A Missing Link for California's Pathways Movement: CTE Instructional Staff

Recently, the State of California committed nearly one billion dollars to the development of career and technical education (CTE) pathways that lead to locally relevant, high-growth, high-demand careers. This investment represents a pivot from relatively disjointed approaches to CTE in high schools and community colleges, and reflects an aspiration to create a more integrated system that aligns the education systems with workforce needs while promoting equity. Between 2014 and 2015, the California Department of Education (CDE) funded 79 regional consortia through the California Career Pathways Trust (CCPT) initiative in two cohorts. The research and analysis in this report draw on interview data from CCPT Round 1 consortium leaders and other relevant reports, databases, and artifacts that inform grade 9-14 CTE pathways development. This brief highlights three challenges to increasing the supply of CTE pathways instructional staff in California: (1) Credentialing requirements for secondary schools and community colleges are discrete and disconnected; (2) There are few accelerated paths to building a CTE instructional staff pipeline; and (3) There are few data publicly available for understanding and matching the supply of and demand for CTE pathways staff. This brief notes key opportunities and considerations for state and local leaders as they pursue strategies for more systematically supporting grade 9-14 CTE instructional staff and pathways. Contains endnotes.