Posts Tagged ‘Secondary’

Continuing Resolution Extends Highly Qualified Teacher Provision

Monday, September 24th, 2012

On Saturday the Senate passed a six month continuing resolution that will fund the federal government through March 27, 2013. This bill extends for an additional year a provision that allows teachers who are participating alternative certification programs to be considered highly qualified. This means that at least until the end of the 2013-2014 school year, teachers in alternative certification programs will be considered highly qualified. The Department of Education will also be required to send a report to Congress no later than December 31, 2013 detailing how many special education students, rural students, English-language learners, and low-income students are being taught by teachers in an alternative-certification program.

Nancy Conneely, Director of Public Policy

By admin in Legislation
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CTE Courses: Creating Commonality with SCED

Tuesday, September 18th, 2012

One of the challenges of CTE for national policymakers has been the difficulty of comparing information about program performance around the country. While there is much valuable data and research available about CTE, more high-quality research is always helpful in advocacy and program improvement benchmarking. One of the contributing factors is inconsistent and out-of-date information about CTE courses identified in the national School Codes for Exchange of Data (SCED) system. The course coding system is often used for national research studies and student transcript work across the country as a common set of courses.

An effort to update these course names and descriptions is underway and this e-mail serves as an invitation to consider participating in the project specifically for Career Technical Education courses.

The “CTE Courses: Creating Commonality with SCED” project will include input from the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium (NASDCTEc), ACTE, the Department of Education (DOE) and, most importantly, practitioners in the field. Working groups of 6-8 people per Career Cluster™ will work together to update and align CTE course names and definitions with the help of resources provided by the steering committee of ACTE, NASDCTEc and DOE representatives.

CTE teachers, administrators, teacher educators, state education agency consultants, or local education agencies and postsecondary institutions, are all qualified to participate. Ideally, each working group will include a variety of participants across the profession and across states.

Check out the SCED webpage for more information on the project and if interested please complete the online volunteer application at https://www.acteonline.org/content.aspx?id=18105&terms=sced.

Applications accepted through October 22.

 Dean Folkers, Deputy Executive Director

By admin in Career Clusters®, Research
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Democrats Support Career Academies and Technical Training in Party Platform

Tuesday, September 4th, 2012

This week in Charlotte, the Democrats released their party’s platform which outlines how their policies will help America out-education, out-innovate and out-build the rest of the world. As we reported last week, the Republican party’s platform included their support for CTE at the secondary and postsecondary levels. The Democrats also voiced their support for secondary CTE, saying that they would “continue to strengthen all our schools and work to expand public school options for low-income youth, including magnet schools, charter schools, teacher-led schools, and career academies.”

At the postsecondary level, Democrats called for greater access to higher education and technical training. To that end, the party supports the following proposals that would improve the skills of students and adult workers:

Nancy Conneely, Public Policy Manager

By admin in Public Policy
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Election 2012: Candidates’ Education Positions

Thursday, August 30th, 2012

Yesterday we told you about the newly unveiled Republican party platform which supports local CTE programs at the secondary and postsecondary levels. While this platform reveals where the party as a whole stands on various issues, it does not necessarily reflect the position of an individual candidate. In a new publication from NASDCTEc, Election 2012: Candidates’ Education Positions, we take a closer look at the policy positions of both Governor Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama. This document does not cover every education policy issue, but those that the candidates have made public.

Nancy Conneely, Public Policy Manager

By admin in Public Policy, Publications
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Republican Platform Highlights CTE

Wednesday, August 29th, 2012

With the presidential election just around the corner, convention season is upon us. Republicans are meeting in Tampa this week to formally nominate Governor Mitt Romney as the party’s candidate for President. Part of the convention process includes releasing the party’s “platform” or statement of principles. The Republican party’s platform covers a broad swath of issues, including education, jobs and the economy, agriculture, and government reform. The party’s education plank underscores the value of CTE in preparing students for the workplace:

School choice—whether through charter schools, open enrollment requests, college lab schools, virtual schools, career and technical education programs, vouchers, or tax credits—is important for all children, especially for families with children trapped in failing schools…We support the promotion of local career and technical educational programs and entrepreneurial programs that have been supported by leaders in industry and will retrain and retool the American workforce, which is the best in the world.

The platform also states the party’s belief that the status quo is not working for the higher education system, and calls for “new systems of learning” that can compete with traditional four-year institutions, including community and technical colleges, private training schools, and work-based learning in the private sector. The party also believes that the acquisition of advanced skills is necessary for the 21st century economy, and should focus on STEM fields.

Democrats will convene in Charlotte next week to officially nominate President Obama as their candidate, at which time they are expected to release their party’s platform.

Nancy Conneely, Public Policy Manager

 

By admin in Public Policy
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New Poll Reveals Shifting Views of Public Education

Thursday, August 23rd, 2012

This year’s PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools shows that the public’s opinion concerning education and funding is shifting. When asked in 1996, whether it was more important to balance the federal budget or improve the quality of education, nearly two thirds of respondents said “improve education.” However, this year 60 percent said that it’s more important to balance the federal budget. Given the state of the economy in 1996 versus today, this shift could be in response to the fiscal crises occurring at all governing levels in recent years.

That being said, the poll also revealed that the public feels that lack of funding is the biggest challenge facing public schools in their communities, with 35 percent of those surveyed citing it as the top challenge, compared with 23 percent a decade ago. Parents, at 43 percent, felt even more strongly that lack of funding is the number one challenge facing public schools.

