Across Maryland, education officials are working to redesign the state’s career and technical education system.
It’s one facet of an ambitious, and controversial, 10-year education reform plan called the “Blueprint for Maryland’s Future,” approved by state lawmakers four years ago.
One of the plan’s big areas of focus: Career pathways — or the emphasis on industry partnerships, and apprenticeships and CTE programs that will prepare students to join the workforce after high school with or without college.
School districts’ interest in promoting career-technical education programs — still sometimes called vocational education — dates back decades. But Maryland is one of a growing number of states placing a renewed emphasis on CTE programs, workforce readiness and career pathways.
As part of that effort, states and school systems around the country are investing heavily to equip students with practical skills for employment. That shift has big implications for vendors as demand continues to grow for CTE courses and the academic resources and training materials to support them.
New Interest in Career Pathways: Key Takeaways
Much of the new momentum behind CTE is driven by state policymakers focused on building a skilled workforce
Forty states approved more than 152 policies focused on boosting CTE combined last year
The big focus of those efforts was supporting industry partnerships, work-based learning – and increased funding
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and ETS are developing new assessment tools that will overhaul the Carnegie Unit with a focus on competency-based education
Many teachers feel isolated in CTE courses, and efforts are underway to give them access to better professional development
Maryland is placing hundreds of “career counselors” at districts all over the state to begin advising students as early as 6th grade about possible career options.
And the state is expanding its existing CTE programs, increasing the rigor of those course offerings, and is “doubling down” on the concept of work-based learning, said Richard Kincaid, Maryland’s senior executive director of college and career pathways.
By 2030, the Maryland blueprint has set a goal for nearly half of all graduating high school students — 45 percent — to complete either an apprenticeship or earn an industry-recognized credential before graduating.
“We know that these are amplifiers for when a student moves into the workforce,” Kincaid said. “If they’re able to leave high school not only with a diploma, but also with work experience, they’re job-ready on day one.”
Education companies that offer specialized CTE curriculum, certifications, assessments and teacher training could find new growth opportunities if they are attuned to states’ and school systems’ burgeoning demands.
Here are four things education companies need to know about the growing focus in career pathways in K-12.
1. Momentum Is Coming From the State Level
The surge in CTE interest has been driven in part by labor force needs, and growing skepticism about the return on college education, which continues to skyrocket in cost.
Career-focused education has traditionally been one of the few areas that politicians from both major political parties seem to agree on. And that broad base of support has helped drive a wave of new action on everything from CTE funding to increased access to courses and programs.
Forty states approved more than 152 policies focused on boosting CTE combined last year, according to a report from Advance CTE, an advocacy organization that represents state CTE directors and leaders.
The report found that states commonly leveraged policy to address labor shortages for high-demand jobs. Nearly a third — 46 total — of all CTE-related policies enacted in the states last year were related to supporting industry partnerships and work-based learning.
That includes efforts in Pennsylvania, which announced a new roughly $4 million program to bolster pre-apprenticeship opportunities for high school students, and South Carolina, where the state legislature approved a tax credit increase for employers utilizing apprentices.
In Maryland, state officials had been using about $12 million in emergency federal COVID relief funds for a grant program intended to establish an apprenticeship pipeline between the state’s school systems and industry.
That money is winding down, and so is the grant program, but the results have been very positive, said Kincaid.
“We ended last school year with a little bit over 1,000 apprenticeships,” he said. “We are on track this year to double that.”
The most common policy action taken last year by the states, however, to focus on increasing funding, according to the Advance CTE report.
There might be one or maybe a few CTE teachers at a given high school, so the general professional development that the district or the school provides is not relevant to them.
Danny Corwin, Harbor Freight Tools for Schools
A total of 26 states enacted 63 policies last year to increase state-level CTE funding, including through direct appropriations to districts and institutions, grant programs for equipment, and scholarships for work-based learning opportunities.
One such state was Idaho, which allocated $20 million to incentivize middle and high schools to create CTE programs that prepare learners to meet local and regional industry and workforce needs.
In the past decade, 27 states have boosted their funding for high school CTE.
But even with the tide of new money, “funding has not in any way kept up with what the field actually needs,” said Kate Kreamer, Advance CTE’s executive director. Kreamer’s organization estimates that state investments in secondary CTE programs amounts to less than one percent of total K-12 education funding from states.
And the largest source of federal funding, the Perkins Act, which provides $1.2 billion annual for CTE programs and job training for students, hasn’t kept up with inflation for years, she said.
(The Trump administration has over the past month gutted many federal programs administered by the U.S. Department of Education, though the president and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon have voiced general support for career-focused education.)
“There is more demand from the learner side then there are resources to provide,” Kreamer said.
2. There’s a New Focus on Assessment
In April 2023, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching announced that it was joining with ETS, a longtime research and assessment organization, to develop a new set of assessment tools that can be used by school systems in conjunction with career pathways.
The two organizations are partnering to overhaul the Carnegie Unit, the metric used to define academic credit, with a model focused on competency-based education that measures “essential and durable skills necessary for success in the 21st-century economy.”
