Advance CTE Making Good on the Promise Part 1
Making Good on the Promise: Part 1
Understanding the Equity Challenge in CTE
Career and Technical Education (CTE) can connect learners to meaningful education, careers, and economic opportunity. However, not all learners have historically experienced the same access to high-quality CTE programs and pathways.
Understanding the Equity Challenge in CTE, the first brief in Advance CTE's Making Good on the Promise series, asks CTE leaders to examine the historical and systemic conditions that can influence who has access to programs, which opportunities learners are encouraged to pursue, and whether all learners have the support they need to succeed.
Equity Requires More Than Equal Access
Equity means creating conditions that allow each learner to identify meaningful education and career goals, access high-quality CTE programs of study, and receive the opportunities and supports needed to achieve those goals.
Understanding CTE's Historical Context
Historically, vocational education was sometimes used to separate learners into different educational pathways. Learners from historically underserved groups were disproportionately directed toward programs with fewer academic and postsecondary opportunities.
Understanding this history is important because policies and practices can continue to influence learner opportunity even when they are not intentionally exclusionary. CTE leaders can examine whether current systems expand choices for learners or unintentionally limit them.
Recognizing How Bias Can Affect Opportunity
Bias can influence decisions about who is encouraged to participate in particular programs, what information learners receive, and which career pathways they are encouraged to consider. Bias may occur through individual interactions or through policies and practices that create different opportunities for different groups of learners.
Areas to Examine
- Career and academic advising: Are learners encouraged to explore programs based on their interests and goals rather than assumptions about their abilities or backgrounds?
- Geographic access: Can learners reasonably reach the high-quality CTE programs available to them?
- Program requirements: Do scheduling, prerequisites, or other requirements unintentionally limit participation?
- Selection processes: When demand exceeds available space, are admission and selection practices transparent and equitable?
- Learner accommodations: Are programs flexible enough to support learners with disabilities, family responsibilities, or other needs?
Access and Quality Must Work Together
Expanding participation alone does not ensure equity. Learners need access to high-quality programs that combine rigorous learning, meaningful career preparation, and opportunities to continue into postsecondary education, training, and employment.
As high-quality CTE programs become more desirable, leaders should also examine whether limited program capacity, location, admissions practices, or other systemic conditions create new barriers to participation.
Consider This in Your CLNA
As you examine local CTE programs and learner outcomes, consider:
- Who has access to each CTE program of study?
- Which learners are participating, completing, and continuing to postsecondary education or employment?
- Are any groups consistently overrepresented or underrepresented in particular programs?
- What policies, practices, or conditions may contribute to these patterns?
- What additional information should you gather from learners, families, educators, and community partners to better understand the data?
Moving from Awareness to Action
Understanding the equity challenge is a starting point. The remaining Making Good on the Promise resources build on this foundation by examining access and achievement gaps, strengthening trust with communities, and identifying strategies to expand opportunity.