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Posts Tagged ‘pathways’

Learning From New Skills for Youth to Move Career Pathways Forward

Tuesday, April 2nd, 2024

Advance CTE recently released Moving Career Pathways Forward: Learning From the New Skills for Youth Initiative, with support from JPMorgan Chase and in partnership with Education Strategy Group. The report shares the successes and challenges of six states as they sustained career pathways development after the conclusion of a major philanthropic investment and the coronavirus pandemic. The report also features recommendations from state leaders to move career pathways development forward. In this blog, Senior Research Associate Dr. Laura Maldonado provides highlights of lasting legacies and recommendations from the report. 

Overview

While receiving a major grant from a funder to support career pathways development is exciting, it is important to develop sustainable systems and processes while leveraging the funding to continue the work beyond the conclusion of the grant. New Skills for Youth (NSFY) was one of the earliest and most impactful philanthropy investments in career pathways and career readiness in recent history. Launched in 2016, and supported by JPMorgan Chase, NSFY was a $75 million, 5-year initiative to strengthen and expand high-quality career pathways for youth.1 Advance CTE, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and Education Strategy Group served as the national partners in NSFY to transform career readiness education in 10 states across the United States. Ultimately, the grant concluded and states had to determine the transition of resources and supports to provide continuity of services.

As states and communities continue to prioritize career pathways policies and programs, it is useful to review insight from NSFY states around scale and sustainability given what they accomplished and what their systems look like today. Advance CTE’s vision for the future of Career Technical Education (CTE) calls on states to ensure each learner engages in a cohesive, flexible, and responsive career preparation ecosystem.2 Thinking upfront about the management of a grant end date helps keep learners at the forefront of high-quality career pathways. 

Background

To help address sustainability concerns, Advance CTE identified state leaders from six NSFY states who were willing to share how they sustained growth and progress of career pathways nearly 4 years after the end of the initiative. Moving Career Pathways Forward: Learning From the New Skills for Youth Initiative helps current leaders build on lessons learned and recommendations from past leaders. 

Lasting Legacies From the NSFY States

One feature of the report is the highlight of lasting legacies, or systems and structures started during NSFY that are still in existence today. 

Kentucky has improved training and support for CTE teachers, collaborates more with industry partners, and has seen changed attitudes regarding regional approaches.

NSFY enabled the Louisiana Department of Education to pursue cutting-edge entrepreneurial initiatives, such as wraparound supports, virtual work-based learning, and other activities that would have taken a long time to be approved for state funding. 

Massachusetts has a comprehensive approach to pathways, a common language, and additional capacity support at the district level. 

Cohesiveness of college and career readiness efforts in state programming and a strengthened commitment to equity continues to be a statewide focus in Ohio. 

Engaging with employers, using data to address equity gaps, and elevating career education to learners, families and key partners were key efforts sustained in Rhode Island. 

And finally, efforts launched in NSFY that have been sustained in Wisconsin include Regional Career Pathways and assessment practices for regional pathway work. 

Recommendations From the NSFY States

Another feature of the report is recommendations and action steps to sustain career pathways across multiple partner groups. These recommendations come from the learned experiences of state leaders and provide additional examples from states. 

State Agencies and Intermediaries

 

Local Leaders

Learners

Advance CTE and Education Strategy Group are currently helping six states and local sites think through the sustainability and scaling of career pathways systems after the conclusion of JPMorgan Chase’s current major career pathways initiative—New Skills ready network.5 The New Skills ready network sites are working to improve learner completion of high-quality career pathways as part of a 5-year initiative, which will end in 2025. 

Advance CTE, Education Strategy Group, ExcelinEd, JFF, and New America are also working with 11 states over two cohorts in another initiative focused on scale and sustainability—Launch: Equitable & Accelerated Pathways for All.6 Within Launch, sites are building sustainability plans to address long-standing barriers and achieve scale in their career pathways efforts. 

Starting or sustaining statewide initiatives with multiple agencies and partners is a major undertaking. The Moving Career Pathways Forward: Learning From the New Skills for Youth Initiative report helps state leaders use lessons learned from NSFY to replicate promising practices in their state for high-quality career pathways.

Additional Resources

Please visit Advance CTE’s Learning that Works Resource Center for additional resources about career pathways. 

