The New CTE: New York City as Laboratory for the Nation<\/em><\/cite><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nNew York City\u2019s school districts under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg were among the first to embrace the new CTE concept. Once called \u201cvocational education,\u201d career and technical education encompasses not just the traditional trades such as carpentry, metal work, and plumbing, but also high-tech skills such as information technology, health care, engineering, and business management. The number of CTE-dedicated schools in New York City has nearly tripled in recent years, from 15 in 2004 to about 50 today, and includes seven \u201cearly-college\u201d high schools, spanning grades 9-14, which many see as a national model.<\/p>\n
Early evidence suggests that students who enroll in CTE schools have better attendance rates and are more likely to graduate, according to the report. Classes tend to be smaller, allowing for greater focus and engagement.<\/p>\n
But as promising as New York\u2019s CTE program may seem, it is not without its share of significant challenges.<\/p>\n
State policy dictates that students who enroll in New York\u2019s CTE programs must pass the same rigorous academic performance tests as their peers in more traditional public high schools in addition to meeting the skill requirements of an individual trade or discipline. Dougherty\u2019s report finds that balancing those dual demands in a limited school year is one of the primary challenges facing New York educators. While teachers universally endorse the tough academic standards, many \u201cstruggle to find time for everything that students need to accomplish,\u201d the report states.<\/p>\n
On a more positive note, the report praised New York City\u2019s CTE programs for having the good fortune to be engaged with such industry giants as IBM and Con Edison. Yet the authors found that the city continues to struggle to find new businesses to partner with the program and schools lack dedicated staff to make such partnerships especially meaningful.<\/p>\n
Work-based learning, which the authors call \u201cthe pinnacle of the CTE experience,\u201d continues to fall short in New York when it comes to bona fide on-the-job work experience, the report says. According to a recent survey, only 1,575 students \u2013 less than 2 percent of all New York CTE students \u2013 completed internships in 2014.<\/p>\n
One of the most promising aspects of CTE is its ability to serve as a bridge from secondary to postsecondary education or training. New York City has a vibrant partnership with the City University of New York, which has opened 17 schools over the past two decades, including seven dedicated exclusively to CTE. This partnership exposes students to postsecondary education, and can ease the transition for students who might otherwise lose their way. But like their peers in business, these partnerships with higher education institutions are time-consuming and difficult to sustain with current resources, the report notes.<\/p>\n
At the policy level, the report recommends that New York City overhaul its state standards for work-based learning, allowing for clearer distinctions between career exposure through field trips, job shadowing, and career fairs and actual work experience through on-the-job internships. Along with this new mandate should come additional resources in terms of both funding and staffing to help schools better coordinate and manage their CTE programs, the report states.<\/p>\n
Lastly, the report finds that despite great investment and the initial general success of New York City\u2019s CTE programs, they are restrained by state policy that currently takes a narrow view of CTE teacher certification, approved CTE career pathways, and potential industry partners. Today\u2019s fast-paced business climate demands greater flexibility and adaptability, the report states. State policy should be overhauled to allow school districts greater leeway in preparing for and responding to a rapidly changing job market, new technologies, and the latest in-demand skills.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe workforce has been changing, and it will continue to change,\u201d says Dougherty. \u201cOne of the challenges is both identifying the current state of the labor force and watching it as it evolves. I would like to see evidence that people are thinking more dynamically about how the workforce is shifting and how CTE offerings are responding to that shift in continuous cycles over time.\u201d<\/p>\n
A second CTE report<\/a>, this one supported by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and authored by Dougherty, is expected to be released in early April. That report will focus on specific outcomes for high school students enrolled in CTE programs in another state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stronger business collaborations are key to career education’s future success, according to a Manhattan Institute report authored by a UConn professor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":110867,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2427,1855,1862,2225],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1928],"class_list":["post-110618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-educational-leadership","category-neag","category-busn","category-uconn-storrs"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-29 05:26:59","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110618"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113553,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110618\/revisions\/113553"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/110867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110618"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=110618"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=110618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}