NRCCTE Presentations

NRCCTE at SREB director James R. Stone III presented High-Quality CTE – A Systems Approach to Benefitting All Students at ACTE Vision 2015 on Saturday, November 21, from 02:30 PM – 03:30 PM.

The National Research Center for Career and Technical Education has completed four studies designed to assess if or how well programs of study work. This session shared the results of these studies and highlighted what is working and what is not.

NRCCTE Director James R. Stone III discussed career development and exploration as a fundamental component of preparing college- and career-ready students in this keynote presentation made at the 2014 ACTE conference in Nashville, TN.

In this presentation made at ACTE’s VISION 2013 Convention, Marisa Castellano summaries major research findings from the NRCCTE’s three field-based studies of programs of study/career pathways.

Dr. James R. Stone III delivered “Building Career Pathways to Success” as an intensive workshop at the 2013 AdvancED Wyoming Fall Conference at the Little America Hotel and Resort in Cheyenne, WY.

College and career readiness defines the focus of today’s high school. While college readiness is generally understood, career readiness remains a more elusive concept. In this presentation made at SREB’s HSTW Staff Development Conference in Charlotte, NC, NRCCTE Director Jim Stone explore the multiple perspectives of academic, employability and technical skills that define career readiness and their intersection with college readiness.

The labor market is changing, the world is flattening: Too many of our youth fail to complete high school and many who do are ill-prepared for any career pathway, including those that require college. Drawing from recent national and international reports and current research, Dr. Stone explored in this presentation made at the annual conference of the Iowa Association for Career and Technical Education how CTE can make high school matter to more students and fulfill its necessary role of preparing all young people to become successful participants in our economic system.

This presentation made at AERA 2013 in San Francisco addressed preliminary findings from a longitudinal study, currently in its final federally funded year, that estimates the impact of career academies on student achievement by comparing outcomes between POS students and well-matched comparison groups in three large urban districts. The presentation addressed achievement results encompassing the full four years of high school, including academic and CTE GPAs, credits earned, dual credit participation, and graduation.

This presentation, made at AERA 2013, addressed differing perspectives on high schools participating in a rigorous longitudinal study of a large urban district’s implementation of CTE programs of study (POS)– one from research, the other from the district’s school rating system. The study sample consisted of students in three wall-to-wall career academy high schools and the students who applied to be in them but were not selected by the district lottery. The presentation described study outcomes, which differed from the results of a new school rating system, which were described by the district’s CTE director. Both presenters discussed the implications for researchers studying large urban districts and for district personnel considering participating in research studies.

This keynote address from the 2013 National Technology Centers That Work Leaders’ Forum, Technology Centers of the Future, describes the NRCCTE’s evidence-based curriculum integration models– Math-in-CTE, Literacy-in-CTE, and Science-in-CTE. Evidence-based curriculum integration models like these are a key strategy for teaching more students the essential concepts of the college-preparatory curriculum by encouraging them to apply academic content and skills to real-world problems and projects within their CTE studies.

This session from ACTE’s VISION 2012 meeting described how a math teacher and a construction teacher from Minneapolis Public Schools applied the NRCCTE’s Math-in-CTE model to create a blocked Geometry in Construction course. Presenters also described how the course aligns with Common Core Math Standards, shared data from the first year of implementation, and outlined plans to move toward a full STEM model. Presenters:  Wendi Palazzo, Mike Lindstrom, and Godfrey Edaferierhi, Minneapolis Public Schools.

A key strategy for helping students achieve is making effective use of the quantities of assessment data available to educators. At her presentation at ACTE’s VISION 2012 meeting, Sandy Pritz of NOCTI described how NRCCTE researchers at NOCTI spent three years researching and pilot-testing a professional development model that takes the confusion out of interpreting and using assessment data and helps educators focus on the data connections between work and real-world student learning. CTEDDI (Career Technical Educators Using Data-Driven Improvement) is the only evidence-based program designed to prepare CTE administrators and teachers to use assessment data to continuously improve programs and target individual and group needs in CTE classrooms.

The labor market is changing, the world is flattening: Too many of our youth fail to complete high school and many who do are ill-prepared for any career pathway, including those that require college. Drawing from recent national and international reports and current research, Dr. Stone explores in this presentation how CTE can make high school matter to more students and fulfill its necessary role of preparing all young people to become successful participants in our economic system.

