Expanding Internships: Harnessing Employer Insights to Boost Opportunity and Enhance Learning: A recent report released by the Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) outlines the landscape of undergraduate internship offerings. BHEF found that while internships have proven to be extremely important for students in securing jobs after college, access remains limited, particularly for first-generation students, individuals of color and community college students. Furthermore, the total number of students who sought an internship in 2023 – 8.2 million – was much larger than the 3.6 million who had an internship and the only 2.5 million who experienced a high-quality internship. Black students from two-year institutions and Hispanic students from two-year and four-year colleges were less likely to participate in an internship.
As for employers, those who were most interested in recruiting young talent had some of the highest internship rates and were more likely to provide a quality experience. In contrast, most learners see the primary purpose of an internship as skill development. Employers also faced issues when offering internships, such as recruitment (a third of employers indicated that they had an internship opening that was never filled) and cost.
The report concludes with strategies that can potentially expand internship offerings, such as creating different models of internships to align with the needs of students and utilizing an external entity to assist with finding candidates.
Workforce Strategies for New Industrial Policies: Governors’ Emerging Solutions: The National Governors Association (NGA) released a report regarding new state industrial policies and what they mean for the future workforce. Governors in many states have allocated a significant amount of money to infrastructure, clean energy and manufacturing efforts, but more needs to be done for the workforce that will handle the projected millions of new jobs that will become available in those sectors. Some governors have taken initial steps toward increasing the workforce: Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has invested in workforce community outreach efforts while Washington state provides workforce resources to grant applicants. Similar CTE and workforce development policies can be found in ACTE’s and Advance CTE’s annual state policy reviews and state policy tracker.
NGA identified seven strategies that governors are utilizing as these new industrial policies are taking hold: hosting regular convenings with stakeholders, investing in workforce system infrastructure, and providing guidance to grant applicants and administrators, to name a few.
The Postsecondary Outcomes of High School Dual Enrollment Students: A National and State-by-State Analysis: The Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Columbia University released a report detailing outcomes of high school dual enrollment students. The researchers tracked high schoolers that began taking dual enrollment courses in fall 2015, following them for four years after high school and examining various outcome indicators. They made some critical findings:
- Dual enrollment across the nation is growing.
- Overall, dual enrollment students have strong postsecondary completion outcomes.
- Certain student groups are underrepresented in dual enrollment, with lower than average completion rates: low-income, Black and Hispanic students. However, these same groups, when enrolled in dual credit courses, have stronger award completion rates than non-dual enrollees.
- Former dual enrollment students are an important source of community college enrollments.
CCRC also developed a data tool alongside the report for those interested in examining outcomes in a particular state. Overall, the findings suggest that states must continue working on ensuring that all students have equitable access to participate in and supports to complete a dual credit course.
This week, Advance CTE released its modernized Career Clusters® Framework, which is designed to serve as a bridge between education and work and a central building block for consistently designed and high-quality CTE programs, and accompanying resources to support implementation. The updated Framework consists of 14 Clusters and 72 Sub-Clusters to serve as the primary organizing structures for CTE programs:
No field has been eliminated from the Framework, though some have been shifted into other Career Clusters, combined with other industry sectors, or renamed. Major changes include the following:
- Energy has been merged with Natural Resources into a new, realigned Career Cluster.
- Information Technology has been expanded and renamed to Digital Technology.
- STEM has been eliminated and these dimensions spread across multiple Clusters.
- Law, Public Safety, Corrections & Security and Government & Public Administration have been combined into Public Service & Safety.
- The Health Sciences & Human Services Career Clusters have been combined into the Healthcare & Human Services Cluster.
- Three Clusters – Digital Technology, Marketing & Sales, and Management & Entrepreneurship –are designated as both standalone Clusters and as Cross-cutting Clusters that provide skills and prepare learners for careers relevant across industries and sectors.
- The Clusters and Sub-Clusters include new technologies such as automation and robotics, clean and alternative energy, and artificial intelligence and unmanned vehicles.
It will be up to each state how it uses the new Framework. While most states used the previous iteration in some form, variations were made to reflect the needs of states and local communities. States may adopt the new Framework in whole or in part or decide to use it in different ways.
One policy implication of the new Framework is for federal reporting. The U.S. Department of Education will require states to align Perkins data with the modernized Framework starting with the 2025-26 academic year and submit data for the federal Perkins Consolidated Annual Report (CAR) starting in January 2027. This will not necessarily require any programmatic changes but rather cross-walking current programs to the new Clusters for reporting on student enrollment and performance.
