CTE in the News

by Nancy Gorman
CTE Copy Editor

It is wonderful to read in newspapers and magazines about Career and Technical Education in our Texas public schools.  Well-written articles make it clear that not all high school students are aimed at a post-secondary education. But students do have interests, skills, and perhaps talents that can lead them through a successful educational experience and the workplace, and CTE programs are can be the right environment for many to succeed.

 Columnist Steve Blow writing in The Dallas Morning News (April 4, 2010), told about his tour in a Grand Prairie high school and was pleasantly surprised with their plan of providing programs to students to prepare them for the working world.  The students’ classes help them with all phases of “employability” including personal skills as well as technical and educational knowledge.  They take many of the same course requirements as traditional high schools, but elective activities such as repairing computers, doing architectural design, printing banners, taking blood pressure, repairing cars, styling hair and more provide real-world opportunities to round out the educational experience. 

Involvement with CTE programs result in a lower dropout rate of students who get discouraged by taking only college prep curriculum.  This may seem like a side effect, but is actually an important factor in increasing school attendance rates

A bold new framework for College and Career plans was developed by Karen Alexander, an Ohio State University graduate (through PhD), whose studies and work at Texas Tech University in 2004 were presented to the Texas Education Agency in 2005. It became known as AchieveTexas which has become a cornerstone for education plans that schools and teachers can use immediately.  It is a full-bodied framework, encompassing full courses in English, language arts, math, science and social studies.  In addition, there are 16 federally defined career cluster outlines in the requirements.  These plans work, and they are continually being updated, amended, improved, and made more workable. (See two links to AchieveTexas, below.)

Read all you can in professional literature, newspapers in your area, “What’s New in Education” articles wherever they appear, and Board of Education news releases.  Find out how CTE programs work in your school or school district.  Let us know your news on our CTE Community Forum.

References

Blow, Steve. (2004, April 4). Here it’s vocation, vocation, vocation. The Dallas Morning News, pp 1B, 10B).

Ciccone, Janet. (2010). A confident future. Inspire 2010, The Ohio State University College of Education and Human Ecology, pp. 12-14.

http://www.achievetexas.org/index.html

http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/curriculum/achievetexas/index.html