Common Core State Standards Career And Technical Education

As states are working to align their education systems with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in support of the goal of graduating all students ready for college, careers and life, academic and career and technical education (CTE) leaders at the state and local levels can and should maximize this opportunity to finally break down the silos between their disciplines and collectively find ways to ensure that the new standards rigorously engage all students in both academic and CTE courses. Bridging this divide, however, will happen only with intentionality and forethought at the policy and program levels. A substantial gap remains between the opportunity and need for engagement of the CTE community and CTE's current level of involvement in the implementation of the CCSS. Nearly half of the states that responded to an Achieve survey report that they have no CTE representation on their CCSS implementation teams, implying that in their states the CCSS are (currently) being viewed as purely an academic initiative, despite interest from CTE leaders to be involved. This paper aims to provide guidance to state education leaders about how they can maximize the opportunity to better align academics and CTE through the implementation of the new CCSS by: (1) Summarizing what state leaders are currently doing to integrate the CCSS and CTE; (2) Providing specific strategies and supporting examples of what particular states are doing; and (3) Identifying common barriers and challenges that state leaders face. The Survey and Its Findings are appended. (Contains 2 endnotes.).