Career & Technical Education

Displaying 31-60 of 84 results
Commentary
12.1.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

How rethinking industry-recognized credentials could boost student success

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

Early in my career, I taught high school in North Carolina. One of the coolest things we did was partner annually with the local Habitat for Humanity team. Each year, students in my school’s construction-trades classes built a modular home from the ground up, doing the masonry, carpentry, electrical work, plumbing—all of it.

Commentary
11.22.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The case for career and technical education

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D., Jeanette Luna

With rising college costs and sky-high college dropout rates—almost one-third of American undergraduates quit before completing their degree—young people are lookin

Commentary
9.23.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Credentials matter, but pathways matter more

Quentin Suffren

Credentials matter, but maybe not as much as many hope. That seems to be one of the takeaways from Fordham’s latest report by Matt Giani evaluating high school industry recognized credential (IRC) attainment and learner outcomes in Texas.

Commentary
9.16.2022
Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Industry-recognized credentials can be very transformational, depending on the local context

Dale Fowler

A new Fordham Institute report authored by University of Texas professor Matt Giani finds that industry-recognized credentials (IRCs) are “mostly not transformative” for the high school students who earn them. But the truth is that it’s all about the context.

Commentary
9.15.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Multiple positive outcomes for CTE students

Jeff Murray

As money and attention focus on career and technical education (CTE) at ever greater levels, researchers can help gauge program effectiveness by digging into the data.

Commentary
9.12.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The case for specialized career and technical education

Zeyu Xu, Ben Backes

About three-quarters of students in the U.S. take at least one credit in high school linked to career and technical education (CTE). When high school students take multiple CTE credits, they are often encouraged to focus in a specialized career pathway, like business, health sciences, or hospitality and tourism.

Commentary
8.25.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Industry-recognized credentials are helpful but not transformative for high school students

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D., Michael J. Petrilli

Fordham’s newest study finds, among other things, that industry-recognized credentials earned in high school are a net positive for students who earn them but are not game-changers. This raises a lingering question: How else can we transform the high school experience for students so as to significantly boost their wages and career prospects once they are in the workforce? Here are four ideas.

Commentary
8.25.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Standards, Teachers & School Leaders

The evolving education reform agenda

Michael J. Petrilli

Earlier this month, I argued that “education reform is alive and well, even if the Washington Consensus is dead for now.” What’s more, I wrote that we should stay the course on the current reform strategy:

Commentary
8.11.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The new education consensus is conservative, and that’s a good thing

Daniel Buck

In the latest issue of National Affairs, Chester Finn and Frederick Hess chronicle the splintering of the school reform movement that lasted from roughly 1983 until Trump’s presidency.

Commentary
8.11.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

How states leaders can expand and support youth apprenticeships

Abigail Hamilton

The Covid-19 pandemic altered public confidence in education and left lasting shortages in the workforce. Youth unemployment rates are recovering, but young people are still in need of job opportunities that will create lasting wealth and opportunities for further education.

Commentary
5.26.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Getting to work: The effect of school-year employment on student outcomes

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

Calls are rising for America’s aging high-school model to modernize, in part by accommodating work experience through hands-on internships or actual employment for students.

Undefined
5.11.2022
Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Personalized Learning

Education Gadfly Show #819: The pod on (pandemic) pods

  On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Ashley Jochim, a principal at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, joins Mike

Commentary
4.7.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

How a summer job may help improve school outcomes

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

The influence of out-of-school activities such as sports and clubs on school outcomes has been an enduring

Commentary
3.31.2022
Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The college readiness battle is won or lost in elementary school

Michael J. Petrilli

Earlier this year, I took to the pages of Education Next to make the case for NAEP to test starting in kindergarten, stating that, “The rationale for testing academic skills in the early elementary grades is powerful.” Therefore, “Starting NAEP in 4th grade is much too late.” I was wrong, and I’m sorry. Kindergarten is much too late. We must begin a program of NAEP testing for newborns.

Commentary
3.24.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education

What hiring ads indicate about the skills that employers want in a college major

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

Not all college majors are created alike, but it turns out that employers want their new hires to exhibit many of same skills regardless of what they major in. A recent study examines online job ads as a proxy for what employers view as the skills inherent in various college majors.

Commentary
3.17.2022
Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Work instead of school: A better approach for our lowest-performing students?

Michael J. Petrilli

High school-age Americans struggling mightily with academics aren’t well served by our current approach to secondary education. But there may be a better model that would give them a more worthwhile experience and lead to better long-term outcomes: Let them take jobs while still in high school—during the school day, during both their junior and senior years, full pay included, no strings attached.

Commentary
3.10.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance

The casualties of “college for all”

Arthur Samuels

A couple of weeks ago, I shared some ideas about how schools and districts can move away from the well-intentioned but deeply flawed “college for all” mindset that has permeated the education reform world and has, in turn, harmed many of the disadvantaged students whom the approach is m

Commentary
2.24.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

A principal explains how to repair the harm of “college for all”

Arthur Samuels

As Michael Petrilli wrote in these pages a few weeks ago, the education reform movement has come to the realization that its belief in “college for all,” while well-intended, was misguided.

Commentary
2.10.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Of course there’s tracking in high schools. Get over it.

Michael J. Petrilli

Tracking in our high schools is simply a fact, and we would do well to stop pretending otherwise or believing that it could be any other way. At the very least, we should allow for diverging paths after tenth grade, and we need to completely rethink our approach for our lowest-performing kids.

Commentary
1.27.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

We all agree that college isn’t for everyone. We should start acting like it.

Michael J. Petrilli

One of the biggest shifts in education reform in recent years has been widening acknowledgment that the “college for all” mantra was misguided. Yet so far our commitment to “multiple pathways” to opportunity is almost all talk accompanied by very little action. High school course requirements and accountability systems continue to push almost all students into the college-prep track.

Commentary
12.9.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Governance

Learning more about the use of industry recognized credentials

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

While the ubiquitous term “college and career readiness” assumes that twelve years of compulsory education could adequately prepare a student for both postsecondary and workplace settings, we know far more about readiness for the former than the latter.