A host of new professions—from jobs in AI to self-driving car technology to clean energy—are now represented in the national framework that guides most states’ career and technical education programs.
The new National Career Clusters Framework, released today by the advocacy and technical assistance nonprofit Advance CTE, marks the first major update to these recommended career pathways in more than two decades.
The revision could lead to significant shifts in the types of jobs schools highlight, the courses students are able to take, and the workforce partnerships district engage.
“The world has changed dramatically since we first did this work in the early 2000s,” said Kate Kreamer, the executive director of Advance CTE, on a call with reporters. The new framework reflects this, Kreamer said, integrating career paths built around new technologies and the kind of flexible skill sets that employers across industries say they seek in candidates.
Many states have used the old framework’s 16 “clusters”—areas of study like business management and administration, or agriculture, food, and natural resources—to determine the courses of study that districts can offer.
“What’s put in front of students is going to change,” said Katie Graham, the state CTE director at the Nebraska Department of Education, and the past president of Advance CTE’s board of directors, on a call with reporters.
In addition to including new job categories, the framework is also designed to encourage interdisciplinary study and transferable skills across the clusters—to make it easier, for example, for a student who’s interested in starting a contracting business to take courses in both construction, and management and entrepreneurship.
And while none of the old career clusters were removed entirely, some were renamed or reorganized.
Digesting all of these structural changes, and eventually updating courses to reflect them, could prove a daunting task for state departments of education and school districts, said Thomas Goldring, the director of research at Georgia State University’s Georgia Policy Labs.
“It should promote interdisciplinary learning,” he said. “But it’s always in the implementation where the rubber hits the road.”
New framework reorganizes, combines ‘clusters’
The first version of the framework dates to the early 2000s, when the U.S. Department of Education, which first conceived of the clusters, awarded a grant to Advance CTE and the Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education to develop curriculum guidelines for each of the 16 distinct clusters. (The federal Education Department is not overseeing the framework update.)
In the years since it was published in 2002, all 50 states have used it “in some form” to organize their CTE programs, the organization has said.
The framework is guidance, not a mandate. States aren’t required to align their program offerings with the recommendations. Even so, there are incentives to stay within the general structure—for instance, the federal government requires states to report CTE program data disaggregated by each of the 16 clusters.
The 2024 version of the document, developed with input from industry representatives, CTE organizations, and educators, reduces the cluster count to 14.
Now, these interest areas are organized under new “cluster groupings” that speak to the purpose and impact of different fields. For example, the grouping “Caring for Communities” encompasses three clusters: Education, Healthcare and Human Services, and Public Service and Safety.
Middle and elementary schoolers, especially, are motivated by this kind of purpose-driven framework, said Dan Hinderliter, the associate director of state policy for the Advance CTE, in the mediacall.
Some clusters have been reorganized.
Health Science and Human Services are now combined under one cluster, Healthcare and Human Services, which merges aspects of physical and mental healthcare.
Instead of Information Technology, the new framework presents the broader category of Digital Technology. The cluster still covers IT support and services, but now it includes cloud computing and unmanned vehicle technology, too.
The expansion makes room for emerging industries that “didn’t really have a clear space” in the old model, said Hinderliter.
Digital Technology is one of three “cross-cutting clusters”—a new feature of the 2024 framework. These clusters, which also include Marketing and Sales and Management and Entrepreneurship, represent their own industries. But they incorporate skills that are relevant and in-demand across many careers, and recognize that many fields have been transformed by technological advances unheard of in the early 2000s, like smartphones, social media, and AI.
In practice, using these cross-cutting clusters might look like teaching marketing skills tailored to a specific industry, like advertising for tourism.
“That is not how our system is structured now,” said Kreamer. “It is incredibly siloed.”
A more interdisciplinary approach could support “hands-on” learning experiences and labs, in which students need to draw on multiple skill sets to solve problems, said Goldring. But classroom practice won’t change overnight, he said.
“The existing framework is deeply embedded in states’ existing CTE plans,” he said. “Updating them will take some time.”
