Fill your fall reading list with new research and publications on CTE equity, industry-recognized credentials, career pathways and postsecondary outcomes.
Credentials of Value: ACTE, among other education and industry leaders, participated in a working group convened by the Education Strategy Group, in partnership with the Council of Chief State School Officers and Advance CTE. The working group developed the following recommendations to help states identify credentials with labor market value and improve attainment of those credentials:
- Identify high-value credentials by analyzing employer signaling, determining which industry credentials can be used for postsecondary credit and building a cross-sector industry-recognized credential list and validation process
- Incentivize attainment of high-value credentials by better communicating the benefits of these credentials, providing funding for credential exams and leveraging program approval processes
- Collect and report credential attainment data by sharing data with industry certifiers and creating a standardized reporting framework
Lessons learned and templates from ACTE’s Certification Data Exchange Project can help states achieve this last goal.
Equity in CTE: Advance CTE has launched its new Making Good on the Promise series this fall. The first brief charts the history of equity challenges in CTE and looks at equity gaps in CTE today. It describes how bias can impact students through career and academic advising and selection/enrollment criteria, as well as through barriers in different geographic locations, through graduation requirements that pit college and career pathways against each other and through the provision, or lack thereof, of student accommodations.
A second brief in the series looks at how states are using their data systems to address equity gaps by leveraging accountability to highlight inequities, providing data publicly and transparently, and analyzing the causes of access and achievement gaps. Examples are shared from Maryland, Minnesota, Delaware and Oregon.
The Making Good on the Promise series is made possible through the New Skills for Youth initiative, a partnership of the Council of Chief State School Officers, Advance CTE and Education Strategy Group, funded by JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Iowa Noncredit Postsecondary CTE Outcomes: The state of Iowa is continuing its commitment to high-quality CTE data and analysis with a new tool: The first edition of Iowa’s Community Colleges: Noncredit CTE Employment Outcomes Report and Interactive Dashboard.
Among its findings, the report notes that:
- Noncredit CTE students in Iowa community colleges are more likely to be older, male and more racially diverse than students in credit-bearing programs
- 32 percent of noncredit students either transfer to credit-bearing programs, or already have postsecondary degrees
- 92 percent of noncredit students were employed in the first year after program exit, primarily in health care, manufacturing, transportation, retail trade, construction and administrative services
Student Data in 2018: According to the Data Quality Campaign, 25 states have passed 59 new laws in 2018 governing the collection, linking, use, access and protection of education data. For instance, Louisiana passed legislation directing the Board of Regents to provide local education agencies with data on high school students’ postsecondary outcomes. In addition, Colorado and Wyoming must now collect data on military enrollment, in addition to other postsecondary pathways.
Career Pathways: A new brief from CLASP defines career pathways and guided pathways, and describes how these two approaches complement each other to support student success.
Another recent CLASP brief summarizes the state of research into career pathways. Author Tim Harmon describes promising findings that show higher earnings and better education outcomes through career pathways, but notes that much research has examined only short-term results and only in health care and manufacturing pathways.
A group of state education and workforce development leaders, national organizations, advocates, funders and federal agency staff was convened by CLASP and the Workforce Collaborative of the Greater Washington Community Foundation to make recommendations for improving career pathways research. These recommendations include developing new measures for career pathways success, tracking co-enrollment to determine how well it addresses students’ education and employment barriers and measuring student retention more effectively, among other steps.
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