Dr. Laura Maldonado, Senior Research Associate

By Jodi Langellotti in Advance CTE Resources, Publications
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Welcome Judd Pittman as the New State Director of Career Technical Education for Pennsylvania!

Wednesday, December 13th, 2023

Advance CTE joins the Pennsylvania Department of Education in welcoming Judd Pittman as the new Director of the Bureau of Career and Technical Education. 

Before serving as the State Career Technical Education (CTE) Director, Judd worked in forestry as an ecologist conducting climate science research in Pennsylvania and in Canada.

As the son and grandson of carpenters, Judd understands the value of CTE programs. “CTE has the gift of being able to answer the question of every student’s ‘why’,” he says.

Judd taught middle and high school science for eight years at Harrisburg City School District and served on the district’s school board for eight years. He transitioned out of the classroom for a job with the Pennsylvania Training and Technical Assistance Network, an organization that provides professional learning for educators. This was followed by spending six years on assignment as special advisor to Secretary of Education Pedro Rivera for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education. Finally, Judd spent nearly two years at Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology helping to design clear career pathways for students of all ages to enter the workforce.  

As he looks at the year ahead, Judd shared that he wants to prioritize building up Pennsylvania’s certification pathways; he is eager to establish apprenticeships and residency models within these pathways that attract and retain new educational professionals into CTE classrooms. To leverage the state’s industry trends, Judd is working on finding ways to create credentialed pathways into the clean energy economy as the state prepares for two hydrogen hubs and grows its energy infrastructure.

“I said I would be honored to come back to the Pennsylvania Department of Education for two jobs, and this job, state CTE director, is one of them. My lived experiences have set me up for this role in a way that will provide a fresh perspective. I’m looking forward to seeing what sort of ‘positive damage’ we can do for learners of all ages by modernizing and aligning state workforce and education systems. This work is critical for Pennsylvania to maintain a vibrant economy, and we need to make things less burdensome for administrators, educators, CTE centers, students and our community as a whole, all to ensure Pennsylvania is the first choice of places to raise a family,” Judd says.

Please join us in welcoming Judd Pittman to Advance CTE!

By Layla Alagic in Advance CTE State Director
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New Skills ready network Highlight Blog: Career Connected Advising in the Middle Grades

Wednesday, November 22nd, 2023

The New Skills ready network (NSrn) is part of JPMorgan Chase’s substantial portfolio in support of an inclusive economy and workforce. This five-year commitment is part of the New Skills at Work initiative to prepare people for the future of work and their $30 billion commitment to advance racial equity. With a dedication to building equitable career pathways, the New Skills ready network connects six sites —  Boston, Massachusetts; Columbus, Ohio; Dallas, Texas; Denver, Colorado; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Nashville, Tennessee — with local partners with the intentionality necessary to build a strong workforce ecosystem for all learners.

For this highlight blog, Advance CTE Senior Policy Associate Haley Wing met with Erin Jacques, MyCAP District Coordinator, and Marsha Innis-Mitchell, Executive Director of Postsecondary Initiatives for Boston Public Schools to discuss career-connected advising in middle grades. Erin and Marsha are both partners of the New Skills ready network Boston, Massachusetts, project team.  

The Boston, Massachusetts project team for the New Skills ready network believes in a city where all young people can engage in high-quality career learning that supports exploration, informed decision-making and preparation for the future. The team aims to dramatically increase the number of Black, Latinx, special education, and English Learner students who participate in and persist through engaging, relevant, and equitable career pathways and are prepared to enter meaningful careers. 

 



 

Overview

Over the past three years, the Boston, Massachusetts, project team has been transforming systems to drive equitable education and career outcomes for all learners. The project team has achieved significant milestones in the development of high-quality, equitable career pathways including addressing structural and institutional barriers to equitable career pathways and creating a holistic and seamless advising system to support learners. In year three of the New Skills ready network initiative, the project team prioritized expanding access to coordinated, holistic and equitable college and career advising. The 2022-2023 school year was the first of college and career-connected advising in the middle-grades and project team members from Boston Public Schools shared how they leveraged cross-department collaboration, offered supports to identified priority schools for the rollout and lessons learned throughout the process.

