This report addresses the challenge of financing community college career and technical education programs. It examines finance policies and practices in 20 states and identifies five strategies that may help preserve higher-cost CTE/workforce programs. The report is intended as a resource for education leaders and policymakers in California.
This report is the culmination of a four-part series on career technical education in the California Community Colleges. Based on a comprehensive analysis of potential barriers to more effective CTE, the report offers a set of suggestions for policy changes intended as a resource for the community college system as it continues to work to improve student success.
This report, jointly produced by IHELP and the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Columbia University, analyzes the impact of the Washington State Student Achievement Initiative (SAI) on college efforts to improve student outcomes and on student outcomes. SAI, a policy adopted by the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, draws on intermediate measures of student progress to reward colleges for improvements in student achievement. This three-year evaluation includes both data analysis and extensive interviewing of faculty and staff.
This report is the third in the four-part series on career technical education in the California Community Colleges. It examines policies in other states that might offer helpful lessons for shaping CTE in California to better meet student and employer needs. It provides examples in the following five policy areas: degree and certificate programs offered; curriculum structure and delivery; high school – community college – workplace pathways; financing CTE – college and student costs; and accountability.
This policy brief is a summary of the first two reports in a series on career technical education in the California Community Colleges. The first report analyzes the complex organizational structure and funding arrangements for the CTE mission and the closely related economic and workforce development mission, while the second report examines the full set of career-technical certificate and associate degree programs offered by the CCC. The brief identifies key issues discussed in the two reports that will need to be addressed as efforts proceed to increase the effectiveness of CTE.
This report is the second in the four-part series on career technical education in the California Community Colleges. It examines the full set of career-technical certificate and associate degree programs offered across the system as a basis for understanding how well the CTE programs are meeting students’ needs to identify, enroll in, and complete programs with real value in today’s labor market. In the report, researchers evaluate the findings against a set of criteria, based on a literature review, that characterize an effective CTE mission and identify key issues that will need to be addressed to increase the effectiveness of CTE.
This report is the first in a four-part series on career technical education in the California Community Colleges. It describes the complex organizational structure and funding arrangements for the CTE mission and the closely related economic and workforce development mission. It offers a set of criteria, based on a literature review, that characterize an effective CTE mission and identifies five key issues that will need to be addressed as efforts proceed to increase the effectiveness of CTE in the California Community Colleges.
This literature review analyzes evidence on the effectiveness of career-oriented education in high schools and community colleges and discusses the factors that promote successful educational outcomes for students enrolled in career-technical programs. It finds the literature scarce on career-technical education (CTE) student success and suggests that further research would help us better understand and strengthen CTE student and program outcomes to better meet the needs of the workforce.