Career and technical education programs are growing in schools across the nation, but are they delivering on their promises?
That was a key question explored by state and local policymakers—who contend that clearer ties need to be established between school programs and industry needs—during a recent forum hosted by the Education Commission of the States.
Career and technical education has “enormous potential,” and at its best “connects students to meaningful, high-quality careers and helps states meet pressing workforce needs,” said Shytance Wren, a policy analyst at ECS, a policy organization that hosted a webinar on the topic on April 29. “But a critical question remains—do we know whether these pathways are actually delivering?”
The programs have grown as workplace experts have sought to respond to shifting workforce demands for talent, and as the return on investment from traditional four-year college education programs, relative to their cost, has come into question.
Enrollment in K-12 CTE programs increased from 7.8 million to 8.6 million students between the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
Last year, the EdWeek Research Center surveyed CTE K-12 educators, including district leaders, school leaders, and teachers, about the quality of their programs. Twenty-three percent of educators gave their program an A rating, 47% gave it a B, 27% rated it a C, 3% rated their program a D, and none rated it an F.
When asked what factors could lead to major improvements to their CTE program, top answers included more funding to add new courses or pathways (56%), additional resources for facilities or equipment (49%), and additional CTE teachers (46%).
Some CTE programs are evolving to offer a more diverse array of courses, including those focused on finance, agriculture and natural resources, leadership studies, and more, according to Education Week reporting.
But Quentin Suffren, the CEO of Insightful Education Solutions and a speaker on the webinar, said states should have more effective strategies to measure the quality of their programs and grow them.
Measuring the effectiveness of a CTE pathway includes looking at how it aligns with state economic and labor market priorities and how its features (including the coursework offered and students’ experiences) are tied to participation in different industries over time, said Suffren.
What criteria should be used to measure CTE pathways?
The first step is seeing if a state defines what a CTE pathway is, Suffren said. For example, some states have created a health science pathway, but they haven’t clearly established a connection to a specific career. Or, on the flip side, states have laid out a specific career pathway, but they may not identify the full set of courses, activities, or experiences that can contribute to students following it.
While those looser approaches offer “the flexibility some folks want,” it also “creates problems when you’re trying to figure out within a state whether or not those experiences that students are getting are equally preparing them for their next step,” said Suffren.
A report published by Insightful Education Solutions, a consulting and research firm, analyzes whether states have an efficient way to measure and grow CTE programs.
According to the report, states were evaluated on the following criteria:
- Structure: Whether the state organizes its CTE programs, which includes defining expectations, measuring progress, and communicating how these will function.
- Data: Whether the state collects and reports student participation and outcomes.
- Workforce alignment: Whether CTE student activity reflects state workforce priorities.
- Transparency: Whether the CTE program information and data are easily accessible.
The report rated four states as demonstrating “high readiness,” meaning they meet the criteria above. Twenty-six states were in the “moderate readiness’ category, meaning they meet most criteria but there are gaps in data and transparency, while 18 were in the ‘minimal readiness” category are those that are missing most criteria.
The four states ranked as promoting high CTE readiness are Arizona, Hawaii, Michigan, and Nevada. In 2019, Hawaii overhauled its CTE program to solve ongoing challenges the state was facing, said Danielle Mezera, vice president of Insightful Education Solutions. One of the problems, for example, was that the schools were teaching CTE courses differently because there were no state standards governing them.
CTE leaders talk about their states’ programs
Troy Sueoka, the CTE educational specialist at the Hawaii State Department of Education, said that in 2019, his state compared federal priorities in CTE to the pathways his state was focused on in its programs.
The state found that what was offered for students wasn’t aligned with the national priorities, and teachers didn’t have standards on how to teach CTE courses. That led to inconsistent approaches to instruction across schools, said Sueoka.
“No matter if [students] went into postsecondary or workforce, it really didn’t align,” he said. “We want our students to be globally competitive and locally committed, and we weren’t providing those opportunities to have that.”
The state began to audit all of the K-12 CTE programs. It also looked at Hawaii’s economic and industry sectors to see which CTE programs best aligned with emerging fields.
As a result, the state expanded the number of K-12 CTE pathways from 6 to 13; changed its assessment and alignment of credentials across CTE programs and coursework; and recommended work-based learning across curricula, including a work-based experience at the end of every CTE pathway.
They rolled changes out in phases and had an advisory council made up of postsecondary partners, industry experts, and school representatives to evaluate each pathway.
Another state that has examined the quality of its CTE programs in search of improvements is Oklahoma.
Another participant in the webinar, Amanda Hall, a policy and research director at the Oklahoma State Chamber, a business advocacy group, said they looked at the state’s competitiveness.
The organization found that Oklahoma fell short when it came to workforce development compared to other states. Oklahoma sought to bring about improvements to its CTE programs to develop the workforce by taking four steps: better defining CTE pathways across the state; conducting an analysis of CTE student activity, collecting stakeholder perspectives; and publishing the data.
