Part 1: Key Facts
Student & Teacher Information
There are approximately 19,306,183 residents of New York, 2.785 million of whom are projected to be enrolled in school in 2008, pre-K through grade 12.
According to 2004-2005 data from the U.S. Department of Education (the latest numbers publicly available), the total number of CTE students in New York was 386,075. This includes the following:
- Secondary: 232,291
- Postsecondary: 153,784
Delivery System/School Information
There are 787 high schools, 81 two-year colleges and 188 four-year colleges. The types of colleges include the State University of New York (SUNY), City University of New York (CUNY), independents and proprietary schools.
The state of New York has several different systems in place to deliver CTE. School districts can offer CTE classes in comprehensive high schools. School districts outside the “Big Five” cities of New York City, Buffalo, Rochester, Yonkers, and Syracuse can belong as component school districts to a regional Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES). BOCES is a public organization that was created by the New York State Legislature in 1948 to provide shared educational programs and services to school districts.
New York City, which educates approximately 1 million of the state’s 2.8 million students, has its own CTE system which includes comprehensive high schools, multi-program CTE high schools and single program career academies and smaller learning communities.
Funding/Financing for CTE
Federal: New York is estimated to receive $59,567,164 from the Perkins Basic State Grant and $5,242,846 from Tech Prep in FY 2008. Of the Basic State Grant funding, 52 percent is allocated to secondary CTE and 48 percent to postsecondary CTE.
State: New York has proportional state funding for CTE. Districts receive funding based on the percentage of the total number of CTE students in the state that the district serves. New York also allows the BOCES centers to choose whether to submit either enrollment data or millage ratios, which are based on the tax rates of the sending districts.
Part 2: State Administration
Key State CTE Contacts
Mrs. Jean C. Stevens
Interim Deputy Commissioner
Office of Curriculum & Instructional Support
New York State Education Department
89 Washington Avenue, Rm. 319 EB
Albany, NY 12234
Phone: 518-474-8892
Fax: 518-474-0319
State Agencies
The New York State Education Department (NYSED) administers the Perkins Act, reporting to the Board of Regents. The Office of Curriculum and Instructional Support and the Office of K-16 Initiatives and Access Programs co-administer Perkins funding to both K-12 education systems and postsecondary institutions.
State Standards for CTE
NYSED has not adopted course-specific curriculum content standards or a statewide course numbering system for CTE courses offered within the State. There are state standards developed and a K-12 Core Curriculum for “Career Development and Occupational Studies.”
Only in the voluntary program approval process is there some modicum of alignment to content standards. In this process, local programs must demonstrate that they are aligned with business and industry standards and must lead to an industry-based certification.
Program Approval/Quality Control
New York has developed an interesting voluntary approach to helping students meet state graduation requirements while also participating in rigorous CTE coursework. Under the New York Board of Regents requirements, all students are required to pass five challenging “Regents” exams in order to graduate from high school. In addition, students are required to complete 22 credits, including three credits of math and three credits of science. New York has placed great emphasis on using the Regents Exams to drive educational improvement.
This requirement posed a challenge for 11th- and 12th-graders who participate in CTE programs at one of the regional BOCES centers in New York. Students who participate in BOCES programs take their academic courses at the home high school in the morning or afternoon, and spend the remainder of the day at the BOCES. Because of transport time to and from the BOCES center, students would have difficulty meeting the additional academic course requirements. BOCES directors believed the new academic requirements would be a disincentive to voluntary student enrollment in CTE courses, so they asked the state to give them flexibility in helping students meet the academic course requirements.
The New York State Board of Education enacted the Career and Technical Education (CTE) Policy of 2001, which is designed to raise the academic and technical rigor of CTE programs, and also allow students a flexible pathway to graduation. The essence of the 2001 policy is a voluntary process for Program Approval.
This voluntary program approval process helped upgrade the overall quality of CTE programs by establishing program standards for approval. When a school has earned an “approved status” then it is allowed to confer academic credit for integrated coursework that counts toward the third unit in math or science and/or an English or social studies credit.
The key program elements of an approved program include:
- cross walking the CTE curriculum to state and local skills standards and state learning standards,
- opportunities for work-based learning,
- teacher earning necessary industry-based certification,
- offerings of articulation and dual enrollment credits,
- offering of industry-based Technical certification assessment to the student, and
- ability to offer a technical endorsement on the student’s diploma.
If the student completes the approved program, earns the CTE endorsement for the approved program, and also meets the requirements of passing the Regents Exams, he or she will receive a Regents Diploma with a CTE Endorsement. The State indicates that students who participate in approved programs outperform the general student population in terms of passing the New York Regents exams and graduating from high school.
