Tag Archives: CTE

Career Prep Pathways Need Prioritizing

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There is a long-standing adage in school campus planning that says, “don’t pave the sidewalks until you see where students are walking – pave where they walk and have killed the grass.” That seems like a practical plan. On the other hand, academic curriculum planners do not inquire as to what children want to learn. They assume the tradition of college preparation. If we planned K-12 curriculum like we plan K-12 sidewalks, the curriculum children learn in school would be different than it is today.

What do we know?

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction boldly claims the mission of preparing children in Wisconsin to be college and career ready. The DPI says, “Public schools are working to graduate every child ready for college and career.” But what does college and career ready mean?

“In addition to having knowledge in academic content areas, the Wisconsin way of college and career readiness values skills and habits. Our graduates must be critical thinkers, able to communicate effectively, collaborate with others, and solve real world problems. Ultimately, we want our kids to be good adults.”

https://dpi.wi.gov/families-students/student-success/ccr

Reads like a good plan. There are two end points in public education: preparation for college and preparation for entering a career. However, reading like a good plan and being a good plan are vastly different.

Again, from the DPI. “The state graduation requirements under Wis. Stats. 118.33 and 118.33(1m)(a)1, Section 3266R total 15 credits and the successful passing of a civics exam. The 15 credits include the following:

  • English/Language Arts – 4 credits
  • Math – 3 credits
  • Science – 3 credits
  • Social Studies – 3 credits
  • Physical Education – 1.5 credits
  • Health – .5 credit in grades 7-12 (needed but not part of the 15 credits due to grades 7-8)
  • Personal Finance – .5 credit

https://dpi.wi.gov/graduation/requirements

Further, the DPI describes elective credits, in the range of 8.5 credits, that a school board may add to the state’s 15 credits. In examining a variety of school districts, most boards strengthen the college preparatory pathway by adding credits in social studies, science, PE, foreign language, the arts, and computer technology.

Further yet, the small print in district publications describes articulated or dual credits and apprenticeship programs. Articulated or dual credits are awarded for courses at the high school or technical college or college/university that a high school student may take and receive both high school and post-high school credit.

The reality is “A minority of students said their school offer opportunities to learn job-related skills, practice applying or interviewing for jobs, or work on projects related to a career they want to pursue.” “Less than a quarter of high schoolers reported having ‘a lot’ of conversations about non-college pathways such as apprenticeships or internships (23 percent), careers that don’t require a degree (19 percent), or starting a business of their own (13 percent).”

https://www.edweek.org/leadership/do-students-think-what-theyre-learning-matters/2024/08F

Where is the career pathway?

The curriculum we provide, and the curriculum children want.

Let us backward design high school curriculum.

“In October 2023, 61.4 percent of 2023 high school graduates ages 16 to 24 were enrolled in colleges of universities, little changed from the previous year. Among recent graduates, ages 16 to 24, 57.6% of men and 65.3 percent of women were enrolled in college. Among 16- to 24-year-olds, 43.7% of recent high school dropouts were working or looking for work. There were 18.0 million people ages 16 to 24 who were not enrolled in school, 45.6% of this age group.”

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/hsgec.nr0.htm

Using the sidewalk paving model, 60% of high school students need a college prep curriculum and 40% need a career prep curriculum. Therefore, 40% of a high school curriculum should be CTE.

From the DPI –

“Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs provide students with a foundation for a wide range of careers that reflect the contemporary workplace.

Academic & Technical Skills – CTE programs promote life-long learning in a global society.

Work-based Learning – CTE programs strengthen business and education partnerships to provide students with opportunities to reinforce skills and behaviors for the workforce.”

These are the sixteen Career Clusters, and the Pathways described by the DPI.

  • Agriculture Food and Natural Resources
  • Architecture and Construction
  • Arts, Audio/Video Technology and Communication
  • Business Management and Administration
  • Education and Training
  • Finance
  • Government and Public Administration
  • Hospitality and Tourism
  • Human Services
  • Information Technology
  • Law, Public Safety, Corrections and Security
  • Manufacturing
  • Marketing
  • Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
  • Transportation Distribution and Logistics

https://dpi.wi.gov/sites/default/files/imce/cte/pdf/career_cluster_handout_v1.pdf

The DPI site describes an Academic and Career Planning process that “…leads naturally to a career pathway. In K-12 education, a career pathway is a series of connected career and technical education and training opportunities that move seamlessly into a a post secondary options for a specific career area. A high school career pathway includes:

  • A sequence of career and technical education courses
  • Opportunities to earn industry-recognized credentials
  • Work-based learning experiences
  • Dual-enrollment opportunities
  • Career and technical student organization related activities

The Big Duh!

I know grads of our local school who own, manage, and run businesses, resorts, construction companies, studios, serve in hospitals and clinics, law enforcement, and are paraprofessionals in schools. They are highly successful in work that does require a baccalaureate degree. As I reflect on their secondary school experience, they completed a college prep curriculum because we said, “it will be good for them” and “they will be prepared for college should they decide to go.”  The reality is our school did not assist them in their career pathway, we got in the way.

