The sharing of best practices has moved beyond teachers talking at school or even professional development seminars at state, regional and national conferences. With the increasing demand on CTE teachers and administrators to improve CTE programs, best practices have become more important. CTE programs now have the ability and need to find, review and implement best practices from across the country.
In this section, you will find research that reviews and highlights best practices in the areas of:
Arizona's Teacher Education Initiative: Aligning High School and College Curricula
Future teachers must be more than highly qualified—they must also be highly effective. The state of Arizona is proactively developing partnerships that will ensure that future teachers are ready for the rigorous expectations of the profession. These partnerships have created teacher-education pathways that link high schools, community colleges and public universities.
ESL/ELL Learners in CTE
An Assessment of the Support Service Needs of Career and Technical Education Teachers and their Students with Limited English Proficiency in Selected Pennsylvania AVTS’s
A survey was conducted among a population of 350 CTE teachers from 12 Career Technical Education Center (CTC) sites in seven counties throughout Pennsylvania. Based on survey returns, it was determined that the ELL enrollment pattern at CTC’s was considerably less than the expected 10 percent or greater reported by census data. Selected findings of this survey indicate that:
- There were considerably less ELL students enrolled in CTC’s than reflected in county census data.
- The average level of their students overall ELL English language skills was rated at a moderate level by CTE teachers.
- The level of collaboration with the English language teacher at the sending school (or in their own school) to meet the occupational safety needs of the ELL students was rated low by CTE teachers.
- The level of collaboration with the English language teacher at the sending school (or in their own school) to develop an English safety vocabulary for ELL students was rated low by CTE teachers.
- CTE teachers responding indicated a high need for more support in helping their students in the area of vocational safety vocabulary development.
- The degree of administrative support received by CTE teachers to meet the needs of ELL students was rated at a moderate level.
Approaches to Dropout Prevention: Heeding Early Warning Signs With Appropriate Interventions
This report outlines steps that schools can take to identify at-risk students and provide the necessary support systems and relevant interventions to assist students in obtaining a high school diploma. Further, the report discusses the use of early-warning data systems to target interventions for groups and individual students, offers a variety of best-practice approaches undertaken by higher-performing high schools and presents effective programs that are currently being implemented to stem the dropout problem.
Career Academies—Long-Term Findings
This report presents findings on the long-term effects of career academies on outcomes associated with the transition from adolescence to adulthood—particularly on labor-market participation, educational attainment and family formation—over the eight years following scheduled graduation from high school. In summary, the career academies produced sustained employment and earnings gains, particularly among young men. While career academies had no impact (positive or negative) on educational attainment, half of the young people in both the academy and non-academy groups earned a postsecondary credential. The career academies also showed positive effects on increasing family stability.
From Large to Small: Strategies for Personalizing the High School
The conversion of large urban high schools into small, focused learning centers has gained currency as an education reform strategy. This article provides guidelines, along with guiding questions, for those considering such a conversion. The first section explores the structural, organizational and political challenges involved in converting large high schools into identifiable, autonomous learning communities. The second section of the article explores the challenges that emerge once a school has reorganized into small units. The last section of the article presents “the five Cs,” a tool for blending youth-development approaches with contextual learning to create effective learning environments.
Good Start: Two-Year Effects of a Freshmen Learning Community Program at Kingsborough Community College
As part of the Opening Doors demonstration and evaluation project jointly undertaken by MDRC and the MacArthur Foundation-funded Network on Transitions to Adulthood, six participating colleges operated innovative programs aimed at increasing students’ achievement, persistence and, eventually, their graduation rates and earnings. Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, New York—a large, urban college in the City University of New York (CUNY) system—tested a program called Opening Doors Learning Communities. The program placed freshmen, most of whom failed one or more of the skills assessment tests that all incoming students take, into groups of up to 25 who took three classes together during their first semester. It also provided enhanced counseling and tutoring and a voucher for textbooks. This report discusses the program’s implementation and its effects on students up to two years after they entered the study.
Improving Educational Outcomes for Students with Disabilities
This paper explores how attitudes and expectations for students with disabilities are changing as a result of No Child Left Behind and the impact of IDEA. Overall, there is strong support for increasing expectations for students with disabilities and helping them improve their academic outcomes. At the same time, there is concern about how states and schools will manage this process, largely as a function of lack of knowledge of effective interventions and strategies. At times, there appears to be some lack of will to undertake the difficult change, allowing states and schools to fall back on excuses, but findings reveal a hope that these laws and policies will result in more equitable outcomes for students with disabilities.
Multiple Choices Multiple Chances
Based on a seven-year study of a population of 256 students, this article examines detailed case studies of two students’ experiences leaving and re-entering community college. It reveals how one program supported multiple exit and entry points. Interconnected educational and career pathways were made visible with the creation of a visual model that situated program experiences in a broader educational and career pathway. Additionally, both the use of creative solutions and adherence to rigid program parameters impacted students’ career and educational trajectories. For more effective results, programs should support parallel career planning and encourage participants to question program structures in relation to their needs.
