After a few quiet years post-pandemic, career-technical education has re-emerged as a key area of growth in the education market, rising to the top of many K-12 policymakers’ priorities.
As interest in job-focused courses and preparation surges, some educators and advocates are determined to correct the outdated or misconstrued assumptions they say are holding those studies back.
Leaders of career-tech programs in school districts and advocates for those programs discussed what’s next for K-12 CTE during a panel at EdWeek Market Brief’s Virtual Forum, being held Tuesday and Wednesday this week.
The billions of dollars in pandemic-era federal stimulus aid, which was largely directed at combating severe learning loss in math and English/Language arts, has ended. While school districts are still under pressure to raise lackluster academic performance in core subjects, discussion around CTE has grown as administrators also look to direct resources to other areas that broaden students’ skills and keep them engaged in school.
Education companies that are attuned to emerging CTE needs can position themselves to meet rising demand from states and school districts. But, if they hope to do so, there are a number of facts about the CTE landscape today that vendors need to get straight first, the panelists said.
They pointed to three core assumptions about CTE that education companies, the public, and policymakers need to rethink.
1. Don’t Assume That Momentum and Interest Will Guarantee Funding
At a time when there are major questions about the future of federal funding for schools, the Trump administration has expressed general support for CTE.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean that new money for expanding career tech programs is flooding in, said Alisha Hyslop, chief policy, research, and content officer for the Association for Career and Technical Education, an advocacy organization for programs in that area.
The primary funding stream for CTE programs, the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act, has not been impacted by the Trump administration’s cuts to government spending, said Hyslop, one of the panelists. It provides about $1.4 billion to career-focused programs annually.
But other funding options have been undermined, Hyslop said. The list includes National Science Foundation grants that supported professional development and curriculum, spending that was cancelled, and programs supported by the U.S. Department of Labor.
School districts will likely need to turn to industry partners to make up for those losses, Hyslop said.
“If you read through some of the executive orders from the administration, for example, they talk about leveraging more public-private partnerships and investments from the private sector,” she said.
“There is a hope that the private sector, businesses, and industry will step up in a lot of these spaces.”
2. CTE Has Moved Past the ‘Vocational Studies’ Era
Career-technical education has evolved to become an integrated part of the courses that high schools offer, panelists described.
That’s a change from earlier vocational school models, which were often housed in a separate building from the general high school and targeted specific students interested in blue-collar jobs that don’t require a college degree.
When we hear people say college isn’t for everyone, so those students should take [CTE] on, I find that personally offensive. Because that’s not really what CTE is about.
Carol Tingley, senior director of the Orange Technical College for Orange County Schools in Florida.
New or evolving CTE programs, especially those that follow updated state standards and expose students to a wide range of careers, have grown in popularity and are earning broad bipartisan support, said Hyslop.
In Texas, career education is part of the fabric of the K-12 system, supported by the state education agency and workforce commission, said Usamah Muhammad Rodgers, the superintendent of DeSoto Independent School District. That means all of the district’s 5,900 students are accessing CTE, she said.
“It’s kind of a standard across our district that all of our students have a pathway and an endorsement and are working for industry-based certifications as a part of our district board goals,” she said.
The district, located about 15 miles south of Dallas, went to voters in May to ask through a bond measure for funds that will, in part, support an expanded CTE program. The measure passed. Their goal is to align the courses the district offers with emerging fields, Rodgers said.
For example, they’re expanding the district’s biomedical technology pathway, since that area of study reflects a growing field in the Dallas area, she said. The district is also restructuring its healthcare career pathways to add options for patient care technicians.
“We’re reimagining career and technical education programs,” she said.
3. CTE Programs Aren’t for a ‘Certain Type’ of Student
There is no “typical” CTE student. Instead, the programming can — and should — be used by all students, said Carol Tingley, the senior director of the Orange Technical College in Florida.
Her program, a part of the 208,000-student Orange County Schools, has been building its career pathways curriculum for more than a decade. Now, about a quarter of students participate in the district’s CTE programming before graduating.
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With this in mind, Tingley says the idea that rigorous academics and career education are two separate routes for students — an idea that often appeared in early discussions and practice of CTE options — is seen as outdated and harmful.
Instead, those two goals are “married together, and students who have both rigorous CTE programs and rigorous academic programs are prepared for anything,” she said.
The district internally markets its CTE programming to both students who are planning to attend a four-year university as well as those who plan to go straight into a career after graduation.
Career “dual enrollment” classes, in which students work toward industry certifications, are given the same weight toward a student’s GPA as an Advanced Placement or college dual enrollment class, she said.
“When we hear people say college isn’t for everyone, so those students should take [CTE] on, I find that personally offensive,” Tingley said. “Because that’s not really what CTE is about.”