Leveraging Cross-Department Collaboration to Support Expanded Access to Career-Connected Advising 

In expanding access to college and career advising, Boston Public School members of the initiative’s project team strengthened their implementation of the My Career and Academic Plan (MyCAP). MyCAP is a learner-centered, multi-year planning tool designed to provide learners with ongoing opportunities to plan for their academic, personal, social and career success. Additionally, because MyCAP is student-centered, there is a large focus on anti-bias and equity to inform, advise and mentor learners. This includes expanding learners’ thinking about what is possible and positioning them to move forward in ways they envision future success. 

Implementing MyCAP with fidelity across Boston Public Schools requires sustainable and deepened staff capacity at the district’s central office as well as at the school level. Marsha and Erin both support cultivating and maintaining strategic partnerships across the district to align with MyCAP priorities. The collaboration and partnerships during this first year of expanded access to middle-grade learners included leveraging family liaisons who support informing learners and families of opportunities within Boston Public Schools and activating counselor teams that support caseloads of learners in the middle grades. The project team also expanded its reach to include community partnerships that operate in the college and career areas to better serve middle-grade learners. The advantage of bringing these partnerships into the fold allowed greater support for learners with exposure to skills and experiences that support college and career readiness and success (see image). 

To actualize expanded access to MyCAP, the project team identified a cohort of schools with grade configurations in the middle grades (grades 6,7 and 8). The team then worked across departments within the school district to increase the capacity to deliver training, guidance and resources to the identified priority schools. Training for school-level staff includes step-by-step instruction on using the tool and leveraging the accompanying resources to draw connections between learners’ interests and college and career opportunities.

To support schools in their efforts, the district staff recommends schools leverage formalized MyCAP plans that articulate how schools will accomplish MyCAP implementation and the set of experiences they will provide for learners over the course of the school year. Due to the intentionality of the district leadership, plans include support systems like additional counselors pushing in, leveraging collaboration with partners and additional guidance from the district team to support the work.

Impact of Expanded Access to MyCAP

As a result of the Boston, Massachusetts project team expanding access to high-quality college and career advising through MyCAP, 45% of 7th-grade learners and 42% of 8th-grade learners in the identified priority schools have completed at least one MyCAP task in the first year of expansion. Additionally, the number of district and school-level staff that are being trained on MyCAP continues to increase; in the first year 150 staff were trained and over 200 individuals have been trained as of October 2023. The group of 200 includes staff representing all of the district’s secondary schools and a dozen of lower-elementary schools. 

The district team and school-level staff are also making greater connections with MyCAP to other bodies of work such as transition planning and special education efforts. MyCAP supports the development and implementation of efforts to support learners’ postsecondary readiness and transitions; these components are also in alignment with Individualized Education Plans (IEPs). Transitional planning is integral to IEPs and MyCAP is transition planning for learners.

Lessons Learned from Launching Expanded Access to MyCAP

Additional capacity building: A key component of the expansion of MyCAP includes additional capacity building. The project team explicitly highlighted that this work is not possible without a district-level staff member dedicated to serving and supporting school-level staff to implement MyCAP. Erin’s role allows the capacity to sit down with school-level staff to increase counselors’ leadership abilities and competencies. As mentioned earlier, the district provides resources to support this work, however, resources and guidance documents are only useful if there is a staff member to support walking through the planning and implementation process.

School counselor involvement is critical: At the school level, school counselors are needed to support the planning, collaboration and implementation of MyCAP. In schools where the expanded access efforts have been implemented, there is a counselor who has built their team within the school, trained their team and teachers, and informed administrators of the planning and implementation process. This is especially important considering scheduling within school buildings and ensuring that MyCAP is integrated into and across advisory blocks within schools.

Adequate training is essential to advocacy: In addition to better serving learners in their career and college planning, the project team has also noted the increased advocacy efforts of counselors within schools that are implementing expanded access to MyCAP. The project team has noticed when school-level counselors are adequately trained and supported, they take ownership of the implementation process and leverage their leadership to mobilize their peers. This can include accurately communicating the vision of MyCAP, identifying how and when it connects to other school-level staff’s work, offering support to leverage MyCAP and advocating for systems within the school that support learners’ postsecondary success. This is especially exciting to witness given there is no mandate to implement or leverage MyCAP in Boston Public Schools, and signals to the district that in the sea of competing priorities, school counselors, administrators and staff are identifying MyCAP as foundational to learners’ transitions to and through college and careers.

