May's Interactive Resource Review: CTE on the Frontier: Series of Four Briefs by Advance CTE

Hello from Advance CTE!

Advance CTE is a national non-profit organization that represents State Directors and state leaders responsible for secondary, postsecondary and adult Career Technical Education (CTE) across all 50 states and U.S. territories. Advance CTE was formerly known as the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium (NASDCTEc). We support visionary state leadership and cultivate best practices to promote academic and technical excellence that ensures a career-ready workforce.

Advance CTE recently released four briefs on the topic of access to quality CTE in rural communities. I’m excited to share these briefs here on the LINCS Advancing Equity in CTE website. Improving Career Technical Education (CTE) quality in rural communities is an imperative for all states, yet rural CTE programs can face unique challenges, such as teacher supply, limited employer relationships, and larger service areas.

The first brief explores state strategies to improve the quality of local CTE programs to ensure they meet industry needs and expand opportunities for rural learners. The brief profiles Nebraska, South Dakota, Idaho and Mississippi to demonstrate different approaches state leaders can take to empower local leaders and support program improvement in rural areas.

The second brief addresses challenges to employer engagement and the provision of work-based learning, highlighting innovations in West Virginia, Louisiana, Montana and North Dakota. The third installment in the series is designed to help states identify promising strategies for expanding the variety of career pathways available in rural areas. The brief profiles how states such as Nebraska, Alaska, North Dakota and Idaho have leveraged strategic partnerships and new technologies to reach economies of scale and offer a wider breadth of career pathways to rural learners. 

And, finally, we offer a “cheat sheet” to help rural policymakers identify leverage points across federal education and workforce programs to support and expand access to high-quality rural CTE at both the secondary and postsecondary levels.

Just last month we also released two support documents to make the briefs actionable - the strategy guide offers a series of questions for state leaders to use as they reflect on current efforts to expand access to high-quality CTE  and career-focused pathways and experiences in rural communities and to identify future opportunities and actions. While many of the questions may be difficult to answer at this time, those unanswerable questions can provide a lot of direction for a state’s next steps, including data to gather and partners to engage. And finally, we also released a companion facilitation guide  (linked to on the strategy guide page) help state leaders make the most of this resource and to support states’ efforts to address the five cross-cutting elements of a rural CTE strategy.

I’d love to hear from those of you in rural areas as to whether these briefs offer useful information. Please also share your strategies for improving CTE program access and quality in rural areas.

Thank you!

Best,

Kimberly Green