To support implementation, Advance CTE has developed a suite of resources, including explainers, messaging tools, and a crosswalk listing each Career Cluster and Sub-Cluster with corresponding North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), Standard Occupational Classification System (SOC) and Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) codes. The organization will also be providing ongoing implementation support.
The modernization of the Framework has been a two-year process, incorporating feedback from more than 4,000 people across state and local secondary and postsecondary leaders, employers, national organizations including educator groups and career technical student organizations, CTE instructors, and other partners.
Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW) recently released a report and data tool concerning credential shortages and high-wage, middle-skills occupations. The report concludes that many providers will need to more than double the number of credentials they award to avoid local shortages.
Specifically, CEW examined the production of workers with “middle-skills” credentials (certificates and associates degrees) across U.S. metro areas with over one million residents and compared the current production rates with the projected number of job openings for these workers by 2032. CEW defines high-wage, middle-skills occupations as ones where more than half of early-career, middle-skills workers earn more than $53,000 annually, in 2022 dollars. Some occupations that fall within this definition include power plant operators, nuclear technicians and database administrators.
Some critical findings that CEW discusses in the report include:
- The biggest mismatch between credentials and jobs will be in the high-paying, blue-collar sector. Annually, the country will face a shortage of more than 360,000 credentials for these occupations, including most major metros areas.
- While some metro areas will produce far more middle-skills management credentials than necessary, the majority will face a moderate to severe shortage of locally produced workers with these credentials.
- In most major metro areas, protective services will experience credential shortages in the high-earning, middle-skills category.
- Several major metro areas are overproducing middle-skills credentials for high-paying STEM jobs, while some larger STEM hubs like Boston, New York and Washington, DC, will face shortages as will a number of rural areas.
- The only occupational group with a projected nationwide oversupply of middle-skills credentials is health care.
For individuals interested in analyzing and comparing trends across metro areas, the data tool allows you to select specific metro areas and occupational groups of interest to examine and draw conclusions from. For instance, the tool indicates that the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim metro area produces significantly more workers with credentials for middle-skills, high-paying management occupations compared to many other metro areas, such as New York-Newark-Jersey City and Boston-Cambridge-Newton.
Employers, jobseekers, students and other stakeholders interested in examining the projected match among middle-skills credentials and the job market are encouraged to use and share this resource and information.
As part of its Unlocking Career Success initiative, the Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education (OCTAE) recently released an English Learner Playbook, a guide for how educators, students, families, policymakers, and other stakeholders can best bring career-connected learning opportunities to English learners (ELs). The playbook also addresses the importance of multilingualism, another key priority for the Secretary of Education.
The English Learner Playbook contains suggestions and resources for strengthening opportunities for ELs tailored to various groups. For example, a section for local leaders discusses collaboration between educational and industry leaders, state leaders are advised to consider innovative funding models to fund these efforts, and educators are encouraged to engage with families in decision-making about their student’s educational options. The playbook also describes why it is beneficial to engage ELs in career pathways, citing studies, similar programs and other initiatives that resulted in positive outcomes for ELs.
Educators, students, families, policymakers, and other stakeholders, particularly those who work with ELs and are concerned about career pathways, are encouraged to share and utilize the playbook to uplift the opportunities available to ELs.
You can learn more about serving ELs in CTE through our brief, “Supporting English Learners in CTE,” produced with our partners at Advance CTE.
Classifying Community College Programs by Post-completion Success in Transfer and Workforce: The Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University, alongside the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program, released a guidebook and several other resources on how community college leaders can understand and classify programs based on student success transitioning to the workforce or transferring to further education. This includes a guide instructing leaders on the taxonomy surrounding the classification of programs, an Excel-based tool that allows community colleges to produce visualizations on their programs’ post-completion success, and another guide for reviewing data from the Excel-based tool. The goal of these resources is to allow community college leaders to identify strategies to ensure that more students are able to either continue their education or attain a high-paying job after program completion.