Replicating Expanded Access to College and Career Advising

Providing learners access to high-quality college and career advising is a critical component of supporting learners’ transitions, readiness and preparation for the workforce. Leaders who are interested in replicating the efforts of Boston Public Schools should:

Looking Ahead

As the project team looks forward, they plan to continue the momentum of expanded access to MyCAP and plan to bring in more schools with earlier grade bands like elementary schools in the district. As MyCAP training and implementation expands, the team continues to have a deep focus on equity, aligning inclusive education goals and activating MyCAP at points of transition within learners’ journey. 

To learn more about Individual Career and Academic Plans, read Implementing Individual Career and Academic Plans (ICAP) at Scale in the Learning that Works Resource Center. This brief highlights promising practices for ICAP implementation at the state and local levels in Colorado, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wisconsin and provides recommendations for further state and local work to scale ICAPs.

Haley Wing, Senior Policy Associate

Read our other New Skills ready network Highlight Blogs from 2023:

By Layla Alagic in CTE Without Limits
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ECMCF Fellow Feature: Dr. Angela Lawhorne

Monday, July 31st, 2023

In September 2022, Advance CTE and ECMC Foundation announced the second cohort of The Postsecondary State Career Technical Education (CTE) Leaders Fellowship at Advance CTE—Sponsored by ECMC Foundation. The Advance CTE — ECMCF Fellows include representation across multiple demographic categories reflecting the Fellowship’s goal of intentionally building a postsecondary leadership pipeline for underserved populations in Career Technical Education (CTE) that closes racial representation gaps and removes equity barriers to postsecondary leadership advancement. 

This month, Advance CTE sat down with veteran and ECMCF Fellow, Dr. Angela Lawhorne (VA), whose decades of experience in CTE and workforce development sparked her desire to promote more effective pathways for some of the most vulnerable learner populations. Through the Fellowship’s emphasis on developing equity minded leaders, she has been able to empower the community colleges she works with to refocus on how they are engaging and serving justice-involved learners. 

Tell me more about your journey to the Fellowship.

I’ve been working in CTE for about 10 years and in workforce development for 20 years. I was really excited to join the Fellowship because I saw an opportunity to learn more about what CTE looks like in other states and the best practices that I could replicate and bring to Virginia. I was especially eager to learn about strategies for expanding access to learners.

What skills or areas have you experienced the most growth in the program? 

Participating in the Fellowship has allowed me to grow my ability to apply a diversity, equity, and inclusion lens in my work as the Director of Career Education Programs and Workforce Partnerships. I’ve been able to build a more comprehensive understanding of the  barriers that different groups of learners face, and the importance of not just recruitment, but the continued support that they receive once they enroll to complete their programs. I know that there are steps we can take to improve outreach to learners that have been minoritized, or those that come from low income or rural communities. Through intentional support structures, we can increase awareness about career pathways, stackable credentials, and get them into a career.

I’ve learned a lot about how to provide intentional support for special populations and the different nuances of the obstacles that these groups of learners face.

Do you feel like the topics and experiences in the Fellowship have helped you advance in your current career/ at your current organization? 

Absolutely. In my current role as the  Director of Career Education Programs and Workforce Partnership, I feel like I’m exactly where I need to be to make a major impact on CTE programs, both the credit and on the workforce (credential) side. Virginia has a ‘one door effort’ which allows students, no matter where they come into the college, to access information on both workforce and academic programs. This means that we’re able to give them a more complete picture of the different certifications or licenses that they can earn on their path to completing a certificate or a degree.

I support our 23 colleges and provide guidance and resources about how to establish and expand programs. Most recently, I helped write a large infrastructure grant application, and the knowledge that I’ve gained through the Fellowship allowed me to present a thorough background on and explanation for how this project will provide specific wraparound services and supports to make our learners successful.  I know that I’m able to have an impact in my role because I can broker connections between workforce and our colleges to design high-quality curriculum and programs that connect learners with employers.

How has your experience in the fellowship helped you explore new spaces or positions in postsecondary state CTE leadership? 

The Fellowship has helped me gain a more holistic view of our population of learners and their needs. The workshop speakers were incredible, and I’ve been able to push myself beyond just the cycle of outreach and recruitment to focus more on the reasons that learners persist and complete their programs. My dissertation is on the topic of student success coaching, and I believe that this is an area where we should be doing more to ensure that learners have the help they need to be matched with program options that are best for them.

How has the Fellowship expanded your network?