Nancy Conneely, Public Policy Manager

 

By admin in Public Policy
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Legislative Update: Alternative Certification, Career Academies

Friday, July 27th, 2012

House Subcommittee Holds Hearing on Alternative Certification

The House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education held a hearing this week to examine alternative certification of teachers. The topic is a timely one given its connection to defining highly qualified teachers under the No Child Left Behind Act. In 2010, Congress passed legislation that allowed students enrolled in alternative certification programs to be considered “highly qualified teachers.” The House Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill seeks to extend this definition for two more years.

There was general support for alternative routes to certification on both sides of the aisle during the hearing. Chairman of the subcommittee, Rep. Duncan Hunter (CA) had this to say:

Alternative certification routes help address teacher shortages in particular geographic areas and subject matter, as well as strengthen the overall quality of the teaching profession. While Republicans know there is no one-size-fits-all federal solution to help put more effective teachers in the classroom, supporting the availability and acceptance of alternative certification programs is one way the public and private sectors can join together to ensure more students have access to a quality education from an extraordinary educator.

Cynthia Brown, Vice President for Education Policy at the Center for American Progress, agreed that alternative certification programs hold a lot of promise, but that there need to be policies in place to ensure that they are “high quality, innovative, and effective,” which also holds true for traditional teacher preparation programs. She suggested that Congress focus on teacher effectiveness rather than alternative routes to certification.

More Details on Career Academies Proposal

Last week Secretary of Education Arne Duncan spoke at the National Academy Foundation’s NEXT Conference about the President’s FY13 budget proposal to invest $1 billion in career academies. Funding at this level could increase the number of career academies by 3,000 and serve an additional 500,000 students.

According to Duncan, $200 million in grants to states would be available in FY13, and $400 million would be available in both FY14 and FY15. Grants to would total $4 million each to states, and would be given over a three year period. States would distribute those funds competitively to locals.

As part of the grant program, the Department of Education is proposing a definition of “career academy” that each state must use for the in-state competition:

  1. A career academy is a secondary school program as organized as a small learning com­munity or school within a school to provide the support of a personalized learning environment.
  2. The academy must begin in ninth grade and combine credit-bearing academic and techni­cal curriculum.
  3. The academy must organize curriculum around a career theme like those proposed by NAF — hospitality and tourism, IT, health, sci­ence, and engineering — and be aligned with states’ college- and career-ready standards.
  4. The academy must provide work-based learning and career exploration activities through partnerships with local employers.
  5. The academy must articulate entrance re­quirements of postsecondary education programs to ensure students graduate from high school ready to pursue a higher education degree or credential.

Nancy Conneely, Public Policy Manager

By admin in Public Policy
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Five More States Receive NCLB Waivers

Thursday, July 5th, 2012

Last week the Obama Administration announced that five more states – Arkansas, Missouri, South Dakota, Utah, and Virginia – have received NCLB waivers that give them flexibility in meeting performance targets under NCLB. This latest round of recipients brings the total number of states with NCLB waivers to 24. Additional information on state requests and other documents can be found here.

By admin in Public Policy
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CTE in the News: Why we Need Vocational Education (Career Technical Education)

Friday, June 8th, 2012

Career technical education at “both the secondary and post-secondary level should be highly-valued, well-funded, and effectively-implemented,” said Mark Phillips, professor emeritus of secondary education at San Francisco State University in a recent blog featured on the Washington Post.

Society must shed its negative notions about vocational education as a dumping ground for non-academic students if it wants to adequately prepare all students in the global economy, noted Phillips.

“This bias against vocational education is dysfunctional. It is destructive to our children. They should have the opportunity to be trained in whatever skills their natural gifts and preferences lead them to, rather than more or less condemning them to jobs they’ll find meaningless,” Phillips said in his blog.

“…It is also destructive to our society. Many of the skills most needed to compete in the global market of the 21st century are technical skills that fall into the technical/vocational area.”

Shifting perception and societal values around CTE will take time, he acknowledged, but quality CTE programs exist across the nation and their success with students will help to highlight their value, he noted.

Erin Uy, Communications and Marketing Manager

By admin in News
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NASDCTEc Collects More than 1,700 Reviews of Common CTE Standards, Moving Development Forward

Thursday, May 31st, 2012

More  than 1,700 reviews  of the Common Career Technical Core (CCTC), a shared set of rigorous, high-quality Career Technical Education (CTE) standards, were submitted during the recent public comment phase. Input on the CCTC was collected from a broad range of CTE stakeholders, including educators, administrators, and business and industry representatives.

“Career Technical Education (CTE) leaders believed it was critical to engage leading experts in the education, industry and technical fields to help develop and validate CTE standards that truly reflect the timely education and workforce needs of today’s global economy,“ Dr. Dean Folkers, Deputy Executive Director of the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium (NASDCTEc).

“The robust participation by a broad range of CTE stakeholders demonstrates the desire to develop standards that prepare our students for the future.”

NASDCTEc is coordinating the CCTC initiative. Forty-two states, Washington, DC and Palau participated in the development of the CCTC.

The development of the CCTC was a multi-step process that incorporated input at various stages from approximately 3,500 individuals representing K-12 education, business and industry and higher education from across the nation.  The public comment period ran from April 30 – May 11, 2012 and was an opportunity for CTE stakeholders to participate in the development of the CCTC.

The final standards are slated for public release at the National Career Clusters ™ Institute  on June 19, 2012. Click here and learn more about the CCTC online or visit www.careertech.org.

By admin in Uncategorized
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