Challenges to CTE Programming Success

in New York State

March 2012

1585 Route 146

Rexford, NY 12148

Phone: 518-723-2137

Fax: 518-723-2140

CTE Technical Assistance Center of New York: Mission and Purposer

The Career and Technical Education Technical Assistance Center (CTE TAC) of New York assists the New York State Education Department (NYSED) in carrying out its mission of improving the quality, access, and delivery of Career and Technical Education (CTE) through research-based methods and strategies resulting in broader CTE opportunities for all students.

The CTE TAC operates as part of the Successful Practices Network (SPN) under a contract with the NYSED. The CTE TAC increases the capacity of the NYSED to serve, support, and expand CTE across the state.

CTE TAC services are provided to teachers and students in:

Local education agencies

BOCES

High needs school districts

CTE professional organizations

CTE student leadership organizations

CTE TAC Work Plan

CTE data collection and communications

Networking to strengthen CTE

Integration of the Common Core State Standards

CTE program and student leadership expansion

CTE program approval process

Best practices in CTE

The Career and Technical Education Technical Assistance Center of NY has made every effort to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in this white paper. The views expressed are theirs alone and do not necessarily represent the position of the NYS Board of Regents or the NYS Department of Education.

Challenges to CTE Programming Success in New York State

A Special Paper Prepared for the

New York State Education Department Office of Career and Technical Education,

by the

Career and Technical Education Technical Assistance Center of New York

Introduction

In December 2010, the New York State Education Department awarded the Successful Practices Network, Inc. a contract to establish the Career and Technical Education Technical Assistance Center of NY (CTE TAC). The contract, funded with Perkins funds for state purposes, is intended to extend the reach of the SED and to provide support to local school districts and Boards of Cooperative Educational Services in the area of career and technical education.

Goals of the CTE TAC include supporting:

  1. CTE data collection and communication
  2. Networking to strengthen CTE
  3. Integration of the Common Core State Standards
  4. CTE program and student leadership expansion
  5. CTE program approval process
  6. Best practices in CTE

The purpose of this paper is to provide information on commonly encountered challenges to improving and extending the reach of CTE as a tool for school improvement and for preparing students for college and careers. By identifying these impediments, policy formation can be informed by the state of CTE in our schools and the resources and relationships needed to enhance CTE as a means to increased student engagement and success. The opinions provided are the work of the CTE TAC and Successful Practices Network, Inc. (SPN) and are the result of the observations of CTE TAC staff.

The CTE TAC has a team of 6 FTE Field Team Associates across New York State led by Edward Shafer the CTE TAC Director. A second team of 4.5 FTE resource specialists in curriculum, data collection, and program development is located at the SPN offices in Rexford and headed by the Tim Ott Assistant Director.

The CTE system in New York State is vibrant and varied. The Big Five School Districts have a variety of programs and designs including technical high schools, career academies, High Schools That Work, and other innovative programs. School districts in rural and suburban areas offer a mixture of Family and Consumer Sciences (FACS), agriculture, business education, technology/engineering, and occasionally trade and technical programs. Boards of Cooperative Educational Services offer Trade and technical and health education programs for the students of component districts and often augment the local programs in FACS, business education, agriculture, and technology.

A hallmark of the New York system is the CTE program approval process, established in 2001. It allows students to earn a technical endorsement on their diploma following completion of a program of study, passing a technical assessment, and meeting all requirements for a Regents diploma or Regents diploma with advanced designation. In many instances, students participating in approved programs are granted between 1 and 4 academic distribution or specialized course credits in fulfillment of graduation requirements. Approved programs require a specific protocol of development and review by CTE teachers, academic teachers, postsecondary providers, industry/business representatives, the Board of Education, and the SED.

The number of approved programs now approaches 1,000, and some programs are engaged in their second and third five-year renewal reviews. The NYS approved program model with its integrated academics component was cited by Dr. Brenda Dann-Messier, US Department of Education Assistant Secretary for Vocational and Adult Education at the 2011 Association of Career and Technical Education (ACTE) national conference as one of the most promising innovations in CTE.

As of November 2011, the CTE TAC team had engaged with leaders in all BOCES, many school districts, and all of the Big Five districts and Albany. In addition, communication has occurred with CTE professional and student leadership organizations, NYS Department of Labor, National Academy Foundation, SREBHigh Schools That Work, several businesses and industries, and numerous business and other associations. These contacts have provided an understanding of the status of CTE programming, as well as the challenges and opportunities for growing and strengthening this important element of the NYS education system.

