NRCCTE Presentations

NRCCTE at SREB director James R. Stone III delivered this keynote address at the Alaska ACTE Professional Development Conference, “Alaska ACTE: Building a State of Collaboration,” at the Anchorage Marriott Downtown, on Wednesday, October 21, 2015.

Jim Stone delivered this keynote address, “What the Research Is Telling Us About High-Quality CTE,” at a conference hosted by the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and the Albert Shanker Institute entitled “Fulfilling The Promise Of a Quality Education for All: 21st Century Career-Technical Education.” The presentation summarized the evidence from data and analyses produced by the NRCCTE, the National Center for Education Statistics, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and other sources of evidence-based research.

As part of a larger session entitled, “Signature Features of Rigorous Career Pathway Programs of Study,” NRCCTE Director Jim Stone discussed the signature features that must be present to have rigorous CTE programs that prepare students for further study, employer certification exams and advanced training. This presentation was made at SREB’s HSTW Staff Development Conference in Charlotte, NC.

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. NRCCTE Director Jim Stone made this keynote address at the Pennsylvania Association of Career and Technical Administrators Summer Leadership Conference in State College, PA. In the presentation, Dr. Stone explored the multiple perspectives of academic, employability and technical skills that define career readiness and their intersection with college readiness.

In this presentation made at the annual conference of the Iowa Association for Career and Technical Education, NRCCTE Director Jim Stone addressed how high schools have become increasingly narrow in focus – a new middle school; useful only to prepare youth for the next level of education: college. The net result is a system that ill-serves the 60% of students who start ninth grade and who will never complete a college degree. This argues for structuring opportunities to provide all young people multiple pathways to a productive adulthood by addressing the three domains of knowledge/skill required for success: occupational expression of academics, generalizable workplace skills and specific technical skills. One policy approach to addressing this challenge has been programs of study and more recently college and career readiness.

This presentation, made at AERA 2013 in San Francisco, explored the role of financial aid (overall, as well as Pell grants, Stafford subsidized loans, Stafford unsubsidized loans, and Other sources of financial aid, a category encompassing state, local, and institutional sources) in the retention of occupational and non-occupational students, using institutional data from three community colleges in three different states. While occupational and non-occupational students were not differentially helped by financial aid in terms of the duration of their retention, some forms of financial aid were more strongly associated with short-term retention, which means that more occupational students using those types of financial aid would complete short-term credentials, while similar non-occupational students would not reach any credential goal.

This roundtable discussion, held at AERA 2013 in San Francisco, addressed how high schools have become increasingly narrow in focus – a new middle school; useful only to prepare youth for the next level of education: college. The net result is a system that ill-serves the 60% of students who start ninth grade and who will never complete a college degree. This argues for structuring opportunities to provide all young people multiple pathways to a productive adulthood by addressing the three domains of knowledge/skill required for success: occupational expression of academics, generalizable workplace skills and specific technical skills. One policy approach to addressing this challenge has been programs of study and more recently college and career readiness. This discussion addressed the current research and future possibilities of these policy initiatives.

On February 27th, approximately 140 educators gathered at the South Penn campus of Moore-Norman Technology Center to hear from national and state experts as they spoke on rigorous programs of study. Robert Shumer, a research associate/lecturer at the University of Minnesota and a participant in the NRCCTE’s original National Programs of Study Institute (NPOSI), kicked off the summit, sharing a national perspective with attendees. Presenters included ODCTE staff as well as participants from the Oklahoma Programs of Study Institute.

In this presentation made at ACTE’s VISION 2012 meeting, Jim Stone presented the latest secondary and postsecondary academic and technical student outcome data and findings derived from the NRCCTE’s groundbreaking longitudinal studies of programs of study/career pathways. The only such intensive, long-term, field-based research on POS in the United States, the NRCCTE is now collecting data on the key transition of POS students to postsecondary education and the workforce.

It’s not hard to find research on integrating academics into a CTE class that concludes with how that research will help your students. It is more difficult to find teachers who have done it and can demonstrate how you can integrate math into your CTE course. In this presentation from ACTE’s VISION 2012 meeting, Montana math and construction teachers use their lesson plans for a house-building class to offer a step-by-step approach to teaching students math while they build a house. Based on the NRCCTE’s Math-in-CTE model.

This webinar describes the Crosswalk Validation Project and provides an understanding of why a validated crosswalk is needed when developing and implementing programs of study, career pathways, or career preparation areas more generally. Webinar panelists describe how state education agencies (SEAs) and local education agencies (LEAs) can use the crosswalks to build linkages for career guidance and discuss why SEAs and LEAs need to use a validated resource for reporting Perkins accountability requirements.  

There has been much interest recently in career preparation areas (CPS) that CTE students may choose at the start of their high school experience.  The CPS is like the Perkins Programs of Study (POS).  The CPS/POS is simulated in nature since actual student experience in CPS/POS cannot be discerned. The presentation uses an NCES national data set (ELS2002) to develop synthetic CPS/POS.  The top CPS/POS will be identified and outcome measures for several CPS/POS will be developed around the student’s high school and postsecondary experiences.

Maine state policy for Career Technical Education includes effective professional development opportunities for educators. Implementation of the well-researched Career and Technical Educators using Data-Driven Improvement (CTEDDI) model began with four schools in August 2011. Plans to offer additional CTEDDI training statewide will broaden a culture of data analysis for informed instructional decisions.

A beginning postsecondary (BPS) student is one who is entering higher education for the first time, typically a community college. Such students face significant risk factors when it comes to enrolling and completing a postsecondary education.  This presentation uses the NCES 2004-2009 BPS data to examine these risk factors in enrolling and completing postsecondary education and assesses the relative outcomes between CTE and non-CTE students.  The presentation also provides comparisons to  a similar study that uses the 1996-2001 BPS data.