I’ve made some amazing connections through the fellowship. My coach has been incredibly supportive in connecting me with a network for both my professional and personal development. She’s also provided guidance in my process for completing my real-world project for the Fellowship.  My real world project topic is on expanding higher education for justice impacted individuals in Virginia. We created a Canvas course that serves as a resource repository for the colleges to connect them with everything they need to know to launch a new program. This includes information about  Pell Expansion, contacts at the prisons or jails, and then best practices from other colleges.

We’ve also created a resource page on the website, credits2careers.org (C2C), which was launched specifically for former military who want to determine their eligibility for credit for prior learning. We’ve included a page on the site for justice-involved learners. The website allows them to go in and plug in any certifications or other education they’ve completed, and it will show the equivalent credit for prior learning programs at each of our colleges. If they were enrolled in a CTE program while incarcerated, they can use this tool to find the colleges that offer their program and continue with little disruption.

Our next steps will be to survey the 23 colleges to collect data on the training of justice involved learners and their current program offerings.

Have you discovered new opportunities for what a role in postsecondary CTE could look like/ the responsibilities of such a position?

I definitely look forward to advancing my career. I would love to expand my reach and have a larger responsibility for expanding CTE and workforce development programs across the state. We’ve established a consortium with over 100 members made up of colleges, representatives from the programs at the prisons, the Vera Institute of Justic, and the Laughing Gull Foudnation to name a few. I’ve been leading monthly, virtual community of practice meetings as well as two in person convenings per year. Our new Chancellor is excited to continue to build on the positive momentum we’ve seen with our new Canvas and C2C initiatives. He’s eager to make these a part of his mission to expand the services that our justice-involved learners receive. 

To connect with Dr. Lawhorne, contact her at [email protected] 

 

By Jodi Langellotti in Achieving Equitable and Inclusive CTE
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New Skills ready network Highlight Blog: Leveraging Learner Voice to Strengthen Career Pathways

Wednesday, July 26th, 2023

The New Skills ready network (NSrn) is part of JPMorgan Chase’s substantial portfolio in support of an inclusive economy and workforce. This five-year commitment is part of the New Skills at Work initiative to prepare people for the future of work and their $30 billion commitment to advance racial equity. With a dedication to building equitable career pathways, the New Skills ready network connects six sites —  Boston, Massachusetts; Columbus, Ohio; Dallas, Texas; Denver, Colorado; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Nashville, Tennessee — with local partners with the intentionality necessary to build a strong workforce ecosystem for all learners.

Denver, Colorado’s vision for the NSrn initiative, aims to “dramatically increase the number and diversity of students who complete selected high-quality career pathways that start in high school, continue into and through higher education, and lead to good jobs in Denver’s labor market.”

Over the past three years, the project team has achieved significant milestones in the development of high-quality, equitable career pathways including building a shared data framework, aligning work-based learning opportunities within high-quality career pathways and enhancing the learner experience when transitioning from secondary to postsecondary institutions. Under the leadership of the site lead, The Attainment Network, the project team leverages strategic cross-sector partnerships while centering equity and learner voice to enhance and improve their career pathways work. 

A critical component of the Denver, Colorado, site work includes centering and leveraging the voices of learners to understand their experiences, barriers and opportunities and shaping career pathways aligned with their needs.In April 2023, The Attainment Network held their second annual Learner Voice Symposium which brought together an audience of educators, employers and policymakers to hear directly from Colorado learners what they seek in career-connected pathways and how they define success.

Haley Wing, Senior Policy Associate, Advance CTE, interviewed Rana Tarkenton, Chief Operating Officer, The Attainment Network to discuss the importance of leveraging learner voice in career pathways and how others might replicate their efforts to meaningfully engage learners in the design and implementation of career pathways.

Overview of the Learner Voice Symposium Event

The purpose of the Learner Voice Symposium is to elevate highlights from learners’ diverse perspectives and backgrounds and provide actionable insights to improve and expand pathways for all learners. The Symposium serves as a reminder to partners of the reason why they engage in this work and elevates the voices of learners who are not always invited to the table when developing and implementing career pathways. Learners, who are not simply the receivers of the work of career pathways, but rather the experts in their experiences, provide critical feedback to leaders. 

The Symposium fills a gap in the career preparation ecosystem in Colorado; leaders developing career-connected pathways are continuously striving to improve the system and learners are disconnected from the leaders who need to hear their voices most. The Attainment Network identified this gap and provides career pathway partners the space to listen to and reflect learner voices in their work in the form of The Symposium. 