Challenges

Two current generic challenges that districts and BOCES face are the significant constraints on education funding and the rate of change required by the Race to the Top funding, SED initiatives, and other political expectations. These cannot be easily resolved, but they must be recognized. The result is that CTE programs face serious competition for staff resources and other forms of institutional support, including but not limited to equipment, instructional materials, student assessments, travel, professional development, and teacher and administrative time. Although these challenges are not unique to CTE, they have a profound impact on the way such programs are supported and funded. In this fiscal environment choices must be made.

Independent of the fiscal constraints and pressure of time to address the state’s reform initiatives, the challenges identified by the CTE TAC are presented here.

Knowledge

  1. CTE is misunderstood by many educators. There is a growing body of evidence that the contextualized learning provided in CTE can result in higher graduation rates; greater academic success and access to postsecondary experiences in college, apprenticeships, and business and industry training; and increased earning power (Stone, 2011; Bishop and Mane, 2004; Pathways to Prosperity, 2011). Getting this information into the hands of local educational leaders and helping them to understand the positive impact that CTE programming can have on their accountability measures is an imperative.
  2. There is a need to fully clarify the term “college and career ready”. School leaders understand the college ready portion and view it as equivalent to career ready. This view fails to consider what constitutes readiness to follow a career path that will result in work which provides a middle-class lifestyle with benefits. Career Readiness skills involve three major skill areas: core academic skills and the ability to apply those skills to concrete situations in order to function in the workplace and in routine daily activities; employability skills (such as critical thinking and responsibility) that are essential in any career area; and technical job-specific skills related to a specific career pathway. (ACTE) A blending of the aspects of college and career ready into a coherent single definition would assist districts in providing educational experiences consistent with the goal.
  1. In many instances, boards of education, superintendents of schools and high school principals do not have a full understanding of the transition NYS made from vocational education to career and technical education and the more recent convergence of academics and CTE. The growing body of knowledge on how CTE can improve achievement (see #1 above) has not made its way to the leadership.
  1. The changes in graduation requirements proposed by the Board of Regents with the potential for greater flexibility in meeting academic requirements through rigorous CTE programs and substitution of a technical assessment for a Regents examination require a higher profile and deep discussion on the school improvement power of CTE.

Leadership and Marketing

  1. While there are many quality CTE educators working in our schools, the skill set and disposition of CTE leaders vary. Many CTE administrators come to their work from the academic side of the enterprise and learn the CTE business side on the job. Strengthening the knowledge base of administrators who may become CTE leaders is an important but neglected effort. Potential administrative leaders should be tapped from among CTE teacher leaders and leaders of CTE professional associations. In addition, information about the relevance of CTE programs should be included in all leadership programs.
  1. In the Big Five there is a lack of strong relationships between the CTE leadership and the directors of core content and assistant superintendents of instruction. This has made it difficult to make the connection between CTE and integrated academics and to encourage participation in the development of approved programs. In several instances, the CTE TAC has sought to meet with core content leadership and has been not been able to access this group.
  1. There is a need to raise the perceived value of the technical endorsement on the Regents diploma and diploma with advance designation with core content administrators, coordinators and teachers, colleges, apprentice programs, and the business community. Including this metric on the school report cards would be a positive step in signaling the importance of this enhanced diploma and would serve the dual purpose of indicating the number of students who have passed a technical assessment. When information on CTE participation and results is made transparent, there is a significant opportunity to improve the profile and importance of CTE. This is a modest mandate that should yield significant benefits. Additional work with business and industry associations and apprenticeship programs must be undertaken.
  1. The CTE professional organizations are loosely associated. There is no united front to market, advocate for, or raise the profile of CTE. Historically, these groups have focused their marketing efforts solely on their career area. There is a protectionist notion of advocacy.

Common Core and Instruction

The Common Core State Standards present challenges to CTE educators. While they are aware of the Common Core, several problems are common:

  1. Many CTE teachers view themselves as vocational educators and perceive core academics as the province of core teachers.
  1. Tools and training must be provided to assist CTE teachers to become ELA, math, science and social studies in-CTE teachers not teachers of core academics.
  1. CTE educators need to acquire the skill set to develop student learning tasks (formative and summative) at the level that will be required in the PARCC Next Generation Assessments and in conformance with the SED guidance on Student Learning Objectives (SLOs).
  1. Information and training is needed on curriculum mapping strategies/tools as well as the time to complete them.
  1. Time and methods are needed to crosswalk current standards to the Common Core State Standards.
  1. Ambivalence by local unions, core teachers and coordinators, etc. to integrated academics and the convergence of CTE and academics remains strong.