Reaching New Heights: Promising Practices for Recruiting and Retaining Students in Career and Technical Education Programs That Are Nontraditional for Their Gender
This report describes promising practices for improving students’ access to career and technical education programs that are nontraditional for their gender. It relies on practices utilized by the winners of, and nominees for, the 2007 Programs and Practices That Work: Preparing Students for Nontraditional Careers Project award. The Programs and Practices That Work (PPTW) Project was created in 2005 by the Association of Career and Technical Education , the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity, the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium and the National Women’s Law Center to recognize programs that have successfully raised the enrollment and retention of under-represented students in nontraditional CTE courses. This year’s recognized programs are the Seattle Public Schools (highest recognition for IGNITE [Inspiring Girls In Technology Evolution]), St. Paul College in Minnesota (honorable mention for its respiratory care program) and Northeast Community College in Nebraska (honorable mention for its mentoring program).
Small Schools, Big Lessons
Small learning communities can help big-city public schools recreate the intimacy and personal attention of their small-town counterparts, boosting graduation rates and achievement. This article looks at high schools in Minneapolis and Boston that created small learning communities from large high schools, the issues that emerged and the effects the change had on their students.
Vocational Technological Education and Special Education: A Logical Approach to Dropout Prevention For Secondary Special Education
The Office of Special Education Programs has reported annual school-exiting data on special education students by disability category and age since 1984-1985. Accountability in special education was mandated by the Education of All Handicapped Children Act Amendments of 1983. There is some research that reports that students with disabilities drop out of school at a rate three times that of their peers. Other research indicates that many secondary special education programs were not adequately serving students’ transitional needs for community adjustments. Secondary career and technical education can be a logical approach to preventing high school students with disabilities from dropping out. This paper presents six recommendations for programs to follow to help prevent dropping out.
Whatever It Takes: Reconnecting to Out of School Youth
Whatever It Takes: How Twelve Communities Are Reconnecting Out-Of-School Youth documents what committed educators, policymakers and community leaders across the country are doing to reconnect out-of-school youth to the social and economic mainstream. It provides background on the serious high school dropout problem and describes in depth what 12 communities are doing to reconnect dropouts to education and employment training. It also includes descriptions of major national program models serving out-of-school youth.
Understanding Teaching with the Internet in Business Education
The purpose of this qualitative study was to analyze the way three technology trained business education teachers deliver content knowledge with the Internet in the traditional classroom. Interviews and observations were conducted to achieve this goal. Findings revealed that the three teachers experienced much difficulty in understanding teaching with the Internet and in monitoring Internet based assignments. Based on the findings, a framework for teaching content knowledge with the Internet in the classroom was developed. This framework includes the following eight areas: course design; technology tools; student centered learning environment; classroom management techniques; communication; integration; motivation; and creativity.
CTSO Student Organization
A major research study was conducted by Purdue University, comparing agricultural education students to the "typical high school student," as quantified in The State of Our Nation’s Youth. The Purdue study showed outcomes for students who participated in FFA, a CTE student organization with about 450,000 members. Because all career and technical student organizations share similar goals for membership and participation, the outcomes of the Purdue study serve as the basis for this discussion, focusing on four major outcome areas—scholarship, motivation, professional development and citizenship.
Looking Inside the Black Box: The Value Added by CTSOs to Students' High School Experience
In this study of the value added by career and technical student organizations (CTSOs) to the high school experience, the researchers compared CTE-with-CTSO classrooms to CTE-without-CTSO classrooms and general education classrooms. The first research question simply asked whether being in a CTSO vs. CTE-only or a general classroom had any effect on the outcome variables elsewhere associated with CTSOs in the literature. We found that being in CTE with a CTSO (vs. CTE without CTSO) was associated with higher beginning (fall) levels of academic engagement, civic engagement, career self-efficacy and employability skills. The second research question went beyond this simple comparison of classroom type and asked whether the amount of participation in a CTSO mattered. The answer was an unequivocal yes. Specifically, we found that the more the students participated in CTSO activities, the higher their academic motivation, academic engagement, grades, career self-efficacy, college aspirations and employability skills. The only measure that was unaffected by degree of participation in a CTSO was civic engagement. The third research question asked whether the specific type of CTSO activity mattered—that is, what is it about participation in a CTSO that affects what kind of outcome? We found that the only element of CTSO participation that did not have a specific benefit was leadership, perhaps because students in leadership positions come in with high scores on these measures to begin with and therefore have little more to gain.
Parents' and Students' Perception, Satisfaction and Retention
Differences Between General and Talented Students' Perceptions of Their Career and Technical Education Experiences Compared to Their Traditional High School Experiences
CTE represents an important and understudied educational option for high school students. This qualitative study utilized data from one exemplary CTE center to address the question of how talented and general education students' part-time CTE experiences differed from their traditional high school experiences. The secondary students in this study simultaneously attended both the CTE center and a traditional high school. Through interviews with students, a trend emerged: students explicitly compared these two educational experiences. Both talented and general students commented favorably on their CTE experiences and negatively on their traditional high school experiences. The four major themes from their comments included autonomy; effective, caring teachers; students with similar interests; and relevant content in an applied setting. Students appreciated the ability to choose courses and determine the order or type of assignments, to self-pace the curriculum, and to experiment with a profession. They also commented on the presence of teachers who had high expectations, sought student's strengths, showed personal interest in the students and had professional experience in the CTE setting. The students' perspectives included the observation that at the CTE center they were exposed to other students who demonstrated mature and committed behaviors, showed interest in their course of study and participated in career and technical student organizations. Finally, the learning environment at the CTE center offered curricular connections to the profession, hands-on learning and professional treatment of students in a job-like setting.