Career and technical education (CTE) is the reform de jour. And the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), created following the Second World War to improve social and economic life for sixteen southern states, has taken notice. In an April report, the commission outlines the career and technical pathways that can help job seekers find employment and improve struggling economies.
Advanced credentials and CTE programs could be a game-changer in the South. Among the sixteen SREB states, at least a quarter of adults fail to complete any form of education after high school. In West Virginia and Arkansas, those numbers are as high as 40 percent and 34 percent respectively. An additional 20 percent of adults in each of the states complete some postsecondary work but receive no credential. And this lack of credentialing doesn’t just hurt working class adults. The report notes that “even youth born to middle-income families are as likely to move down the economic ladder as they are to move up.”
To reverse this dismal trend, the report calls for increasing the percentage of students who leave high school academically prepared for college and career to 80 percent (authors repeatedly call for higher and more rigorous standards, though they never mention “Common Core” by name) and doubling the proportion of adults who earn a postsecondary credential by age twenty-five.
The report lays out eight action items for states and districts to adopt in order to strengthen the connection between high schools and postsecondary institutions. They include creating relevant career pathways, providing CTE teachers with professional development to meet technical standards, and restructuring underperforming schools around rigorous career pathways. These are all, of course, noble pursuits in struggling economies. But whether states can turn this framework into implementable policy remains to be seen.
SOURCE: “Credentials for All: An Imperative for SREB States,” Southern Regional Education Board (April 2015).