Each program is locally developed and there are no model programs that have already been designated with a “pre-approval” status by the State. Even if a local program is affiliated with a national organization or curriculum such as Pro-Start or Project Lead the Way, it must go through the standard state review and approval process. The Program Approval Process is completely voluntary, and is used primarily by the BOCES. There is no direct requirement for program approval for local districts that receive their Perkins allocation and run their own CTE programs. As of fall of 2007, about 850 local programs have received approval status.
According to state officials, the process of re-approving the first CTE programs that were processed under the 2001 Regents Policy on CTE began in 2006. Programs must be re-approved after five years to assure that they continue to meet academic and industry standards.
Part 3: CTE Initiatives & Related Policies
High School Redesign
The State Department of Education is not currently promoting a specific “high school redesign” initiative, but in October 2007, the Board of Regents proposed major new initiatives that would have an impact on high schools in the state.
One proposal from the Board of Regents is a “Smart Scholars” program intended to “transform the traditional 4-year high school to college model” with $100 million to help at least 12,000 disadvantaged students to graduate from high school “on time with as much as 30 college credits and graduate from college in three years.”
The Board of Regents has also proposed creation of “regional Education Alliances” that would include colleges and universities, school districts, libraries, museums, professional organizations, and public broadcasting. The purpose of the alliances is to “raise the achievement of disadvantaged students all the way to college completion” with comprehensive educational support and improving the quality of teacher preparation and professional development.
Currently, some targeted state funding is available for high school redesign, in limited circumstances. Under the accountability mechanisms of the No Child Left Behind Act, dozens of New York schools are in a “needs improvement” or “restructuring” status. In November 2007, the State Department of Education announced a new initiative “Contracts for Excellence” which provides funding and guidance to 55 school districts to help them improve student achievement. The districts distributed $428 million in Contract funds to 1,547 schools that have an enrollment of almost 1.1 million students ($258 million allocated to New York City.) The contract funds are directed to improvement strategies which include: class size reduction; increased time on task; middle and high school restructuring; and teacher and principal quality initiatives.
New York is a also member of the High Schools That Work state network, and supports 16 schools in New York as HSTW sites.
Career Academies
There are no statewide programs supporting the development of career academies, but within New York City, there has been extensive restructuring of high schools around small, themed academies. Beginning in 2000, three foundations—the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, and the Open Society Institute (OSI)—made a multi-year, multi-million dollar commitment to supporting the implementation of small-school designs. These, and other related efforts, are coordinated by the “Office of New Schools” within the New York City Department of Education.
Role of Career Clusters
The New York State Education Department continues to organize its career and technical education studies under somewhat traditional categories:
- Agriculture
- Business and Marketing
- Family and Consumer Sciences
- Health Occupations
- Trade and Technical
- Work-based Learning Programs.
In each of these areas, the State has adopted model program standards that use the terminology of career clusters (or “career families”) and career majors.
Academic & CTE Integration
The integration of academics and CTE is strongly encouraged through the approved program process. The key to the academic credit is the working relationship between the academic teacher and the CTE teacher. Before the school year begins, an academic teacher that meets the Highly Qualified Teacher definition in the No Child Left Behind Act must confer closely with the CTE teacher, and review and approve curriculum guidelines to ensure that the state’s academic content standards will be addressed. The academic teacher must also validate the CTE teacher’s ability to convey the academic content in the integrated course format. In essence, the academic teacher is acting as a supervising teacher to the CTE teacher regarding academic content, in the way a physician acts as a supervising agent to a nurse practitioner. CTE teachers can also become highly qualified under HOUSSE provisions to offer integrated courses for academic credit.
In the regulations, besides integrated courses, the NYSED also allows for “specialized” courses. These are courses approved by local districts in which a CTE course could also count for academic credit on the student’s transcript. The New York Board of Regents regulation says that “a specialized course develops the subject in greater depth and/or breadth and/or may be interdisciplinary. Successful completion of one unit of study in an interdisciplinary specialized course may be awarded only one unit of credit but may be used to meet the distribution requirements in more than one subject.” So the “specialized” CTE course could be allowed to count for up to one credit in the academic area. Awarding of the credit is a local district decision.
Secondary/Postsecondary Linkages
The Regents Statewide Plan for Higher Education 2004-2012 relates to the overall goals of NYSED, and strengthening the transition of CTE students from secondary to postsecondary studies.
