Advanced Career
Advanced Career
What modern career and technical education looks like
Imagine high school classes that show students how learning connects to life and work outside the school walls. Hands-on team projects allow teens to test drive careers in high-demand fields while they learn rigorous academic math, science, reading and writing, and technical skills.
Real-world learning to prepare students for further study and a rewarding career is what SREB Advanced Career is all about. Students who might lose interest in a traditional course sit up and take notice when teachers help them master skills and knowledge they recognize as practical and meaningful to their future lives.
“It flips the switch for students who aren’t sparked by traditional teaching.”
Advanced Career is the culmination of years of work by states and the nation’s largest school improvement network at SREB. The result is turnkey pathways with everything a school needs to be sure they work, from curriculum to assessments to extensive training and support for teachers.
Each course in these pathways is hands-on, rich with projects and intellectually demanding. And all require application of college- and career-readiness standards in reading, writing, math, science and other areas so the students are ready for postsecondary study.
Students master complex academic and technical concepts and graduate ready for the workplace, technical colleges and universities.
College or Career?
Why not both?
High schools are challenged like never before to prepare students better for a wide array of postsecondary options. This brochure introduces the eight STEM-based AC programs ready for your school or system to adopt.
Advanced Career STEM Pathway Academies
Career academies: A proven strategy for engaging students
Research shows that career academies — small learning communities in which students take academic and technical courses as a cohort with dedicated academy teachers — not only help students transition to college, but also improve their labor market outcomes, according to studies conducted by MDRC.
High schools and technology centers that join SREB’s AC STEM Pathway Academy Network find that career academies naturally complement their existing efforts to improve instruction and engage students.
Advanced Career STEM Pathway Academies
This two-page document describes how high schools and technology centers that join SREB’s Advanced Career STEM Pathway Academy Network can adopt one or more AC pathways in an academy design that meets national standards for best practices.
For additional information, see Connecting Classrooms, Careers and College.
Q&A: Advanced Career STEM Pathways
A Learning Experience for Students and Teachers
By Gene Bottoms, SREB senior vice president
What goes on in the Advanced Career classroom? A lot of math. Intense researching and reading. Most importantly, learning. The type of learning that remains in the forefront of students’ minds as they apply it to practical, purposeful projects.
Credentials for All: An Imperative for SREB States
SREB’s Commission on Career and Technical Education offered eight actions states can take to build rigorous, relevant career pathways. Supported by policies and practices described in the report, these actions can help states increase the percentage of young adults earning valuable industry and postsecondary credentials.
Advanced Career Background
Advanced Career is an innovative initiative of SREB and a consortium of states to create career pathway programs of study that prepare high school students for careers and meaningful credentials or postsecondary certificates or degrees.