Education and Workforce Data Legislation Review: What Happened in 2024: The Data Quality Campaign (DQC) released a report detailing the strides states have made within the past year regarding data governance, access and usage across the educational and workforce landscapes. With hundreds of bills introduced in the past year across states that would affect these data processes, DQC analyzed the trends and described future legislative work needed in maintaining such data systems. For instance, Colorado legislators established the Colorado Statewide Longitudinal Data System – connecting education and workforce-related datasets – and Vermont created a new Office of Workplace Expansion and Development, tasked with collecting data from various agencies and formulating recommendations on workforce education and training programs. ACTE and Advance CTE produce a similar resource annually – our state CTE policy reviews – that analyzes and summarizes trends from state-level bills targeted toward CTE and workforce development, including bills that address CTE and workforce data. The 2023 report can be found here along with the state CTE policy tracker.
Keys to Scale: How to Grow the Impact of Education-to-career Pathway Intermediaries: Education Strategy Group (ESG) released a report on the roles pathway intermediary organizations take when promoting educational and workforce opportunities to students. As these organizations grow across the nation – often with commitments to bringing about equitable economic opportunities to the most marginalized student groups – barriers remain in place that prevent these organizations from reaching scale. The report released by ESG discusses what these organizations are, what their impact is, why they are impactful, and what could be done to increase their influence. ESG also released separate reports on five specific organizations doing this type of work across the nation.
Breaking Barriers, Building Futures: Expanding Access to High-quality Career Pathways: Advance CTE and ESG released the Year 4 Annual Review of JPMorgan Chase’s New Skills ready network, a five-year program across six U.S. cities with the purpose of developing equitable career pathways and policy solutions that provide underserved students with opportunities to access postsecondary education and high-wage jobs. The annual review describes how the six sites of the network – Boston, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Indianapolis and Nashville – are working to expand, implement and sustain pathways, advising and related supports. For example, the Denver site has established an annual Learner Voice Symposium, where educators, policymakers and other stakeholders hear directly from learners about their experiences and what they seek in career pathways.
The Institute of Education Sciences has awarded grants to six new research teams seeking to further our knowledge about CTE as part of the recent launch of the CTE Research Network (CTERN) 2.0, in which ACTE is a Network Lead alongside the American Institutes for Research, Boston College, and the CTE Policy Exchange at Georgia Policy Labs. The purpose of CTERN 2.0 is to collaborate and develop research to better understand the effects of CTE on student outcomes, building on the work of its predecessor, CTERN 1.0.
Similarly to CTERN 1.0, CTERN 2.0 consists of six research teams, each conducting its own exploratory and impact study of CTE in school districts around the country. The studies are being conducted by different partners in the research network, including universities, think tanks and nonprofit research organizations, and are set to conclude by 2028.
CTERN 1.0 produced several important and relevant resources documenting CTE’s impact on learner outcomes, including the recent systematic review that summarizes CTE research spanning the past 20 years – findings are also available via a two-page abstract and infographic. The literature review shows that CTE has statistically significant positive impacts on several high school outcomes and is associated with postsecondary enrollment and post-high school employment.
CTERN 2.0 has coordinated a team to conduct another systematic review, this time with a focus on work-based learning.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recently released new employment projections for 2023-33 for 832 different occupations across a variety of industries. The projections show that CTE occupations are among both the fastest-growing jobs and the jobs with the most expected openings.
Fastest-growing jobs (Growth rate projected, 2023-33):
- Wind turbine service technicians: 60%
- Solar photovoltaic installers: 48%
- Physical therapist assistants: 25%
- Occupational therapy assistants: 22%
Most new jobs (Number of new jobs projected, 2023-33):
- Medical assistants: 118,000
- Construction workers: 115,400
- Heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers: 102,000
In a new addition to the employment projections, the BLS is now reporting on the most relevant skills for occupations, including cross-cutting and employability skills:
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Adaptability
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Computer and information technology
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Creativity and innovation
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Critical and analytical thinking
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Customer service
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Detail oriented
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Fine motor
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Interpersonal
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Leadership
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Mathematics
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Mechanical
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Physical strength and stamina
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Problem solving and decision making
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Project management
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Science
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Speaking and listening
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Writing and reading
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The addition of these skills in the employment projections will allow jobseekers, employers, career counselors, students and others to identify occupations that match skill sets, better preparing for job applications or adjust new employee training.
A few examples of occupations that score highly on these skills include the following:
- Adaptability: Career counselors, film and video editors, meeting planners and CTE teachers
- Detail oriented: Air traffic controllers, phlebotomists, public safety telecommunicators and aerospace engineering technicians
- Project management: Construction managers; transportation, storage and distribution managers; farmers and ranchers; and early childhood educators
For more information on occupations, including details on educational requirements, pay, projected growth rates and more that you can share with your colleagues, students and families, please refer to the Occupational Outlook Handbook.
The Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education recently released 2022-23 enrollment and performance data for secondary and postsecondary CTE participants and concentrators.
The 2022-23 enrollment and performance data, alongside fiscal information, can be accessed on the Perkins Collaborative Resource Network’s recently revitalized website:
- Fiscal information showing funding distributions nationally and in each state (can also be found under the “Grant Programs” tab as “State Profiles”).
- National enrollment data showing national totals for secondary and postsecondary CTE participants and concentrators, which can be disaggregated by gender, race/ethnicity, special populations, and Career Clusters.
- National performance data showing national averages for each performance indicator for secondary and postsecondary levels, which can be disaggregated by gender, race/ethnicity, special populations, and Career Clusters.
- State enrollment and performance data, which can also be disaggregated by gender, race/ethnicity, special populations and Career Clusters (both can also be found under the “Accountability” tab in the “Perkins State Plans and Data Explorer”).
Several takeaways from the data are listed below. Note that the OCTAE will update the data later this month as they work to resolve issues in a few states, so the data presented here may differ slightly once the update is complete.
- In 2022-23, there were about 7.8 million secondary CTE participants and 3.5 million secondary CTE concentrators.
- In 2022-23, there were about 3.3 million postsecondary CTE participants and 1.8 million postsecondary CTE concentrators.
- The four-year graduation rate for secondary CTE concentrators nationwide was 96.7%.
- The postsecondary placement rate for postsecondary CTE concentrators nationwide was 81.3%.
States also reported on at least one of the three following secondary program quality indicators:
- About 400,000 secondary CTE concentrators attained a recognized postsecondary credential across 21 states, districts or territories.
- About 116,000 secondary CTE concentrators attained postsecondary credits in their CTE program area across 12 states, districts or territories.
- About 215,000 secondary CTE concentrators participated in work-based learning across 29 states, districts or territories.
In addition, disaggregated data revealed the following:
- The top three Career Clusters among secondary CTE concentrators were Health Science; Agriculture, Food & Natural Resources; and Business Management & Administration.
- The top three Career Clusters among postsecondary CTE concentrators were Health Science, Business Management & Administration, and Information Technology.
CTE educators, students and families, policymakers and other stakeholders are encouraged to explore the new data tools to examine CTE data in their own state.
The Department of Education has been busy this week as they wrap up Secretary Cardona’s Back-to-School Bus Tour and review their Administration’s investments in education. Next week, Congress will be back in D.C. and will start to focus on passing legislation to extend government funding past September 30, the end of the fiscal year. Keep reading for more details!
- Senator Cassidy to Host Roundtable on Innovation in K-12 Education, Enhancing Student Achievement: On Tuesday, Senator Cassidy will host a roundtable to discuss ways to innovate within K-12 education to improve student success.
- The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Announced New Awards for the CTE Research Network: IES will fund six new awards in the Extending the Reach of CTE Research Network. These projects will examine the availability and quality of career development opportunities, and will assess the impact of a subset of these career development opportunities on secondary student outcomes.
- Department of Education Announces $28 Million in Grants to Create Diverse Educator Workforce: The Department of Education announced over $29 million in grants in the Teacher Quality Partnership program to recruit, prepare, develop and retain a strong and effective educator workforce.
- Secretary Cardona’s Back-to-School Bus Tour: Secretary Cardona visited Ivy Tech, a community college in Indiana, as part of the Back-to-School Bus Tour. Secretary Cardona also participated in a roundtable discussion with students, Ivy Tech President Sue Ellspermann and Representative Frank Mrvan to discuss how Ivy Tech prepares students for careers.
Today, ACTE is releasing a new resource, Staffing Outside the Box: Strategies for Addressing CTE Teacher Shortages.
Providing learners with access to qualified instructors with relevant occupational experience and teaching skills is one of the most important and challenging aspects of providing high-quality secondary CTE programs.
Ideally, CTE programs can find staff who meet both requirements: A fully licensed teacher with experience in pedagogy and classroom management as well as relevant and up-to-date industry knowledge and skills. But when the ideal isn’t available, CTE programs and institutions have a long history of innovating to ensure students have access to industry expertise and competent teachers.
This publication, sponsored by eDynamic Learning, explores considerations and provide examples for addressing CTE teacher shortages in the short and medium term through such methods as bringing industry experts into the classroom, sharing faculty across subject areas and institutions, and providing virtual learning opportunities.