Tech Prep/Consortia: New York is currently planning to maintain Tech Prep as a separate funding stream under the 2006 Perkins Act. There has not been a final decision on what the exact role of Tech Prep will be. Tech Prep consortia will be funded in 2008 through a new competitive process, based on criteria still to be developed. Tech Prep will be expected to play a role in supporting program development and professional development among consortium member schools and colleges.
College CTE Credit for High School Students:According to the state’s Perkins transition plan, “All students will be assisted in their progress towards a degree through improved educational programs and services, accomplished through articulation among higher education institutions, including undergraduate and graduate colleges, across public, independent, and proprietary sectors.”
All articulation agreements are locally-developed with wide latitude for how they are carried out. New York does not exercise a strong state directive on dual or concurrent enrollment, or any state-based reimbursement policy. There are no statewide policies requiring that dual/concurrent enrollment credits be immediately transcripted by a participating community college.
NYSED does require articulation agreements to be in place for program approval, and in most cases the articulated courses count toward postsecondary credit. The State is considering requiring articulated credit as an element of new Programs of Study as well. NYSED is also beginning to investigate facilitating a tighter articulation from two-year to four-year programs.
Programs of Study: New York’s approved program criteria are very similar to what the Perkins Act describes as a Program of Study. Thus, NYSED will consider all Approved Programs as qualifying as Programs of Study for its local applications.
The State will not develop a set of pre-approved or model Programs of Study. Rather, local applicants will develop Programs of Study that meet the requirements of the Perkins legislation, and NYSED will review each district’s and each college’s proposed Program(s) of Study against those criteria.
The State’s Transition Plan indicates that “as Perkins IV moves into full implementation, it is anticipated that each local postsecondary grantee will be required to align a portion of their basic grant funds with the programs of study initiative in their respective region.”
Career Guidance & Advisement
New York does not currently sponsor a statewide electronic career planning system. However, there is a state board policy (100.2 (j) Guidance Program), that requires each school district to “have a guidance program for all students.” In grades seven through 12, the guidance program is supposed to include “an annual review of each student’s educational progress and career plans,” and “instruction at each grade level to help students learn about various careers and about career planning skills.”
The state also has established Career Development and Occupational Studies learning standards, and a companion Career Development and Occupational Studies (CDOS) Resource Guidewith Core Curriculum. The resource guide further develops the core content for each learning standard and career major, and contains teacher-developed classroom activities that help students achieve the standards.
In 1998, there was a Career Plan Pilot Initiative launched (funded through School-to-Work funds), but there does not currently seem to be an active initiative from the NYSED to implement these provisions.
The Board of Regents announced a new proposal in October 2007 to create a “single website that provides key information about career options, educational requirements, and links to college programs, financial aid, and grants available to students.”
Technical Skills Assessments
In order for local CTE programs to receive approved status, several elements related to industry-based credentials must be in place. First, teachers in the program must earn the relevant industry-based credential. Further, the program must offer the student the opportunity to take an industry-based assessment that is related to the course of study.
For the student, if he or she takes and passes the technical assessment and completes the approved program, he or she will receive a technical endorsement on the Regents diploma. However, there is no requirement for the student to take the industry-based assessment, since they can be very expensive and the state does not subsidize the cost of the assessments.
Educator Development
New York has largely outsourced its professional development activities through awarding of the New York “Career and Technical Education Resource Center.” This center, funded for five years, provides technical assistance to the “Big Five” districts as well as Roosevelt and Wyandanch, focusing on CTE strategies to enhance student performance in English and math. The Center also coordinates professional development workshops across the state with NYSED, with a focus on helping CTE teachers learn how to integrate CTE content with English and language arts, mathematics and science content.
Part 4: Results
The Career and Technical Education in New York State: Final Evaluation Report 2005-06 by MAGI Educational Services, concluded the following:
- Commencement-level academic content was evident in most CTE curricula. Still, improvement is warranted.
- The CTE leaver rate was on a downward trend, while the high school dropout rate was on the rise.
- CTE and their non-CTE peers shared similar views about their high schools. However, slightly more CTE students expressed clarity of future goals and certainty about their career choices.
- Significantly more minority students in CTE programs than in non-CTE programs felt that high school was a relevant and meaningful experience.
- Students in CTE programs performed as well as non-CTE students on measures of academic achievement.
This state profile was developed by the Association of Career and Technical Education with the assistance of the Meeder Consulting Group, LLC. If you need further information or more specific details, please contact ACTE. Customized reports can be developed on specific topics or entities. Last Updated 1/25/08
