CTE Apprenticeships Chicago

Chicago Public Schools (CPS) houses 12 of the 16 nationally recognized career clusters. Career clusters are groups of occupations and industries that have in common a set of foundational knowledge and skills. Among these career clusters students can choose to specialize in one of forty different programs of study (Jankowski, Kirby, Bragg, Taylor, & Oertle, 2009). Career pathways are multi-year programs of academic and technical study that prepare high school students for a full range of postsecondary options within each of the 16 clusters. Programs of study are sequences of courses that incorporate a non-duplicative progression of secondary and postsecondary elements, which include both academic and career and technical content (Jankowski et al., 2009).

In 2010, CPS reorganized 250 non-standardized CTE programs into 80 College and Career Academies at 35 high schools. These College and Career Academies (CCA) provide approximately 20,000 students with college prep courses like math, science, and English, as well as hands-on experience in their specific industry. CCA students also have the opportunity to receive scholarships, attain industry-recognized certifications, earn college credit, participate in job shadows and internships, attend college fairs and tours, and compete in city, state, and national competitions (Chicago Public Schools, 2016a).

Work-Based Learning Experiences

CPS also partners with industry professionals and organizations that give students opportunities to put skills they learn in their CTE courses to practice via real-world work-based learning experiences (WBL). Some WBL opportunities are similar to an apprenticeship and include job shadows, internships, cooperative education, guest speakers, and site visits. WBL experiences typically occur during the junior and senior years of high school (Chicago Public Schools, 2016b).

Classroom guest speakers and one-day site visits are usually a student’s introduction to exploring how their CTE coursework applies on the ground. During one-day job shadows students are partnered with an industry professional who serves as both teacher and mentor. Students complete their job shadow in the spring of their junior year. Internships occur the following summer, once the student has completed two years of CTE curriculum. Internships give students the opportunity to apply the academic, technical, and employability skills emphasized in the CTE courses. Internships differ from youth employment in that they are a highly structured and supervised learning environment. Finally, cooperative education, i.e. co-op or work study, is paid employment for only the strongest CTE students and provides on-the-job advanced skills training aligned with a particular CTE pathway (Chicago Public Schools, 2016b).

Selective-Enrollment High Schools

CPS has 11 selective enrollment high schools. These schools were originally targeted efforts to keep white families and their children in the school district, and as a result were located in gentrifying and affluent neighborhoods. Over time a significant percentage of white students have left CPS, resulting in white student enrollment of fewer than 10%.

Hancock College Prep and Jones College Prep are the only selective-enrollment high schools in CPS with CCAs that have eligibility requirements. There are also a few CCAs that are selective in enrollment, such as Health Sciences, Law and Public Safety, IT - Cisco Networking and Information Technology, Database Programming Academy, and Pre-Engineering and these are considered academically rigorous. Student acceptance into both selective-enrollment high schools and CCAs is based on middle school GPA and local and state assessment scores (Chicago Public Schools, 2016c).