What's Unique About Programs of Study? Three CTE Experts Respond

by Catherine Kirby
 
The passage of Perkins IV charged states with creating at least one program of study. Illinois has encouraged local Partnerships for College and Career Success (PCCS) to apply to be on a Partnership Development Team (PDT), comprised of one or more Partnerships. Update editor Catherine Kirby posed the following question to three nationally recognized experts in career and technical education. They include Rich Katt, Nebraska’s State Director for Career Education; Ann Benson, former Director of Career and Technical Education for the state of Oklahoma and now a CTE consultant; and Deb Mills, Vice President for Partnerships at CORD.

UPDATE: Many practitioners experienced with Perkins III are uncertain about how creating programs of study will differ from the work they have already done in creating integrated and articulated curriculum under previous Perkins legislation. What advice and insight would you give them about the differences you see? How should their approach differ? Where should they focus their attention?

Rich Katt: In a word: collaboration. The law says secondary needs to be aligned to postsecondary and postsecondary needs to be aligned to secondary. From a postsecondary perspective, it really hasn’t been that way. We’ve tried to say “Look, the onus is both ways now, not just one way [from secondary to postsecondary].” In some cases collaboration can start with something simple as getting together to identify the postsecondary programs of study that align most closely to the secondary ones. And that’s happening through the curriculum workshops that we’re doing in Nebraska as we go forward, cluster by cluster. This is the new spirit of collaboration: one that goes both ways.

Ann Benson: We have a crisis in education where we have only 70% of our incoming 9th graders graduating high school. So it’s evident that what we’re doing now isn’t working. What programs of study offer is that all coursework has to be academic and career/technical and actually lead somewhere. We have to show students that as a result of spending time in high school they will get a degree, license or credential.
When you look at other reports about high school drop out rates and the reasons for that, plus when you talk to students, they say they’re bored. In my mind, if they’re bored, it’s because students don’t see the relevance of what they’re learning. If we can be creative and get students into clusters and master the cluster-level knowledge and skills identified by industry to help them be successful, then all of these students will be successful in being both college and career ready.
We’ve got to do something because we’re losing too many kids. If you’re involved in work related to Perkins just to meet the Perkins compliance requirements or just to get Perkins money, those are the two sorriest reasons there are. Perkins work with programs of study should not be looked at as a federal requirement of the law but as an opportunity to provide students with direction and relevance for their educational experience.
Somewhere along the way since Perkins III, we lost sight of what tech prep was all about. In the early days, we talked about two models for tech prep. One was “time-shortened” and the second was “skill enhanced.” We got so caught up in shortening the educational time to degree (credits-in-escrow and such) that we neglected the enhancement of skills.
Articulation resulting from tech prep has been mostly confined to program to program far more so than secondary to postsecondary. For example, we saw lots of secondary auto-tech courses articulated with postsecondary auto tech courses, but they didn’t include the whole picture – including the academic side of things. Even where this has occurred, it’s been restricted to individual institutions that work with only certain other institutions. But with Perkins IV we’re talking about designing a program that is personalized, is more broad based and inclusive, and ensures students get both academic and career preparation that leads somewhere.
When we implement the concept of clusters, pathways and programs of study found in Perkins IV, we can’t identify the subset of students who are “career” bound because within the cluster structure, all students are career bound. Programs of study means that we create a system where there is a consistent and uniform process for helping to guide young people, making sure they get into the coursework that leads somewhere, and gives them the meaningful learning they need in high school. If I were advising [CTE leaders], I would say pull out numbers – get the data – and show what’s currently happening to too many kids; it’s a dismal picture. Considering the alternatives, how can you not believe that [programs of study] is the not right thing to do?

Deb Mills: As I travel around the country in my work with CORD, I hear some version of this question a lot. I usually respond by asking a few probing questions at the end of the discussion that ensues, I find that the implementation of programs people think are aligned with Perkins IV programs of study do not actually meet the full intention of the legislation. Upon some reflection, I’ve categorized them into four curriculum development “models” (although there is some overlap between them.) I’ve given each a name that speaks to the main focus. I’ll summarize them and then conclude with what folks should be doing to build programs of study.

Articulated Curriculum: This is where typically each separate educational level (secondary and postsecondary) builds their own curriculum and tries to “adjoin” the curricula after it has been built. This is usually done in an “articulation meeting”. We rejoice when we have an overlap because now we can award articulated credit. The downfall of this approach is that building curricula separately makes articulation awkward and disjointed. Instead, the secondary and postsecondary partners need to build the curricula together and lay it over two educational levels/institutions.

CTE Coursework Only: This model involves building the CTE coursework together but not doing the same with the academic and employability parts of the curriculum content. I see this a lot, and it falls far short of the kind of comprehensive curriculum reform Perkins IV calls for.

High School Focus Only: This model looks at cross-walking the knowledge and skills sets (standards) to the secondary level only. The postsecondary institution either has its curriculum in place or perceives that the postsecondary curriculum do not need modification. This is not building it together.

Working with the Existing Programs Only: Many times school leaders look at the programs they’re offering and begin the work of building curriculum frameworks. That is NOT where one should begin. Building curriculum frameworks should begin with looking at economic development and workforce needs data. What occupations will be in high demand and have high wages? Unfortunately, many schools begin with the program offerings that they have because a teacher likes to teach the course, the students like the classes, or they have the equipment to offer the program. If there is not a high-demand, high-wage job at the end then we have done the student a disservice. From my perspective the curriculum framework process should begin with economic development and workforce development data.
 
Instead of any of those four scenarios, here’s the advice I give:

• Secondary and postsecondary institutions should build the curriculum together and lay it over two institutions.
• Build on what is needed in your region and the state for economic development.
• Build on standards including academic, skills, and employability standards. Career Clusters have samples of knowledge and skills statements.
• Review them for modification with local business/industry

There are two scenarios how this can happen. They are:

1. Where the curriculum does not currently exist:

• Gather the standards (Career Clusters has knowledge & skill statements which are a great place to start).
• Modify these models to fit your area’s needs.
• Have local business/industry also look at them for local adaptation and enhancement.

2. Where curriculum does exist:

• Outline a blank template (curriculum framework grid) and put in high school graduation coursework and postsecondary general education coursework.
• Design new or select existing career foundation courses (9 & 10th grade), technical core coursework (11 & 12th grade), and postsecondary specialty courses.
• Put in possible electives
• Crosswalk the cluster-level knowledge and skills statements from Career Clusters and the skills and national standards from associations and your courses. Ask questions like: Where is each skill taught? Where are there overlaps? Is the overlap necessary to reinforce the skill or is it redundant? Do any courses need to be added or can existing courses be revised to include what they are missing?
• Once the curriculum framework has been completed, the standards to be covered in each course identified, and the assessment strategy formulated, curriculum development can proceed (e.g. course outline, units, specific learning objectives, individual lesson plans)
• Finally, share them with local business/industry and remember to review them yearly and revise when necessary.

This is just the curriculum development piece of programs of study. The law intends for this process to include a lot more, like professional development and using data to make decisions etc. But this is a start!

Rich Katt can be reached at Rich.Katt@nebraska.gov, Ann Benson at agben@brightok.net, and Deb Mills at dmills@cord.org.