Career and Technical Education and the College and Career Readiness Agenda

This month, the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium (NASDCTEc), in collaboration with 43 states and the District of Columbia, released a set of common standards for career and technical education (CTE).  The standards, known as the “Common Career Technical Core,” are designed to provide “a common benchmark for what students should know and be able to do after completing a [CTE] program of study.”  NASDCTEc hopes to universalize the standards through voluntary state adaptation.  The standards themselves are subdivided into 16 “Career Clusters that target various fields such as healthcare and architecture.  Each cluster lists specific skills students should acquire during their study.

Common standards are just one strategy that can enable CTE to improve college and career readiness for all students.  In the near future, the High School Matters blog will feature a series of posts on the role of career and technical education in actualizing college and career readiness.  The series will focus on the evolution of CTE, its role in ensuring all students graduate high school college and career ready, and offer concrete steps on how CTE can be used to implement college and career readiness.

Note: This blog post was originally authored under the auspices of the National High School Center at the American Institutes for Research (AIR). The National High School Center’s blog, High School Matters, which ran until March 2013, provided an objective perspective on the latest research, issues, and events that affected high school improvement. The CCRS Center plans to continue relevant work originally developed under the National High School Center grant. National High School Center blog posts that pertain to CCRS Center issues are included on this website as a resource to our stakeholders.

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