This story was originally published by The Hechinger Report.
If we want genuine, future-ready graduates, state policy and school curriculum decision-makers should start looking at the career technical education (CTE) playbook.
High schools have been working hard to expand and diversify prospects for students. Walk through any building and you’ll see a plethora of enriching experiences: students earning college credits, mastering technical skills and exploring careers.
But these programs typically provide limited opportunities to integrate pivotal skills — too often the kids enrolled in them are tracked into two categories: “college” or “career.”
Related: Newspapers, against the tide, keep student journalism alive on Minnesota campuses
Culturally, education has been focused on college pathways for decades; over the last few years, however, across the U.S., more schools have been adding career-oriented coursework. But academic knowledge and technical skills aren’t opposing forces; they’re complementary building blocks. Preparation for both is crucial.
When those categories are treated as separate destinations, the opportunity to gain essential skills and experiences from both is lost. Students miss out on the power of combining the conceptual depth of advanced academics with the practical applications of CTE.
Systems surrounding these pathways make blending the principles they espouse even harder. In many states, “academic” and “career” courses live in separate directories, draw on different funding streams and are measured by different accountability metrics.
This only furthers the polarization that leads to narrowing horizons. Even when coursework overlaps, some students earn college credits while others attain technical skills and industry credentials — when really it should be “both/and” instead of “either/or.”
The idea of merging college and career preparation is not new, yet a recent survey shows only around 1 in 6 educators connected to CTE find that they are seamlessly integrated in their schools. This is because the status quo has sent a quiet yet powerful message that academic success and technical skills are not equal.
I’ve been in the CTE space long enough to know that career readiness and college readiness both demand skills and depth of knowledge built through critical thinking, project-based learning and authentic, performance-based assessment. While the education sector has been focused on building CTE momentum to benefit career-oriented learners, advanced academic students have just as much to gain when learning is anchored in real-world problems.
A persistent stigma around CTE courses leaves most students unaware of their options or uneasy about taking them. We must stop forcing students onto separate tracks and instead embrace the strengths that both paths offer.
In the early 1990s in Tennessee, I was deemed an advanced high schooler and placed on a college-bound track with a small, promising cohort of honors peers. I vividly remember our final project in physics, in which we were required to build an actual catapult capable of launching a projectile across the room.
I was flummoxed by the project; most of us were. We were a bright group of students who could talk endlessly about theory but could not put concepts into action.
The only successful project belonged to a girl outside our cohort, a general education student whose catapult launched projectiles not only across the gym, but ultimately over the school.
Being “book smart,” I learned that day, is not the same as being prepared.
While education has evolved tremendously since then, some advanced academic programs are stuck in the same traditional practices that lack contextualized knowledge. Assessments based on timed tests, essays and multiple-choice questions may examine students’ discipline-specific knowledge, but authentic assessments that challenge students to show what they know and apply their skills to real-world scenarios make education relevant.
At Cambridge International Education, where I work, we know it’s entirely possible to create assessments that marry the theoretical knowledge emphasis of traditional tests with the hands-on application of CTE. And we know that doing so improves student learning, autonomy and motivation. Contextualizing content beyond the classroom requires higher-order thinking, problem-solving and decision-making: skills known to boost engagement and career success, whether students are headed straight to the workforce or going to college first.
In a rapidly changing world in which technological advancements and labor market demands outpace higher education trends, having real-world experience, adaptability and essential skills such as communication, judgment and critical thinking foster early career success.
There is no better time to instill those competencies than during the developmentally crucial years of high school.
CTE courses by nature do this. Increasingly, national conversations — including from thought leaders at Advance CTE — are pushing more schools toward models that integrate academic and career-focused learning rather than treating them as separate tracks. And schools and states across the country are seeing success in that approach.
Related: Chilling effects of Trump’s war on free speech extend far beyond campus walls – and that’s the point
Those of us in the education and policymaking fields must actively acknowledge and reflect on how readiness isn’t one thing or another. It’s a blend of curiosity, skills and adaptability.
Bringing this kind of learning to life takes courage, a willingness to make bold shifts in our perspective and a determination to take policy actions that allow for future-minded integration.
State policymakers can start by recognizing rigorous, dual-purpose courses for both academic and CTE credit and removing the barriers that keep these programs siloed.
School administrators must be willing to rethink course codes and champion local examples showing how integrated learning boosts engagement and achievement.
When we teach students how to think and how to do, we prepare them not just for their first job but for a lifetime of learning, opportunity and growth. That’s what real readiness looks like.
And that’s what every student deserves.
Related
