Last week, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona embarked on his “Back to School Bus Tour 2023: Raise the Bar” which included stops highlighting CTE programs and their value to their local communities.
The bus tour traveled through multiple states to showcase current strengths of the education system amid the beginning of a new school year. Secretary Cardona, alongside various members of Congress and state and local officials, visited educational programs in Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Alongside multiple CTE-centered visits, the tour also highlighted the topics of early childhood education, teacher recruitment, parent engagement, mental health initiatives, HBCUs and after-school programs.
As part of his first stop in Topeka, Kansas, Secretary Cardona, alongside Kansas’s governor Laura Kelly and other state officials, held a discussion at the Brown v. Board of Education historic site with Teaching as a Profession high school students. The discussion centered around teacher recruitment and efforts to diversify the teacher workforce.
The tour later stopped at Woodruff Career and Technical Center in Peoria, Illinois, for a roundtable on CTE that included students, instructors and local workers. Secretary Cardona spoke about the ways CTE allows students to intentionally engage in their personal academic journey, and he stated: “These students are also walking away with credentials, they’re walking away with a pathway to a career, a connection with a college, and mentors that are going to be with them all the way through.”
Another stop on the tour spotlighted recently renovated CTE facilities at a Madison, Wisconsin, high school. After touring the school, Secretary Cardona led a CTE roundtable that discussed the value of CTE programs and his own personal experience with such programs. He shared how his own experience in a CTE automotive course in high school provided him with skills that support him in his work today.
He reiterated these sentiments Friday during a visit to Dakota County Community College in Rosemont, Minnesota, where he hosted another CTE roundtable discussion with local officials and students. During this discussion he stated: “I’m going to tell you right now that my experience at a technical high school without question, it’s part of the reason why I’m sitting here.”
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