Education Week - April 26, 2023 - 8

How Career Prep Programs Went
From 'Dumping Ground' to Top Priority
More Americans think kids should come out of school prepared for careers,
and career prep has emerged as a rare area of bipartisan accord
By Libby Stanford
High school students in Rhode Island
will soon be hard at work on a
novel project: developing their own
food truck businesses.
Starting in the fall, students in 13
Ocean State districts will develop
business plans, design menus, create
graphics, learn culinary skills,
and enter an October competition to
compete for the prize of best business.
It's all a part of a $1.6 million program
called Menu for Success that will send
food trucks to those 13 districts for
students to work on. The initiative,
which aims to equip students with
skills they'll need in the restaurant
business, stems from the state's new
commitment to career and technical
education programs.
Rhode Island in recent years has
worked to realign its curriculum standards
so schools have a greater incentive
to adopt career and technical
education, or CTE, or beef up existing
programs. A state law passed in 2021
allows students to enroll in CTE programs
in another district if they can't
access the same quality program in
their home district.
" This is where we're going, " said
Angélica Infante-Green, Rhode Island's
commissioner of education. " All
of our students are expected to have
this type of [CTE] experience throughout
the state. "
Infante-Green isn't alone in her
views about CTE.
Showing how it's become a nearuniversal
priority, 42 states have
signed the Common Career Technical
Core, a commitment to expand
CTE programs and make them more
rigorous, according to AdvanceCTE,
a nonprofit advocacy group. And CTE
programs have earned more bipartisan
support over the past decade.
Meanwhile, more Americans now
think it's more important for schools
to prepare students for careers than for
college, a change that's become particularly
pronounced in just the last few
years. Plus, the nation has recorded
its steepest slide on record in college
enrollment since 2018, as many young
adults have chosen a different path.
The movement reflects a shift in
prioritization from using CTE as a
" dumping ground " for students who
don't have the academic record or
financial resources to attend college,
to making it a pathway for students to
gain both the technical skills and academic
preparation needed to succeed
in both college and careers.
" It's no secret that we for decades
trapped certain students into certain
pathways, " said Kate Kreamer, deputy
executive director of AdvanceCTE.
" Marginalized populations, Black students,
Latinx students, students from
Students work on a vehicle in an auto technology class at the Regional Occupational Center in Bakersfield, Calif.
low-income families and communities
were largely put in terminal programs
and told, 'some students are college
bound and some students are not college
bound.' That is inequitable. "
From 'vocational education'
to career and technical education
CTE, once known as vocational education,
has been embedded in federal
law since 1917, when Congress passed
the Smith-Hughes Act.
The law established federal funding
to support research and curriculum
development for vocational education,
but the first law that actually provided
funding to help schools develop
and expand vocational education programs
was the Vocational Education
Act of 1963.
The laws supported programs that
taught students technical and trade
skills. But the focus shifted in the
1990s, as former presidents George
H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton pressured
schools to compete with the rest of the
world. The idea was that American
students weren't learning to be critical
thinkers and high school degrees
weren't enough to prepare them for
the workforce.
" As more and more jobs were starting
to demand college degrees, high
schools in many ways became col8
| EDUCATION WEEK | April 26, 2023 | www.edweek.org
lege preparatory, " said Walt Ecton, an
education professor at Florida State
University. " Most states aligned high
school graduation requirements with
college entry requirements and there
was a real decline in interest in vocational
education. "
The No Child Left Behind Act in the
early 2000s and a continued emphasis
on standardized testing cemented this
shift in priorities. That ultimately led
to an inequitable system, where career
and technical education became
a backup option for students who
struggled with academics, Ecton said.
" In the past, CTE was really used
as what is sometimes referred to as a
'dumping ground'-an offensive phrase
that existed at the time-for students
who folks didn't think were going to
go on to college and didn't think were
going to go on to have some of these
more high status, high-earning career
paths, " Ecton said. " In particular, that
was Black students, that was women,
that was students with disabilities. "
The onset of career clusters in the
mid-2000s was a step toward changing
this mentality. It provided schools
with a new framework for developing
CTE programs based on specific
industries and career paths, shifting
the focus away from traditional " vocational "
programs such as cosmetology,
automotive mechanics, and agriculture,
to programs across a wide
range of industries, Kreamer said.
Those programs often lead to college
degrees.
Then, in 2018, former President
Donald Trump signed the Strengthening
Career and Technical Education
for the 21st Century Act, otherwise
known as Perkins V, a bipartisan law
that provides over $1.4 billion in state
grants to support CTE programs each
year.
Perkins V, an expansion of the longstanding
Perkins grant program,
helped states expand CTE offerings
but also required state education
agencies to be much more intentional
about their programs, Kreamer said.
To receive Perkins funding, state now
must look more at equity, analyzing
where their CTE programs have racial
and gender disparities.
Programs meet societal and
economic demands
While interest in CTE has grown
over the past decade, there's been a
noticeable shift in thinking since the
start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Americans ranked preparing students
for careers as the 6th highest
priority for schools in 2022, according
to the Purpose of Education Index,
an annual survey of American views
on education from the Massachusetts
think tank Populace. That was up from
the 27th highest priority in the same
survey just three years earlier, in 2019.
Meanwhile, preparing students for
college fell from the 10th highest priority
in 2019 to the 47th out of 57 in the
2022 survey.
" In the last two years, with the pandemic,
I've seen the narrative really
start to shift, " said Kreamer, of AdvanceCTE.
" It opened individuals'
eyes that a college degree was not a
guarantee of financial security. "
The shift in thinking has been reflected
at the federal level.
President Biden's 2024 budget
proposes investing $200 million in
the U.S. Department of Education's
career-connected high schools initiative,
which would provide grants to
help high schools partner with local
colleges and universities as well as
employers to give students internship
and dual credit experiences. And career
and technical education has long
been a priority for North Carolina Rep.
Virginia Foxx, the Republican chair of
the House's education and workforce
committee.
In Rhode Island, schools have
worked to align CTE programs with
career demands, Infante-Green said.
For example, students at the Cranston
Area Career and Technical Center in
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Education Week - April 26, 2023

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