NYSACTE RECOMMENDATIONS FOR COLLEGE AND CAREER READINESS

1. NYSACTE RECOMMENDATIONS FOR COLLEGE AND CAREER READINESS PROFESSIONAL ORGAINIZATIONS LEADERSHIP FORUM AUGUST 6-7, 2013

2. 1. The Board of Regents must define College and Career Ready and establish new 21st Century Graduation Outcomes

3. 21st Century Graduation Outcomes • The academic ability to persist and succeed in all post secondary education opportunities without remediation • Earning power in the form of an industry approved entry level certificate • Demonstration of Career Ready Practices embodied in an employability profile • A defined Career Pathway Plan • Earned college advanced standing and /or dual credit • National State Directors of CTE Consortium Common Career Technical Core

4. Career and College Ready • Academic skills are essential to do a job and be a continual learner in the job. Students need to acquire career-related academic skills consistent with the Common Core State Standardsin context and in authentic situations. • Employability skills make a difference in getting a job, keeping a job and building a career. These skills are embodied in the Career Ready Practices found in the Common Technical Core Standards. • Technical skills are industry based, may be required for licensure and represent what a student needs to know and be able to do in the specified career area (career-specific skills). Technical skills are constantly changing because of improvements in technology, so instruction must be continually updated.

5. 2. The Regents Should Recognize and Validate CTE as an Equally Rigorous Path to High School Graduation • Enhance the messaging on CTE with Boards of Education, Superintendents and principals • Set and publish goals for increasing the number of students who have technical endorsements • Allow for the substitution of an industry credential assessment for a required regents examination • Insure that all students develop a career plan that is reviewed annually • Require recording of technical endorsements on the student transcripts.

6. 3. Affirm the Common Core State Standards, Career Development and Occupational Studies and Next Generation Assessments to converge career and academic content and instructional practices • Adopting the Career Clusters Model and the Common Career Technical Core Inclusive of the Career Ready Practices • Providing Non Mandatory CTE Curriculum Guides • Expanding Programs of Study • Providing the Availability of Embedded/Integrated Credit • Providing Alternative Assessments to the Regents Examinations

7. 4. Avoid imposing additional math and science course requirements Additional academic press through higher level courses has limits and may decrease school completions without substantively changing achievement. Increased participation in CTE and engagement with the higher order skills present in career-based instruction and texts offer the best opportunity for students to become engaged, achieve and avoid remediation in postsecondary education.

8. 5. Strengthen middle level and early high school CTE Create programs of study that begin in middle school and continue into high school solidifying the curricular connections between grade levels and build capacity at grades 9/10 for exploration of career pathways. This would strengthen the continuum from grades 6 through 10 and prepare students for more specific career pathways, which often begin in grade 11. Currently, students are rarely able to begin career instruction in grades 9 and 10 and do not seriously consider a career pathway until grade 11

9. 6. Career Plans are a necessary component of every student’s graduation outcomes Exposure to career pathways based on the realities of the labor market and work-based opportunities related to them are the key elements to meet this objective. Goal setting is an important element in student engagement and development of a connection with the adult world

10. 7. Continue to pursue changes in the assessment system that requires students to apply concepts and understandings Career readiness now applies to all students, whatever pathway they are pursuing. This requires an assessment system that measures student mastery of the application of knowledge to real world authentic problems. As students and adults, information will be readily available through the internet so it may not be as important to measure what you know but how you can apply what you know

11. 8. Provide universal articulation agreements for CTE programs at SUNY and CUNY SUNY and CUNY units should offer advance standing and dual credit for all approved programs at the same level using the standards in non mandated curriculum guides. Articulation agreements should be established at the state level to assure equity and improved access to post secondary education for students who complete CTE Approved Programs

12. 9. Adjust teacher certification standards to reflect a move to integrated instruction and emerging technologies and careers As academic and CTE teachers work more closely together, technology changes, new careers and pathways emerge increased flexibility in certification will be necessary to assure that students have appropriate instruction and the opportunity to earn technical endorsements. This requires a different approach to certification of CTE and academic teachers working in innovative CTE programs

13. 10. Incentivize businesses to support high quality CTE for all students • Use BOCES to plan and support a broad reach to business engagement at a regional level linking business, Economic Development Councils, labor and schools to foster partnerships. • Encourage the development of tax incentives at the state, federal and local level to support business participation in loans of staff, infrastructure support, sharing and loaning of equipment, co-location of CTE programs, work based learning, sharing of training and assessment materials and other activities to foster a strong link between schools and the business community. • As part of the required professional development hours every teacher should have an experience observing or shadowing in a local workplace apart from school.