As states continue to develop and implement programs of study, many challenges have emerged. The National Research Center for Career and Technical Education has several research studies designed to examine how states and local school districts are addressing these challenges. This presentation will provide the latest findings from numerous studies currently being conducted in states across our nation.

The Pathways to Prosperity report emphasizes the limitations of preparing students based solely on academics and advocates high quality CTE. Similar recommendations are being made by leading organizations involved in economic development. One of the largest technical assessment firms is evaluating how the nation is progressing using a lens focused on technical assessment scores. Participants will learn valuable information about utilizing testing in the classroom to meet federal reporting requirements and to document program improvement.

An NRCCTE/OVAE Webinar

The NRCCTE and OVAE hosted a series of webinars based on the findings from the White House Summit on Community Colleges, the Regional Summits that followed, and the Virtual Symposium on Community Colleges. This third webinar in the series highlighted how community colleges, adult education, workforce and industry partners and others are well-positioned to promote college and career readiness through the development and implementation of career pathway bridge programs. This webinar also built on the President’s recent State of the Union address, focusing particularly on community colleges and their role in helping American students and employers gain access to the skills they need to compete in today’s global marketplace.

An NRCCTE/OVAE Webinar

On March 26, 2012, the NRCCTE and OVAE hosted the second in a series of webinars based on the findings from the White House Summit on Community Colleges, the Regional Summits that followed, and the Virtual Symposium on Community Colleges. This webinar builds on the President’s recent State of the Union address, particularly its focus on strengthening the pipeline between high school and college for all students. The presentation features key practitioners at every level of career and technical education systems (from Administration officials to a high school principal) and will highlight their work on easing the transition from high school to college and careers. The webinar highlights successful strategies for aligning secondary and postsecondary career and technical education.

The NRCCTE has conducted three research studies in CTE-academic integration: Math-in-CTE; Authentic Literacy-in-CTE; and most recently, Science-in-CTE. Attendees will hear about the outcomes of these studies and learn more about the practical aspects of implementing models of curriculum integration.

CTE teachers face the challenge of preparing all students for the high-performance workplace of the 21st-century and for continued learning. Based on the findings of a research project designed to train beginning CTE teachers, this session will highlight seven instructional skills that CTE teachers need to face the challenges of 21st-century. CTE instruction-planning standards-based instruction, designing standards-based assessment, facilitating project-based learning, using cooperative learning, integrating literacy, integrating numeracy and managing the classroom to create a climate of personalization and support.

The NRCCTE is developing two professional development models focused on improving secondary CTE that address: supporting teachers entering the profession through alternative routes and the use of technical assessment data to drive instructional improvement and student achievement. John Foster, project director of the CTEDDI professional development model, discussed these two projects and results from pilot and field studies.

National databases are useful, rich sources of information for education in general, but since they use comprehensive samples, they do not necessarily address the specific complexity of CTE. At the NRCCTE, we have been using NCES databases to build a new CTE taxonomy that relates CTE secondary course taking to occupational areas. The new taxonomy allows the Center to report more effectively on the engagement, achievement, and transition of CTE students.

Career and technical teachers face the challenge of preparing all students for the high-performance workplace of the twenty-first century and for continued learning throughout life. Based on the findings of a research project designed to train beginning career and technical teachers, this session will highlight emerging instructional skills that CTE teachers need to face this challenge, standards-based instructional planning, the use of research-based instructional strategies, a comprehensive approach to assessment and a classroom management approach that creates a climate of personalization and support.

This project examines three local CTE programs of study to better understand how this aspect of Perkins IV legislation is being implemented. How do mature POS work in practice, and how does this relate to the Perkins IV requirements? Case studies and backward maps of how the POS work are being developed from interviews, focus groups, student surveys, and document analysis in three communities to understand how the POS were developed and how they are sustained locally. Preliminary results will be presented and questions will be asked to facilitate interactive audience discussion of the findings.

As a part of a larger literacy study, 51 CTE teachers in New York State completed a self-assessment measuring their transactional and transformational leadership through each of the nine components of the Full Range of Leadership Model. The outcome variables of this correlational study were gain scores over a period of eleven weeks for reading comprehension and motivation for reading. Idealized Influence-Behavioral and Idealized Influence-Attributed were both found to have significant relationships with both outcome variables. Intellectual Stimulation was found to have a significant relationship with reading comprehension. Several demographic and literacy variables were collected and analyzed. Significant relationships were found between reading comprehension and student gender as well as student socioeconomic status.

