NCES Digest of Education Statistics: The National Center for Education Statistics recently released an update to its Digest of Education Statistics showing that 85% of 2019 public and private high school graduates earned at least one Carnegie credit in CTE coursework. Additionally, the data shows that participation in CTE was higher for graduates from schools in rural areas (92%) and towns (91%) and lower for graduates from suburban areas (83%) and cities (80%). Participation was also higher for students in the southern United States (91%) than for any other region. White students, Black students, and Native American and Alaska Native students participated at about the same rate (86%, 86% and 87%, respectively), while 83% of Hispanic students and 77% of Asian American students earned at least one Carnegie credit. The most common CTE courses in which students earned credit were IT (29%), human services (28%) and business and marketing (21%).
Prior to the release of this dataset, earlier data showed that among 2013 public-only high school graduates, 81% had earned at least one credit in CTE subjects and 92% had earned any credits in CTE and related subjects like career exploration. Owing to differences in data sources and definitions, these datasets are difficult to compare; however, both demonstrate that a majority of high school students are taking part in CTE.
Rural Community College Excellence: A Guide to Delivering Strong Opportunities for Students and Communities: The Aspen Institute’s College Excellence program – an initiative aimed at advancing higher education practices and leadership that significantly impact and improve underserved and underrepresented student learning, completion and employment after college – recently published a guide covering the successes and opportunities of community colleges in rural areas. The guide is aimed at highlighting how community colleges are essential hubs to the communities and regions that they serve by generating opportunities for economic mobility and talent development and oftentimes providing health care support. This guide draws on data from analyses of student outcomes, interviews with college leaders, as well as virtual and in-person site visits to rural colleges to share examples of high-achieving rural colleges.
Unlocking Opportunities: Supporting English Learners’ Equitable Access to Career and Technical Education: A recently released report by the Migration Policy Institute looked at CTE participation and concentration for students categorized as English learners (EL). Researchers found that, on a state level, English learners participate and concentrate in CTE at rates that are relatively representative to their share of the high school population. However, they note that a lack of access to district-level data means that there may be more variation on the local level. Where local systems observe underrepresentation of English learners, the authors discuss strategies such as co-teaching between an EL specialist and content teacher; employing student and family advisors; and developing CTE programs in translation and interpretation, which could be a draw for bilingual and multilingual students.
Unpacking Financial Disincentives: Why and How They Stymie Degree-Applicable Credit Mobility and Equitable Transfer Outcomes: The Beyond Transfer Policy Advisory Board recently released a white paper on credit mobility policies and challenges as a part of its “No Easy Answers” series exploring postsecondary education outcomes for economically disadvantaged students. The advisory board chose this focus of research to raise awareness of the problematic default approach where institutions opt to reject credits until they are evaluated and approved for equivalency, which often results in classes having to be re-taken. Shifting this default, according to the paper, would be imperative to achieving equity since students who transfer and are more mobile tend to be from underrepresented learner groups by race, ethnicity, age and/or income. The report includes examples from Northern Virginia Community College and George Mason University as well as The Ohio State University and various Ohio community colleges. It also recommends strategies such as using funding formulas to incentivize policies that better serve transfer and mobile students and requiring institutions to have an evidence-based rationale for rejecting credits or risk financial consequences.
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