the New Skills ready network initiative and how does it inform your work at Advance CTE? 

A: New Skills ready network is a five-year initiative, part of JPMorgan Chase’s $350 million global New Skills at Work program, which aims to improve student completion of high-quality career pathways. The six New Skills ready network sites are: Boston, Massachusetts; Columbus, Ohio; Dallas, Texas; Denver, Colorado; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Nashville, Tennessee. 

A key feature of the New Skills ready network is the makeup of the leadership teams. Each site’s team brings together a cross-sector group of partners representing local school systems, two-year and four-year postsecondary institutions, intermediary organizations, industry, and state and workforce development agencies. These unique state-and-local, cross-sector leadership teams were developed to align systems; incubate innovative solutions; and ultimately, scale equitable career pathways for all learners. This piece of the New Skills ready network has been significant in informing the rest of my state policy work. It showcases the strengths and challenges that local and state partnerships bring to the table, but it also offers best practices from six local sites to better inform state policy work around engaging stakeholders, bridging secondary and postsecondary, aligning pathways, closing equity gaps, and many other areas that haven’t even been explored yet.   

Q: How would the New Skills ready network define high-quality career pathways?

A: High-quality career pathways are ones that successfully prepare learners for a variety of educational opportunities while supporting effective and meaningful collaboration between secondary schools, postsecondary institutions, and employers to provide students with experience in, and understanding of, all aspects of an industry, and ensure equal access to all learners. Within the New Skills ready network, all sites are developing or expanding their definition of what high-quality career pathways means to them. For example, the Indianapolis, IN team has aligned their definition of high-quality career pathways to match the state’s new next level programs of study (NLPS) model. The shift to NLPS provides learners with:

  1. An increase in the consistency of CTE course offerings to ensure all CTE students have the same opportunity to learn essential skills regardless of the location they are taking a course;
  2. Intentionality by directly aligning secondary courses to postsecondary competencies, providing students who have discovered their passion the opportunity to earn more postsecondary credentials and make progress towards postsecondary degrees while in high school; and
  3. Quality programs because new course standards will increase the rigor in many CTE courses and provide greater benefits to students.

Q: How can state CTE leaders leverage the work coming out of the New Skills ready network to ensure labor market information (LMI) is used to define high-skill, high-wage and in-demand career pathways?

A: States should follow the recommendations laid out in the recently released Advance CTE research brief on aligning labor market data which suggests:

  1. Continuing to make data-informed decisions about which career pathways to build and support and which ones to transform or phase out. In the face of major economic upheaval, while responding to real-time changes may be tempting, focusing on the longer-term trends and consulting multiple data sources and stakeholders are critical.
  2. Address equity within any LMI tools, supports and decisions. As states and institutions invest in their labor market systems and platforms, presenting the data with an equity lens is critical to better inform investments and arm learners with actionable information
  3. Take the opportunity to streamline existing labor market data to make it more usable and accessible for policymakers, local partners, instructors and learners themselves.
  4. Build capacity within the system to improve labor market data literacy. With the complexities of labor market data and increased frequency of the data being reviewed at the state, region and community levels, leaders at all levels — including counselors and advisers — need a better understanding of what they are looking at and how they should interpret the data to best support learners. 

Q: What can we expect next from the New Skills ready network?

A: The New Skills ready network has previously released three research briefs focused on work-based learning, aligning career pathways to labor market data and state strategies for scaling early postsecondary opportunities (EPSOs) in career pathways. In the next month, expect one additional research brief on strengthening state and local partnerships. In addition to the policy briefs, the New Skills ready network team will be releasing an annual report on the lessons learned during the first year of the grant as well as snapshots of each site and the work they have accomplished. As the work progresses, we will have innovations, best practices and lessons learned from each site to share that can be adopted and scaled across the nation.   

Brittany Cannady, Senior Associate Digital Media 

By admin in Resources, Uncategorized
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Aligning Career Pathways using Labor Market Information

Tuesday, May 4th, 2021

A career pathway is a progressive sequence of at least three courses that is aligned to high-skill, high-wage, in-demand occupations; spans secondary and postsecondary; reinforces academic learning with related work-based learning experiences; and embeds opportunities for students to earn both related postsecondary credit in a degree-granting program and industry-recognized credentials. 

An important factor in ensuring the alignment of high-quality career pathways is the use of labor market information (LMI). Due to the pandemic, we have witnessed a shift in many industries, which will undoubtedly affect the long-term outlook of the future of work. Now more than ever, it is imperative for state and local Career Technical Education (CTE) leaders to make data-driven decisions, consulting with industry partners to ensure each learner navigating through the career preparation ecosystem can succeed. 

Many states have shared their best practices for gathering and using LMI to build better pathways statewide in these times of uncertainty. 

In Indianapolis, Indiana, EmployIndy (a local workforce intermediary) provides labor market studies and reports on key sectors to increase access to and success in career pathways for local county residents, while supporting local employers’ talent needs. Based on stakeholder feedback to make the labor market data actionable, EmployIndy invested in its internal capacity to collect LMI and conduct its own research to better communicate what the LMI says with regards to the changes in the jobs themselves and the competencies demanded within those jobs. The goal is that both education and industry partners are better prepared to leverage the data to support learners, career pathways development, hiring and training.

Kentucky has partnered with multiple state agencies including the Kentucky Center for Statistics, or KYSTATS, to develop the state’s longitudinal data system. Through this ongoing effort, Kentucky was able to be responsive to the pandemic and future of work by using its one-stop shop for data sources and processes in place to determine if changes are needed to career pathways and what those changes should be. State leaders are now consulting the labor market data on a monthly basis as shifts in industries continue and will stay the course of making data-driven decisions on supporting and funding only those career pathways identified as aligned to good careers.