“Drowning in data”, is a phrase we hear in education often these days. Teachers frequently don’t have the time or the expertise to make sense of the assessment data they receive, much less use it for instructional improvement. The NRCCTE has recently completed a national study on how to use end of program technical assessment data to improve instruction through professional development. This innovative program offers in-state facilitation, mentorship, a social networking tool and ongoing contact.  Through this program educators learn to use data from their own students to identify individual and group instructional needs and initiate plans to improve instruction.  Best of all, this program will be offered through the NRCCTE as technical assistance to states.

Beginning career and technical teachers need a variety of support to make a successful transition to teaching. This session will share findings of the field tests of an induction model that provides professional development and support to improve new teachers’ competence, self-efficacy and commitment to the profession. The model includes a professional development focus on 21st -century instruction in CTE, support from a local mentor in the teacher’s school, guidance from an administrator, coaching from the professional development instructor and electronic communities of practice.

Secondary educators involved with this NOCTI/NRCCTE pilot project learned to use assessment data to identify individual/group instructional needs and to improve program curriculum. Learn about the professional development strategies provided, the effectiveness of that training, and find out which strategies the educators feel should be continued to help improve student success. Find out how your school could benefit as this work becomes available for technical assistance.

Building on the successful Math-in-CTE study, presenters will share recent findings from two new NRCCTE curriculum integration studies: Authentic Literacy-in-CTE and Science-in-CTE. Special emphasis will be placed on the core principles of successful academic-CTE integration and what researchers are continuing to learn about integration that works in real classrooms with real teachers.

Secondary-level CTE is broadening its purpose from preparation for entry-level jobs to preparation for both employment and postsecondary education. This expanded purpose requires teachers who have a wider range of skills and knowledge than in the past. In this session two of the authors of the NRCCTE report examine the influences that are creating the changed context in which professional development for secondary CTE teachers operates and the kinds of learning needed to respond to this context.

Presenters will share recent findings from two new NRCCTE curriculum integration studies: Authentic Literacy in CTE and Science-in-CTE. Special emphasis will be placed on the core principles of successful academic-CTE integration and what researchers are continuing to learn about integration that works in real classrooms with real teachers.

This session will provide an overview of the NRCCTE-sponsored, AED-led Technical Assistance Academy to support states in developing green-focused Programs of Study (POS). The Academy process will be described as a strategy for building replicable implementation models to bring POS to scale. In addition, this session will explore the implications of the emerging green labor market for the delivery of CTE and the larger role that POS play in the NRCCTE’s research agenda.

Participants in the NRCCTE’s video about POS in Brevard Public Schools (BPS) discussed the development of POS in BPS and answered questions about the Brevard experience during a one-hour live webinar held on Thursday, May 6, 2010.

The Brevard video is the second of three site-based videos on the experiences of districts and schools implementing POS. The NRCCTE visited Viera High School, part of BPS, and talked to faculty, staff, and students from BPS and Brevard Community College (BCC). BPS has worked with its postsecondary and business-and-industry partners on its advisory committees to organize its POS to help students, parents, and counselors plan rigorous and relevant course sequences leading to industry-recognized credentials and postsecondary credit-earning opportunities, particularly through its college credit certificates (CCCs).

Many educators are struggling to develop programs of study (POS). This is a descriptive study of “mature” POS sites from around the country to learn about challenges and solutions in the development of POS.

This presentation outlined the impediments to site selection in RCT studies, particularly when the randomization technique is “naturally occurring” in the form of district-run lotteries for entrance into oversubscribed programs. The setting is a longitudinal study evaluating the federal policy of CTE programs of study.

NOCTI has conducted a NRCCTE investigation into if/how secondary CTE educators use technical assessment data to improve programs and identify individual/group instructional needs. Findings from survey research and insights from the literature will be discussed with implications for the sustained and interactive professional development being created to respond to the needs expressed by the field.

Jim Stone presents the keynote address at the ACTE-NOCTI Pre-Convention Assessment Conference at the annual meeting of the Association for Career and Technical Education in Nashville, TN.