Competition

  1. There exists on several levels a competitive stance with respect to CTE. Many CTE educators view it as a zero sum game and fiercely protect their turf. BOCES educators are wary of the development of local CTE options that would reduce their enrollments. District core content teachers, and often principals, think BOCES is a convenient option for districts to enroll students after eliminating local CTE options or as placement for difficult to serve students. In the Big Five, the tension is between technical high schools with traditional CTE programs and comprehensive high schools that are instituting a variety of innovations such as career academies, early college programs, and others. This has mitigated the sharing of curriculum, work based learning experiences, post secondary articulations and other tools developed through the Approved Program process.
  1. The concept of integrated academics is perceived by academic departments and coordinators at a threat; academic departments are introducing their own “elective” courses to preserve current “full-time equivalents.”

Assessment

The technical assessments in CTE are a very charged issue. The concerns are compounded by the need to establish SLOs to meet the requirements of APPR under Education Law §3012-c and assessment of teachers based on growth. Here are the common concerns.

  1. The limits of currently available technical assessments and the purchase, administration, and data retrieval costs of the industry based assessments are frequently stated.
  1. The testing requirements for SED program approval are a problem which is deepening. Local CTE educators often feel the NOCTI assessments were “forced” on the field in order to get program approval. The assessments are viewed as cost prohibitive and not aligned with curriculum or instruction. Requests have been fielded for SED to bring teachers together from around the state (as is done for Regents exams) to develop a bank of questions (with industry input) that can be used for assessing programs as they are meant to be assessed. This call is made, of course without considering the psychometric limits of this type of effort.
  1. There are many instances where students complete an Approved Program but are not provided with the opportunity to challenge the technical assessment. Cost, student skills and instructor perception of student readiness are often cited.
  1. The conflict between the technical assessments and the SLOs protocol required for APPR will need resolution quickly.
  1. NOCTI has deep penetration in the state, and questions have been raised about cost, administration by practitioners in the career field and alignment to workplace standards as perceived by industry representatives.

Data

  1. A lack of understanding of what constitutes CTE and its value and the fear of yet another metric to evaluate a school impede data collection; principals put a low priority on it.
  1. There is insufficient training and support for gathering, entering, and reporting CTE data.
  1. Without a system that tracks individual students, the reporting requirements are administratively unfriendly and costly.
  1. Variations in the level of support provided to school districts by the RICs and by IT departments in the Big Five result in a lack of consistency across the state in data reporting.
  1. The recipients of Perkins funds are the most concerned with accurate reporting.

Business and Industry

  1. Access to work-based learning opportunities is difficult due to transportation issues, class schedules, the economy, and the staff required to foster the relationship with business/industry and clearly define the experiences.
  1. There is a dearth of materials on strategies for educators on how to engage the business community; they just don't speak the same language. Also, the development of customized training programs has been left to adult educators and community colleges.
  1. Businesses are often unwilling to make commitments to accept students for semester or year-long work experiences due to employee and union concerns.

Approved Programs

  1. Schools have difficulty seeing the advantage of having their CTE programs approved. Education is needed on why they should seek approval of their programs. What are the advantages?
  1. Establishing an articulation in unique pathways is difficult as there are fewer postsecondary providers, they are more remote and students are unlikely to take advantage of them (think engineering, bio-medical, nanotechnology, and others). Articulations in rural areas can be especially hard to establish due to the distance from postsecondary institutions.
  1. The technical endorsement is not well understood or acknowledged by colleges, businesses, the military, or apprenticeship programs. There is growing skepticism by districts and BOCES as to the value of the endorsement and the approval process itself. It is viewed as time-consuming and in competition with other demands placed on staff time, including the introduction of the Common Core State Standards, the APPR, and fiscal constraints that reduced time for curriculum work, professional development, and other reform initiatives. There is a sense that the programs could be offered without the approval process. A clearer understanding of the advantages, including the academic distribution possibilities, needs to be articulated. This is particularly true in districts that are less dependent on the time advantages that integrated academics and academic distribution provide to BOCES or other shared time programs.
  1. Districts and BOCES are frustrated by the lack of model or exemplar programs and the inability to take approved programs “off the shelf,” because each program must be uniquely constructed. Allowing adoption of a vetted, high-quality program in another district or BOCES following a local external review and confirmation of the work experience and articulations is worth considering.
  1. High school principals and CTE administrators are concerned about the additional layers of accountability that approved programs present without a perceived benefit.

Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR)