Self-confidence wasn’t always natural for Ashton Hartnett, a senior at Smyrna High School, a large suburban public school in central Delaware. The 17-year-old remembers his middle school self as a “long-haired short boy who got bullied by his peers and didn’t have many friends.”
He’s still not one of the tallest kids in his class, but Ashton now ranks high in confidence, thanks largely to his experience in Business, Finance, and Marketing—one of six schools of career and technical education available at Smyrna. Other options include Agricultural and Natural Resources, Education, Leadership Studies, Performing and Visual Arts, and STEM and Professional Studies.
As part of his CTE education, Ashton enrolled in the Academy of Finance, a three-course program that introduces students to the financial services industry.
“We’ve learned concepts like accounting with credits and debits, assets and liabilities, stock fluctuations, and different ways to invest,” he said. He also earned first place in a statewide public speaking competition hosted by Business Professionals of America, a national career and technical student organization.
Ashton’s journey challenges outdated perceptions of CTE as solely trade-focused programs with limited career outcomes. Increasingly, forward-thinking school districts like Smyrna are redefining CTE to expose students to a broad range of potential careers without necessarily steering them to a specific post-high school pathway.
This shift comes at a critical moment in secondary education. Workplace experts emphasize the need for job seekers to acquire practical, often technical, skills. While most U.S. high school students continue to enroll immediately in a two- or four-year college after graduation, more families are questioning the return on investment from a four-year college education.
At the same time, a growing number of traditional public high schools are shifting away from a near-exclusive focus on “college preparedness” and, instead, providing more space for students to explore various career pathways and acquire practical skills and experience.
“We recognize that solely encouraging higher education as a default option is outdated. That’s not what we do when we go about helping students,” said Stephanie Nelson, a school counselor at Garner Magnet School in Garner, N.C., and a finalist for the 2025 School Counselor of the Year award. “I emphasize career and college readiness versus college and career readiness.”
A nationwide shift in perspective around CTE
Statistics indicate that most of the nation’s public high schools are primed for this shift in perspective. Sixty-six percent of high schools offer CTE pathways that lead to an industry-recognized credential, and 57 percent make work-based learning opportunities or internships available to students, according to a 2024 nationally representative EdWeek Research Center survey.
But most high schools have pushed primarily college readiness for decades, a movement that gained steam after the publication of the 1983 report “A Nation at Risk” and its call for stronger academic preparation. Now, high schools—even those well-equipped to offer a broader education that’s likely to include CTE—must figure out how to guide students in a new and less linear direction.
Nelson, Garner’s school counselor, said she’s comfortable talking to students about their future, and how to prepare for it, in a new way.
“I like the shift in the mindset from college and career readiness to an emphasis on career-college readiness, because even when our students pursue college degrees, it’s still setting them up for a career,” she said.
She also realizes that these conversations can’t wait too long.
“We need to recognize earlier than students’ senior year how we can help them take courses that align with potential career paths, even if they don’t end up pursuing that [path],” she said. “We know career development is not necessarily linear, but we want students to at least have exposure to different types of career tech ed. classes.”
When providing students with guidance on curricula choices, CTE expert Alisha Hyslop advises counselors to keep the focus on what’s best for individual students—not what broader societal norms suggest is best.
“It’s about what the students’ goals are, and aligning their goals to the educational opportunities that will help them meet those goals,” said Hyslop, the chief policy, research, and content officer at the Association for Career and Technical Education.
It’s a nuanced approach that’s likely to represent a change for many educators.
“There certainly was a time where that message got lost in the rhetoric around post-secondary education, where it was more about, ‘What college do they need to go to, and what do they need to focus on to get there?,’” Hyslop said.
Countless parents, having internalized this message, may require education, too.
“When we talk to parents, we tell them that CTE in high school doesn’t prevent students from pursuing any opportunity. Instead, it’s the opposite,” Hyslop said. “It gives them additional skills to pursue whatever pathway they want to pursue.”
Schools need to keep up with evolving CTE offerings
It’s not just students and parents who need to be educated on CTE. Teachers, school counselors, and other educators do, too.
“There are a lot of careers out there that we may not know about unless we are engaging in PD [professional development],” Nelson said.
That’s especially true right now. In October, Advance CTE, an advocacy and technical assistance nonprofit, released the new National Career Clusters Framework, marking the first major update to recommended career pathways in more than 20 years. The updated framework supports new and emerging professions that prepare students for jobs, some of which didn’t exist a decade or two ago—like those involving artificial intelligence, self-driving-car technology, and clean energy.
A CTE pathway like Business, Finance, and Marketing, which Smyrna high school senior Ashton chose to pursue, may not be considered cutting-edge. But it’s given him an edge nonetheless.
“I still have my shy moments, and I can fumble in some speaking opportunities, but where my confidence is at now is leagues better than any years prior,” said Ashton.
He credits his growing public speaking skills with the opportunities he’s taken advantage of at school—from CTE courses where he had to present before classmates, to the public speaking competitions hosted by Business Professionals of America, to his internship as a salesperson at Smyrna’s mobile school store.
“My goals in life would not be nearly as certain without the support I’ve received from the AOF pathway,” said Ashton, who plans to attend a four-year state college in the fall, where he’s considering a major in business and a minor in communications.
