Infrastructure Key to Success of Career and Technical Education Programs

A recent report has shed light on the challenges faced by career and technical education (CTE) programs in the United States. Despite strong political support and attention, these programs struggle to find enough employers willing to host high school students in meaningful roles, or sometimes enough students to fill available spots.

The problem, according to the report, is not a lack of effort, but rather a lack of infrastructure. The report profiles six work-based learning programs across the United States, highlighting six key conditions that enabled them to move from pilot to permanent part of a redesigned high school experience.

## Conditions for Success

### 1. State Policy Support

State policy support is essential for the success of CTE programs. States that allow work-based learning hours to count toward graduation requirements and higher scores for career and technical education on state school accountability ratings are more likely to have successful programs. For example, Colorado and Indiana allow students to satisfy graduation requirements or earn a distinction on their diploma by completing a capstone project or a career course pathway with relevant work hours.

| State | Graduation Requirements | Career and Technical Education Scores | | --- | --- | --- | | Colorado | Yes | Higher scores | | Indiana | Yes | Higher scores |

### 2. Government Funding

Government funding is also crucial for the success of CTE programs. The report highlights the importance of combining multiple funding streams, including state career-technical education money, state and local workforce development funds, and school innovation dollars. For example, the Fremont Multidistrict Initiative in Colorado turned a state P-Tech designation into federal P-Tech dollars, which were layered on top of a state Opportunity Now workforce grant and ordinary state and local school funding.

### 3. Teacher Licensure Flexibility

Flexibility in teacher licensure is also essential for the success of CTE programs. Many states require educators or supervisors to hold a full license as a K-12 teacher, in addition to whatever certification their industry requires. However, some states, such as Indiana, have introduced "workplace specialist" certification for qualified industry professionals, which eases staffing challenges.

### 4. Employer Partnerships

Meaningful experiences in the field of choice through employer partnerships are fundamental to high-quality work-based learning. These partnerships must be structured to be mutually beneficial, which is best achieved through detailed partnership agreements. Program staff reported that the best partnerships were built on long-term relationships, with anchor partnerships with founding employers who helped design the pathway to a specific work experience.

### 5. Dedicated Staff

Dedicated full-time staffers for recruiting students and employers are essential for the success of CTE programs. Program leaders consider these coordinators so essential that funding their positions is a budget line alongside teachers, supplies, and transportation. To reach the scale needed to support one or more full-time coordinators, half the programs in the sample pooled school districts across rural counties or a metro area.

### 6. Transportation Plans

Transportation plans helping students get to their jobs improved access, especially in low-income or rural areas. Programs solved this challenge in different ways, including using school buses, leveraging county workforce dollars for transportation, and giving students tickets for riding public buses.

## Conclusion

The six programs profiled in the report demonstrate that work-based learning can succeed in rural and urban settings alike, using very different designs. However, the remaining question is whether the country will treat the infrastructure behind them as seriously as it treats the problem itself. By filing work-based learning under "core experience," the integration that makes it work starts to look like something a state or a region is responsible for building, the way it's responsible for roads or broadband.