The Symposium held virtually on Zoom, included a keynote speaker who is a practitioner that engages with learners frequently and specializes in community engagement, and breakout sessions that are co-led by learners who are compensated for their time and expertise. The Symposium is attended by a wide audience including practitioners in secondary and postsecondary education, college and career advisors, state agency providers, policymakers and employer partners.  

Participants have the opportunity to attend breakout sessions of their choosing covering topics like authentic youth engagement in career pathways, immigrant and undocumented learner experiences, non-traditional learners and pathways and more. Presenting organizations that support the sessions include Ednium, The San Luis Valley Boys & Girls Clubs, Emily Griffith Technical College, MSU Denver and more.

All of the information shared during The Learner Voice Symposium is centered on elevating the experiences of learners and incorporating their voices in the development of career-connected pathways. At the close of The Symposium, The Attainment Network announced their Learner Voice Grants that organizations and institutions can apply for to support and enhance their meaningful learner engagement efforts. 

Impact of The Learner Voice Symposium on the New Skills ready network 

The learner engagement in The Learner Voice Symposium supports the Denver, Colorado, New Skills ready network team in their communications strategies as they develop materials and messaging to better connect learners and families to career-connected pathway opportunities. Additionally, Denver Public Schools (DPS), a secondary partner for the New Skills ready network site, and the Colorado Department of Higher Education (CDHE) are two of the grantees for the Learner Voice Grant. DPS and CDHE leverage the grant funding to support their learner engagement work in the development of local and state-level career pathways. 

With more than 175 attendees of The Symposium, The Attainment Network models meaningful learner engagement for its system-wide network. The Network, being a statewide intermediary, supports strengthening the career pathway ecosystem and strengthens relationships with system partnerships that impact learners. 

Further, the Denver, Colorado, project team also elevates the voices and feedback from learners in state-level policy. The Attainment Network, alongside the Colorado Department of Education and the Colorado Community College System, led an effort to design, collect, and report on community input to inform the HB22-1215 Secondary, Postsecondary and Work-Based Learning Integration Task Force (Study of Expanding High School Programs).

Recommendations delivered to the Task Force focus on equitable access to and successful expansion of high school programs across all regions of Colorado with a focus on traditionally underserved populations and those who have not accessed relevant programming in their educational experience. The discovery process of community feedback collection leveraged community organizations, educational organizations, and local partnerships.

Replicating Meaningful Learner Engagement

Leveraging learners’ input and feedback in the development of career pathways, CTE programs and policies is a valuable component of program improvement. Leaders who are interested in replicating The Learner Voice Symposium should prioritize including learners whose voices are historically underrepresented, leveraging partners who can support recruiting learners to bring them to the table and co-creating the event with partners and learners to ensure the content fills the needs for the ecosystem.

The Attainment Network engages in the planning and execution of The Symposium with an equity lens to ensure a diverse representation of learners, speakers and attendees. The Network also backward plans by prioritizing the outcomes they want the event to achieve from the start of the planning process to ensure there are sessions with meaningful outcomes and takeaways for attendees. 

The planning and execution of an event of this size includes a lot of logistics and leaders should consider adequate staffing, preparation that helps to keep audiences engaged and ensuring the videos and notes from the event are accessible once the event is over. The addition of a visual scribe enhances the experience for attendees throughout the session, as well as providing engaging artifacts to further share learnings after the event and marketing for future events. 

Looking Ahead

As The Attainment Network enters year four of the New Skills ready network, the project team is working towards holding more learner and community engagement events to continue the work of leveraging learner voices, input and feedback in the design and delivery of career pathways. The Network team is currently working on analyzing themes from The Learner Voice Symposium to inform the design of their Colorado Pathways Conference on September 19 – 20. The two-day conference will focus on pathways-focused education-to-workforce systems across the state and country. 

Haley Wing, Senior Policy Associate

 

By Jodi Langellotti in CTE Without Limits
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CTE in the News: Wisconsin Program Preps Students for College and Career

Friday, August 24th, 2012

All students should be prepared for college and career, say Wisconsin educators who are leading a program to help improve students’ graduation rates, transition services, and post-school outcomes, according to a recent Education Daily article.

The Wisconsin Career Pathways program was designed to serve all students. Starting in ninth grade, students are asked to choose a career to study and take classes in their chosen field.  The Wisconsin Technical College System partnered with the state department of instruction to develop the program, which is web-based and modeled after the National Career Clusters ™ Framework.

“The idea is that students are making their own plan to prepare for the future,” said Marge Rubin, director of College and Career Pathways at Fox Valley Technical College in Appleton, Wis.

“Research shows that students who have plans are more successful than those who don’t.”

The program intends for students to explore different jobs within the career of their choice so they understand the academic and technical requirements, demands and outlook for those jobs, and what postsecondary options within the state can help them achieve their college and career goals.

“There was this great divide. Students either had to choose between preparing for college or a career,” Rubin said. “All students need to be prepared for both.”

Education Daily is an online publication available only to its subscribers.

Erin Uy, Communications & Marketing Manager

By admin in News
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Gallup and Harvard Education Leaders Join CTE Foundation Board of Directors

Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012

Tim Hodges, Director of Research for Gallup’s Education Practice, and William (Bill) Symonds, Director of the Harvard Graduate School of Education Pathways to Prosperity Project, have joined the Board of Directors of the National Career Technical Education Foundation (NCTEF). Hodges and Symonds bring to NCTEF their reputable experience in and longstanding commitment to quality education.

Dean Folkers, NCTEF Deputy Executive Director, calls Hodges and Symons “visionary leaders who are committed to charting a new path for education in America” who will help NCTEF’s work in supporting and pursuing high-quality CTE.

Under NASDCTEc, NCTEF develops and funds activities and programs that are designed to improve CTE.  NCTEF has focused significant efforts in support of Career Clusters ™ projects and efforts to increase the visibility and advance quality of CTE. As public members of the Board of Directors these leaders will advise and influence the policy and direction of the work NCTEF supports in CTE and Career Clusters™

Hodges consults with K-12 school districts and higher education institutions to lead research projects in strengths development, employee selection and engagement, and wellbeing.   Hodges experienced formal CTE through marketing and agricultural programs, and served in leadership roles for Career Technical Student Organizations as well.

Symonds is the primary author of a groundbreaking report – Pathways to Prosperity: Meeting the Challenge of Preparing Young Americans for the 21st Century – which was released in February 2011.  Since, he has been invited to speak about the report in more than half the 50 states. The report analyzes the reasons America has failed to prepare so many of its youth to lead successful lives as adults, and notably suggests supporting high-quality, comprehensive pathways, such as those used in CTE, that will lead students to a certificate or a postsecondary credential.

Erin Uy, Communications & Marketing Manager

By admin in Advance CTE Announcements
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Most Manufacturing Executives Report a Shortage of Qualified Workers, Survey Shows

Thursday, November 3rd, 2011

A recent national survey from the Manufacturing Institute, an organization focused on improving and expanding manufacturing in the United States, delves deeper into the “skills gap” issue and examines how industry leaders are responding to this challenge.

Of the thousand manufacturing executives who completed the Manufacturing Institute’s survey, nearly 70 percent reported that they have a moderate or severe shortage of available, highly-qualified workers. Over half expect the shortage to worsen within the next five years. Further, over 60 percent of executives stated that shortages and skill deficiencies are having a profound impact on their companies’ ability to expand and improve.

Manufacturing Institute President Emily DeRocco stated that students and their parents have a limited understanding of the jobs that are available in manufacturing today, partly due to the stigma around the low-skilled manufacturing jobs of the last century. However, today’s manufacturing jobs require more complex skills, like high-level technology and computer skills, and are situated in much better work environments.

Many executives reported that available jobs are in areas of “skilled production,” such as machinists, operators, distributors, and technicians. DeRocco suggests that companies partner with educational institutions, such as CTE schools and centers, to further align education and training to meet the needs of business and industry.

Through the Manufacturing Career Cluster, Career Technical Education (CTE) programs provide a response to manufacturers’ demands by educating students through career pathways that lead to industry-recognized credentials. Still, more students are needed to overcome this skills gap by training in advanced manufacturing programs of study (POS) and acquiring the skills needed to pursue positions in manufacturing.

The Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte provide an analysis of the survey results in Boiling Point? The Skills Gap in U.S. Manufacturing.

Kara Herbertson, Education Policy Analyst

 

By admin in News, Publications, Research
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