School boards do not need to invent career and technical education or its pathways. They exist. School boards need to re-evaluate their priorities, acknowledge the 40% of graduates who do not enroll in a college or university, and start paving a CTE curriculum where students’ footprints already exist.

Being Taught By an Unprepared Teacher Is a Mathematical Certainty

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The shortage of qualified teachers in our schools is real and if it has not touched children in your school yet it will.  I remember Andrews, the naval architect in the movie Titanic, saying to Captain Smith, “Titanic will founder (sink).  It is a mathematical certainty, Sir”.  He was not believed.  The Titanic was supposed to be unsinkable!  So, it is with less than prepared teachers in classrooms.  A school’s statement of “a quality teacher in every classroom” has the same credibility as believing the Titanic could not sink.  Your children will be taught by unprepared teachers; it is a mathematical certainty.

A shortage of teachers had been a long time coming, but it always was coming.  It always was a story of numbers.  Today there are more teaching jobs posted than candidates and the gap in this trend is widening not narrowing.  Principals in the 80s and 90s could unabashedly expect between 50 and 100 applications for a posted teaching position.  In 2022 too many postings for teaching positions did not stir a single application. 

Four reasons are engineering our shortage of classroom teachers.

  1. Starting a career in education is economically difficult to impossible.  The disparity between the cost of a college degree and teacher certification and a teacher’s salary during the first ten years of employment turn people away from becoming teachers.  Too many teachers are burdened with college debt and their salaries are inadequate for meeting today’s cost of living and debt payments.  Debt is driving teachers from the classroom and preventing others from a career in teaching.
  2. Public confidence in public education was dramatically damaged by the pandemic.  The work of classroom teachers was not the issue.  It was the political battleground of school closings, required quarantining, masking and vaccination, and the failure of remote and home-based learning that constantly grew parental hostility to public schools.
  3. The continuing inequality issues inherent in education have not changed.  As a correct generalization, children in wealthier communities and well-financed schools receive a better education and educational experience than children in impoverished and under-financed schools.  Everything from student-teacher ratios to midday snacks to enrichment field trips hinges on financing.  It is hard to recruit teachers to teach in under-supported schools.  These schools are plagued by a lack of prepared teachers.
  4. More teachers are retiring and resigning than are graduating from teacher preparation programs of any design.  Interestingly, we have enough people with a teaching license to place a prepared teacher in every classroom.  We do not have enough licensed teachers who want to teach.

State legislators are responding to constituent school districts declarations of teacher shortages by modifying statutory requirements for a teaching license.  To meet legislative direction, state departments of public instruction are creating a “buffet” of alternative strategies for awarding a teaching license.  Sadly, the buffet is becoming more of a snack bar.  These “buffet” options:

  • Incrementally reduce the requirement of a baccalaureate degree in education as the benchmark for a teaching degree.  Teacher licensing based upon a BA degree requires a candidate to have completed a broader array of course work in English, mathematics, science, and the social sciences.  This background education provides teachers with contextual information that more completely teaches children the “why and wherefores of answers” and not just if an answer is correct or incorrect.  Reducing background academic knowledge reduces the quality of instruction and learning.  Without adequate background knowledge teachers are unprepared.
  • Focus on how to teach and not how to teach children.  For example, a Career and Technical Education (CTE) certification program allows a candidate with a BA in a technical field and more than three years working experience in that field to complete a minimum number of instructional courses to qualify for a teaching license.  Too often classroom management, child psychology, testing and assessment, and teaching children with educational challenges are not included in CTE preparation.  Teachers who do not understand children are unprepared.
  • Eliminate student teaching.  The American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE) offers a teaching license based upon virtual course work and exams.  No student teaching is required; if you can pass tests, you can teach.  ABCTE says so.  The practicum of student teaching is how unexperienced teachers become prepared.  Without student teaching, children are guinea pigs for unprepared teachers.
  • Keep reducing teacher preparation to place an adult in the classroom.  Legislation is pending to allow a person with an associate degree and experience as a Teacher Aide to be eligible for teacher training.  Legislation is also pending to allow a person with a high school education to work as a substitute teacher.  This returns us to 1900 when an 8th grade graduate could teach elementary school and high school grad could teach secondary school.  It is the Cadillac of unpreparedness.

There is some hope for the future as school boards increase teacher compensation.  There is some hope as the federal government attempts to reduce student debt.  There is some hope as schools return to the look of pre-pandemic stability.  There is some hope that public confidence in public schools will return to a positive value. 

But trends, like the Titanic, do not change course easily.  A course correction for the Titanic or a public institution takes time to affect and during that time more harm is inflicted.  While it was a mathematical certainty the Titanic would sink due to a rip in its hull, the employment of unprepared teachers need not sink public education.  If we value public education, the trend toward the employment of unprepared teachers will reverse itself.  But it will take time, if we value public education.