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18 Nov 2014
Service

CTE at AIR: Preparing Students for College and Career Success

Career and technical education (CTE) is a critical strategy for preparing youth and adults for careers and addressing the skills gap – a disparity between the skills job-seekers offer and the skills that employers need. States and regions, school districts, and individual institutions are creating innovative CTE programs that pave the way for students and adults to successfully enter the 21st century workforce. Nationwide, AIR is supporting organizations large and small to strengthen CTE through rigorous research, evaluation, and technical assistance.

AIR Services in Career and Technical Education

AIR staff are actively engaged in improving career pathways for all learners. We offer expertise in policy, research, and practice associated with high-quality, well integrated CTE and career pathways systems.

  • We support states, districts, and educators by providing rigorous research, evaluation, data analysis, technical assistance, and capacity building related to CTE and the development of career pathways.
  • We provide guidance on the development of industry-specific in-demand pathways, and assist states, districts and schools with using data to support and align CTE systems.
  • We engage with the field to improve recruitment, preparation and professional development of CTE teachers.
Highlights of AIR’s Work

The College and Career Readiness and Success Center at AIR has developed two Career Pathways Modules, Professional Learning Modules (PLM) on career pathways and employability skills. Designing a Career Pathways System: A Framework for State Education Agencies is focused on helping educational leaders develop a rigorous and cohesive career pathway system with four chapters intended to help educators design, implement, and evaluate a career pathways system. Integrating Employability Skills: A Framework for All Educators is a PLM that supports educators in building their knowledge and capacity to integrate and prioritize employability skills at the state and local levels.  

Our Career and Technical Education Early Warning System provides Chicago Public Schools’ programmatic and district staff real-time information in a single location to target interventions to the approximately 20,000 students participating in CTE programs annually.

AIR has published CTE-related research-to-practice briefs, including

  • Looking Under the Hood of Competency-Based Education: The Relationship Between Competency-Based Education Practices and Students’ Learning Skills, Behaviors, and Dispositions (June 2016)
  • What Career and Technical Education Teachers Really Want for Professional Learning (September 2015)
  • Meeting the Professional Learning Needs of Career and Technical Education Teachers (Jan 2015)
  • 21st Century Educators: Developing and Supporting Great Career and Technical Education Teachers (February 2014)
  • How Career and Technical Education Can Help Students Be College and Career Ready: A Primer (March 2013)

AIR is supporting the efforts of Capital Adults Education Regional Consortium, a southern California regional consortium of over 40 partners committed to support creating new pathways in high-demand and high-income careers in advanced technology, engineering, and public service. AIR was contracted to facilitate, develop, and write the professional development plan, including methodology, for improving the alignment of the career pathway services offered through its members.

AIR is partnering with Washington’s Pasco School District to develop a comprehensive CTE Accountability Framework that goes beyond traditional accountability measures to offer other meaningful student success measures. AIR's work with Pasco focuses on evaluating the feasibility of: 

  • Developing a multimetric accountability system and continuous improvement framework that incorporates relevant college and career readiness data
  • Implementing the framework and system throughout the district in a way that considers and meets key stakeholder needs
  • Sustaining the work with a focus on continuous improvement for schools and continuous improvement of the system itself

Related Centers

Center

College and Career Readiness and Success Center

The College & Career Readiness & Success Center (CCRS Center) provides technical assistance support to states focused on ensuring all students graduate high school ready for college and career success. The mission of the Center is to build the capacity of states to effectively implement college and career ready initiatives such as career and technical education, work-based learning, career pathways, employability skills, and competency-based education.

Related Work

2 Jun 2016
Video

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Chaney Mosley

Long Story Short: How Does Career and Technical Education Help Prepare Students for the Workforce?

Career and technical education provides students with the employability and technical skills they need to enter the workforce. In this video interview, Chaney Mosley talks about what elements such educational programs need to successfully prepare students and who benefits the most.
Topic: 
Education, College and Career Readiness, Workforce
19 Feb 2014
Blog Post

Jacques Catherine.jpg

Catherine Jacques

Career and Technical Education Month: Developing and Supporting Great Teachers

More than 7 million high school and middle school students in Career and Technical Education programs—and their 140,000 teachers—are celebrating Career Technology Education Month in February. In this blog, Catherine Jacques describes the importance of these teachers, based on her recent research.
Topic: 
Education, College and Career Readiness
27 Feb 2014
Blog Post

Coggshall Jane.jpg

Jane Coggshall

Who Are Today’s Career and Technical Education Teachers?

Career and technical education teachers make up about 11 percent of all public high school teachers across the country. In this blog post, Jane Coggshall shares data and figures to give an overall picture of who they are.
16 Jun 2016
Blog Post

CTE and ESSA: The Start of a Beautiful Friendship

Career and Technical Education (CTE) advocates are still eagerly awaiting reauthorization of the Perkins Act. While we wait, two important events could change the face of CTE across the country: 1) the passage of ESSA and 2) a new vision for CTE released by Advance CTE. In this blog post, Chaney Mosely explores whether ESSA will support states in carrying out the new vision proposed by Advance CTE.
Topic: 
Education, College and Career Readiness, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)
19 May 2016
Blog Post

Career Pathways: Graduation is No Longer the Endgame

The old either/or model of college-prep or vocational education is out of sync with the needs of 21st-century America. Career pathways offer a way out of this bind. They help high school students gain secondary and postsecondary education, training, and support services while they acquire marketable skills, industry-recognized credentials, and eventually good jobs aligned with labor market needs. In this blog post, Jessica Giffin highlights how career pathway systems combine rigorous academics with workplace experience using the latest technologies.
Topic: 
Education, College and Career Readiness, Workforce
7 Jul 2016
Blog Post

‘Carl Perkins’ Is in the House

In our May 2016 blog, Have You Met Carl Perkins, Chaney Mosley offered five changes to the Perkins Act that Congress might consider, in light of his years of CTE teaching and administration. In this blog post, Mosley addresses those changes based on the new bill and raises a few flags about how the proposal might fall short.
Topic: 
Education, Postsecondary Education
23 Mar 2016
Blog Post

Have You Met Carl Perkins?

Last week, U.S. Secretary of Education John King called for the reauthorization of The Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education (CTE) Act so that “every student, in every community, has access to rigorous, relevant, and results-driven CTE programs.” In this blog post, Chaney Mosley suggests five changes Congress should consider.
Topic: 
Education, College and Career Readiness
23 Feb 2016
Blog Post

CTE Lets Students Try Out Their Dream Jobs

In this blog post, AIR expert Chaney Mosley discusses the importance of career and technical education (CTE) classes to help students plan for the future.
Topic: 
Education, College and Career Readiness
20 Feb 2015
Blog Post

Jacques Catherine.jpg

Catherine Jacques

What All Educators Can Learn From CTE Teachers

Where can a math or English or history teacher go to discover ways to integrate and assess college and career readiness standards and skills in their classes? In this blog post, AIR's Catherine Jacques suggests working with career and technical education teachers, who have used this kind of instruction for decades to bring real-world learning into their classrooms.
Topic: 
Education, College and Career Readiness, Teacher Preparation and Performance

Further Reading

  • Integrating Employability Skills: A Framework for All Educators
  • Career and Technical Education: Preparing Students for College and Career Success
  • ESSA │College and Career Readiness
  • CTE and ESSA: The Start of a Beautiful Friendship
  • What All Educators Can Learn From CTE Teachers
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Beth Ratway

Senior TA Consultant

Cherise G. Moore

Principal Researcher

Topic

Education
College and Career Readiness

Related Center

College and Career Readiness and Success Center

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