South Carolina has been reviewing its LMI and enrollment data with an intentional focus on ensuring equitable outcomes for each learner. As a result of data analysis, the state has scaled its credential offerings to build better pathways.

State and local CTE leaders must also remain committed to cross-system collaboration and engaging the industry sector to enhance LMI. 

The South Carolina Office of Career and Technical Education was flexible and nimble to the pandemic and decided to re-engage the state’s 12 regions to see if the pandemic was necessitating any revisions to the previously completed Comprehensive Local Needs Assessments (CLNAs). South Carolina hired a new business and industry liaison to help facilitate those discussions. A number of regions decided on revamping their career pathways and supports based on updated data and input from their industry and workforce partners.

Kentucky has multiple venues for incorporating the knowledge and expertise of industry partners into decisionmaking on career pathways. The Kentucky Workforce Innovation Board provides regular input and updates and the state established Business and Education Alignment Teams meet annually. These teams span across 11 industry areas. 

Today, Advance CTE released Practical Guidance for Aligning Career Pathways to Labor Market Data in the Time of COVID-19, the first in a series to build better pathways, that offers more promising practices for designing strong state and local practices for enhancing the career preparation ecosystem by leveraging LMI to align programs to high-skill, high-wage and in-demand occupations. View the brief here in the Learning that Works Resource Center. 

This resource is part of Advance CTE’s dedicated efforts to build high-quality, equitable career pathways through the New Skills ready network in partnership with JP Morgan Chase and Education Strategy Group.

Kate Kreamer, Deputy Executive Director 

By admin in Advance CTE Resources, COVID-19 and CTE, Publications
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This Week in CTE

Friday, October 23rd, 2020

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

CAREERS IN CONSTRUCTION MONTH

Build Your Future is hosting a construction video contest, I BUILT THIS, and giving away more than $20,000 in prizes. Learn more and submit a video here.

During Careers in Construction month, utilize these classroom resources to engage with students about the opportunities in the construction industry.

TWEET OF THE THE WEEK

Essex North Shore Agricultural & Technical School in Massachusetts has relied on their mobile classroom to ensure learners across the district have access to hands-on learning and career training. 

LEGISLATIVE UPDATE OF THE WEEK

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced this week that the Federal Work Study (FWS) Experimental Sites will receive additional funding. This initiative seeks to increase earn-and-learn opportunities by removing barriers to off-campus jobs, allowing increased work hours and allowing institutions to pay students for work-based learning. The increased funds will be used for FWS salaries and to develop Job Location and Development (JLD) programs. Further information can be found here.   

INITIATIVE OF THE WEEK

Advance CTE is honored and excited to co-lead the New Skills ready network! 

RESOURCE OF THE WEEK

Youth apprenticeship programs can give students access to valuable work-based learning experiences that provide insights into how their interest can connect to education and the workforce. Although these programs are often beneficial for participants, there is little data to show the programmatic landscape and impact.

The Role of Data and Accountability in Growing Youth Apprenticeship Programs highlights current practices from states who are collecting data on youth apprenticeship programs, and what steps have been taken to collect high quality enrollment and outcomes data. 

View The Role of Data and Accountability in Growing Youth Apprenticeship Programs in our Learning that Works Resource Center.

Brittany Cannady, Digital Media Associate

By admin in Advance CTE Resources, Legislation, Publications, Resources
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Announcing the New Skills ready network

Tuesday, October 20th, 2020

Today, JPMorgan Chase announced the full cohort of U.S. based sites receiving career readiness investments as part of the company’s $75 million New Skills at Work initiative. This effort is designed to better prepare young people, and particular Black and Latinx learners, for the future of work and lifelong success.

The U.S. sites – which comprise the New Skills ready network – are Boston|Massachusetts, Columbus|Ohio, Dallas|Texas, Denver|Colorado, Indianapolis|Indiana and Nashville|Tennessee. They will be joined by four international sites that will be announced in the coming months that will round out the global investment.

What makes these five-year, $7 million investments so unique is that each site has brought together a cross-sector partnership of local K-12 school systems, two- and four-year institutions of higher education, employers, and state agencies to develop and scale equitable, high-quality career pathways. Advance CTE is excited to be working with these state and local leaders over the next five years, in partnership with Education Strategy Group, to help them strengthen their systems, policies and practices to provide greater opportunities for each and every learner.

The six sites will have regular and ongoing opportunities to learn from each other, build shared solutions to common challenges, and provide lessons learned that can benefit pathways and learners in communities across the country. Work has been underway over the past six months, and all sites stand ready to begin implementing their year one action plans to attend to equity gaps, improve data capacity and sharing, strengthen public-private partnerships and build key supports for learners, among other foundational priorities.

“Advance CTE is honored and excited to continue our relationship with JPMorgan Chase & Co. as a co-lead of the New Skills ready network. Career Technical Education is more important than ever in today’s economy, striving to provide each learner with equitable access to the knowledge and real-world skills that prepare them for careers in essential industries. I am confident that this important work, across the six states and sites, will create transformative career pathways and inspire innovative policy that will ensure more learners can use their passion and talents throughout their education, resulting in a lifetime of career success. We look forward to continuing this work in partnership with Education Strategy Group and JPMorgan Chase & Co.” said Kimberly Green, Executive Director, Advance CTE.

Read JPMorgan Chase’s full press release and Education Strategy Group’s blog to learn more about the initiative and progress to date.

Kate Kreamer, Deputy Executive Director

By Kate Blosveren Kreamer in Advance CTE Announcements, News
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