How can states and school districts effectively integrate academics into CTE in order to meet Common Core and student learning needs?  The NRCCTE has developed research-based, proven models to integrate match, science and literacy into CTE.  Workshop participants will learn about the pedagogic models, learn about research updates, and explore means of integrating those models into CTE classrooms.  Ask questions about research and models about how to use this research to help your teachers and students.

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.

As states continue to develop 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 five separate studies currently being conducted in a dozen states.

Beginning CTE teachers need a variety of support to make a successful transition to teaching and meet the challenges of CTE teaching in the 21st-century. This session will share the findings of a collaborative project between the NRCCTE and SREB to develop an induction model that provides over 200 hours of professional development and support framed around the most pressing questions new teachers face.

One important way CTE is focusing on education reform is through attention to data-driven instructional techniques for improving and focusing instruction on what matters most. In the 2011-2012 school year, the NRCCTE will offer CTEDDI (Career and Technical Educators using Data-Driven Improvement) to states as a technical assistance option. CTEDDI will provide educators from participating states with professional development to increase their knowledge and skills in the use and interpretation of assessment data for making instructional improvements. CTEDDI will be delivered by facilitators who will also serve as coaches as the educators apply their initial training at their school sites.

The NRCCTE has access to the data obtained from several of the surveys that the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) regularly collects. Two of which – High School Transcripts Study (HSTS) and the Education Longitudinal Study (ELS) — have been used to build and verify a new CTE taxonomy that relates secondary courses and postsecondary programs to occupational areas. The new taxonomy allows the Center to report more effectively on the engagement, achievement and transition of CTE secondary and postsecondary students.

As the discussions of Perkins reauthorization move forward, given current trends related to the country’s economic condition matched with growing concern about U.S. economic competitiveness, attention is now being focused on educating the 21st-century workforce. In this regard, CTE is being seen as an increasingly major contributor to the White House’s agenda-but with a caveat. CTE must convincingly make the case that it adds value to federal education and workforce development efforts. In short, does the federal investment in CTE pay off? Answering this question requires the development of a research agenda focusing on return on investment (ROI) that will analyze the benefits of investment in CTE programs from the perspective of both the individual and society.

2011 ACTE National Policy Seminar Panel Discussion

College and career ready is a concept heavy on college ready. This panel addressed the career ready part of the concept. Center Director Dr. Jim Stone and a panel of experts presented a timely seminar and simultaneous webinar event on “The Career Side of College and Career Ready” at ACTE’s 2011 National Policy Seminar, March 8, 2011, at the Crystal Gateway Marriott, Arlington, VA.

CTE teachers were interviewed after completing a semester-long pilot study which implemented literacy frameworks in their classrooms. Themes included developing teacher confidence, building communities of practice, utilizing authentic text, providing initial professional development, making strategy adjustments, achieving framework adoption, and experiencing student receptiveness. In this manuscript researchers analyze their comments and attempt to define what an effective literacy framework within CTE needs to better equip both pre-service and current CTE teachers to incorporate literacy into their classrooms.

In 2009-2010, the National Research Center for Career and Technical Education TA Academy worked with five states in building capacity for assisting local education agencies and postsecondary institutions in developing “green-focused” programs of study (POS) models. Five states– Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, Ohio, and Oregon– designed POS models that prepare secondary and postsecondary students for high-skill, high-wage, high-demand employment in positions associated with green-focused jobs in any of the 16 Career Clusters, including those aligned with the President’s priorities for green technology in energy, housing, and construction. The intent of the TA Academy was to build replicable implementation models for bringing POS to scale within states. This presentation will present the process and outcomes of the TA Academy for each of the five states focusing on lessons learned about developing model POS systems.

“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.

This interactive presentation will focus on the various strategies and measurement tools incorporated in several national teacher certification models. The discussion will provide background on statewide and national systems implemented to support the nontraditional preparation of CTE teachers in a variety of different certificate areas. An explanation of how the various processes have improved the quality of the technical teaching force will also be included.

The NRCCTE has developed a comprehensive agenda for technical assistance and dissemination that addresses various issues surrounding CTE accountability and evaluation. Included in this agenda are return on investment (ROI) studies at local, agency and state levels. This presentation will focus on the NRCCTE’s efforts to develop an ROI guidebook outlining the building blocks for ROI studies, how ROI studies might vary when conducted at different operational levels and case studies, data requirements, and a glossary of definitions. The presentation will also discuss a proposed dissemination and technical assistance strategy for informing stakeholders about the ROI guidebook at various CTE and workforce development conferences and meetings.

The NRCCTE is part-way through three longitudinal studies of programs of study. This session will share our findings to date and lessons learned from this research.

Developing a national technical skills inventory database is necessary if states are to comply with the most critical Perkins accountability requirements. A searchable database of technical skills assessment information can provide consistency from state to state when reporting about technical skill proficiency in secondary and postsecondary CTE programs.

Marisa Castellano, NRCCTE researcher, and Pradeep Kotamraju, Deputy Director of the NRCCTE, represented the NRCCTE at the Office of Vocational and Adult Education’s Data Quality Meeting in Baltimore, MD from December 1st through the 3rd, 2009.

NOCTI, a partner in the NRCCTE, is conducting a descriptive survey study to investigate how secondary CTE educators, both administrators and teachers, use technical assessment data to improve program curriculum and to identify individual/group instruction needs.

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.

The growing demand for CTE teachers, coupled with the diminished supply of teachers from traditional teacher-education programs, has led to a sharp increase of alternatively licensed teachers in CTE classrooms. How to help them quickly become proficient in the skills necessary to successfully manage a classroom and achieve Perkins-related academic and technical outcomes is a challenge.