State Chiefs Release Recommendations to Strengthen Career Readiness

Last month, the Council of Chief State School Officers released “Opportunities and Options: Making Career Preparation Work for Students,” a report from its recent Task Force on Improving Career Readiness.

The task force was comprised of state school chiefs, postsecondary and career technical education leaders, national education experts and business leaders. Its goal was to bring a renewed focus to the issue of career readiness and develop a set of recommendations for state policy actions to “transform their schools’ approach to career readiness.”

While the report does reference some schools as “doing a very poor job of being responsive” to current workforce needs, and the “pace and scale” of change in CTE programs as insufficient, most of the report’s recommendations align with those of the broader CTE community. Many are even included in ACTE’s recommendations for the next Perkins reauthorization.

The included recommendations are included below, and you can review the report for more details and examples of states that already have such initiatives in place.

1. Enlist the employer community as a lead partner in defining the pathways and skills most essential in today’s economy.
   • Enlist the employer community as a lead partner in identifying the high-demand, high-skill industry sectors that are most important to the state’s economy so career pathways can be aligned with those opportunities.
   • Engage the employer community in designing career pathways in secondary schools that develop the specific knowledge and skills needed for entry-level work within high-demand, high-skill industries.
   • Establish a structured process through which the education and business sectors come together to establish priorities and design pathways.
2. Set a higher bar for the quality of career preparation programs, enabling all students to earn a meaningful postsecondary degree or credential.
   • Require that all career programming is organized within pathways that culminate with a meaningful postsecondary degree or credential that opens doors to high-skill, high-demand jobs.
   • Raise the level of rigor in career programs by including both a college-ready academic core and a technical core that spans secondary and postsecondary systems and meets industry expectations.
   • Work with the employer community to dramatically expand work-based learning opportunities to expose students to career options and connect what they’re learning in the classroom with the world of work.
   • Strengthen and expand career guidance and support services, beginning in middle school, and seek out non-traditional partners to help provide these supports.
   • Use state funding and program approval processes to scale up the pathways in greatest demand and scale down or phase out programs that do not lead to credentials of value.
   • Build the capacity of educators to more effectively engage students in high-quality, career-relevant instruction through deeper engagement with business and industry.
3. Make career readiness matter to schools and students by prioritizing it in accountability systems.
   • Make career readiness a higher priority in school rating and accountability systems.
   • Adapt graduation requirements and scholarship criteria to give students credit for meeting rigorous career readiness indicators.