The tools are designed to capture evidence of skill development in states using the “portrait of a graduate” framework, said Laura Slover, managing director of Skills for the Future, the two organizations’ joint initiative focused on rethinking academic credit.
That framework consists of a broader approach to measuring graduation and workforce readiness. Typically in that model, students are required to master academic concepts, acquire social-emotional skills, and develop a sense of civic character.
Around 20 states have developed their own frameworks based on the portrait of a graduate, according to Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, or CASEL, a nonprofit that works to advance the development of SEL.
Select districts in five states — Indiana, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Nevada, and Wisconsin — will pilot the assessment tools, she said, with the goal of it reaching 5,000 students over the next six months.
“We’re also getting a lot of interest from districts that are not in those five states,” she said. “So right now we’re finding ourselves in the exciting position of … trying to figure out our next steps for how to expand beyond [them].”
Unlike traditional assessment tools that just measure knowledge of academic content, these will track things such as “creativity, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, leadership growth mindset, resilience, and work ethic,” Slover said.
Those attributes, she added, more closely reflect the full range of “competencies and skills that students need coming out of high school to be prepared to go into the world around them.”
Meanwhile, states and school systems are actively discussing how to best measure competency and outcomes for CTE programs. So far, a lot of programs have relied on industry-based credentials and certifications that capture evidence of completing a program.
The problem? The “credential space is chaotic,” said Kreamer, who heads the advocacy group Advance CTE.
A 2022 report from Maryland highlighted some of the current problems with CTE industry credentialing. One challenge is students pursuing certifications that are already oversaturated in dozens of states, or earning industry credentials only to find out that they “are not sufficient to prove readiness for any one specific job,” according to the report.
“There are so many credentials, and entities are creating new credentials. The [CTE] industry is not really involved in actually validating those,” said Kreamer.
“How do we validate the learning in CTE in a way that works for industry is not something that we’ve really solved.”
3. There’s a Gaping Need for Better Professional Development
As the executive director of a nonprofit that supports skilled trade education in high schools, Danny Corwin is in contact with CTE teachers around the country. His organization, Harbor Freight Tools for Schools, annually awards $1.5 million to high school CTE programs.
One issue Corwin hears from CTE educators in the field has to do with the lack of professional development aligned to the lessons and skills they’re trying to bring to students.
“There are so many credentials, and entities are creating new credentials. The [CTE] industry is not really involved in actually validating those.”
Kate Kreamer, Executive Director, Advance CTE
“They often feel pretty isolated,” he said. “There might be one or maybe a few CTE teachers at a given high school, so the general professional development that the district or the school provides is not relevant to them.”
During the summer, CTE teachers who’ve been awarded money through the Harbor Freight contest meet in person and share best practices and develop new ideas, in what amounts to a multi-day pseudo-PD event of sorts hosted by the organization, Corwin said.
Those types of interactions — skilled-trade educators gathering outside of school to talk shop — are extremely valuable, given that CTE teachers can be somewhat siloed in their daily jobs on campus, said Alisha Hyslop, chief policy, research and content officer for the Association for Career & Technical Education.
Some school systems are “beefing up” teacher induction programs, she said, and providing significant professional development and other support for educators who have made the leap from industry to the classroom to ensure they stay in the job — teacher shortages in CTE fields are especially acute.
But in most cases, Hyslop said, CTE teachers are facing a difficult dual challenge: The need to develop and continually enhance pedagogical skills, while also having to stay abreast with advances in their respective industry.
“Professional development for CTE teachers has to operate in both of those spaces to be truly effective,” she said.
4. Education Companies Are Starting to ‘Sit Up and Pay Attention’
A number of major ed-tech companies — McGraw Hill, Savvas, and Edmentum, for example — sell CTE curriculum products to schools. And a plethora of startups are also competing in the same segment of the K-12 marketplace.
CTE programs are incorporating more digital tools, such as virtual simulations, online certifications, and interactive learning platforms into coursework. But the market remains niche: An overall small percentage of K-12 funding flows toward CTE-related purchases for academic resources, though many in the industry see potential as states inves more in the area.
Kincaid, the head of Maryland’s college and career pathways division, said he knows interest is high among ed-tech providers to provide learning materials and training for CTE programs based on the number of pitches his team receives from vendors
But the relatively small number of students the products would ultimately serve could be preventing some innovations from hitting the market, he said.
At the most recent Association for Career & Technical Education trade show in December, Hyslop said the exhibition hall was packed with hundreds of vendors showing off their latest tech offerings for CTE.
“There has been significant investment and advancement in technology and curriculum in this space,” she said, noting how specific courses like welding and life sciences appear to be conducive to virtual and augmented reality experiences.
For the most part when it came to CTE, the primary focus for companies developing products had generally been those focused on upskilling or reskilling employees, said Slover, who’s leading the joint Carnegie/ETS initiative focused on rethinking academic credit.
The K-12 market “is always a little bit behind,” she said. But she said that is likely to change with all the momentum CTE and career pathways are generating.
“The private sector is starting to sit up and pay attention,” she said.