National Research Center for Career and Technical Education

Glenn Cummings Announced as the New Deputy Assistant Secretary for Vocational and Adult Education

Glenn Cummings is former Speaker of the House of Representatives in Maine and currently serves as dean of institutional advancement at Southern Maine Community College. Glenn is also a former high school history and economics teacher. As noted in one of the many articles on Glenn's appointment, as Chairman of the House Education Subcommittee in Maine, he sponsored the bill to transform Maine's technical colleges into the state's community college system. That change promoted an increase in statewide enrollment by 40% and a doubling of enrollment at Southern Maine Community College.

Center Announces 2009 Technical Assistance Academy

The National Research Center for Career and Technical Education is pleased to announce that the 2009-2010 National Technical Assistance Academy will support states in developing “green-focused” career and technical education programs of study (POS) tailored to state and regional economic needs. Emphasis will be placed on designing replicable implementation model(s) for bringing POS to scale.

The Technical Assistance (TA) Academy will engage up to 5 states in a 14-month process to develop “green-focused” POS. Selected states will be assigned a facilitator to provide ongoing assistance during the term of the project. Up to 10 days of consultation from content experts in POS and “green-focused” industries will also be provided. A 3-day TA Academy will be held in Washington, DC, in Winter 2010. Each state will be asked to present on their POS model and its implementation at the summer 2010 Career Clusters Institute.

The full application package is available here (PDF document).

NCES CTE Statistics (CTES)

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) within the Institute of Education Sciences has recently updated the Career and Technical Education Statistics (CTES) website. The CTES website includes tables describing career and technical education (CTE) at three levels: 1) secondary/high school CTE, 2) postsecondary/college career education, and 3) adult education for work. These tables are updated periodically to incorporate new CTE-related topics and data from new surveys. In this update, two sets of tables were added to the postsecondary/college career and technical education tables:  1) a set of 21 tables with state-level information on institutional offerings and credentials awarded in CTE, and 2)  a set of 7 tables describing CTE students' enrollment characteristics, for the 12 states that were oversampled in the 2003-2004 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study.

New Research Snapshots

The Center's two-page Research Snapshots provide general overviews of our studies. Each Snapshot presents a study's research questions, a brief summary of its methods, major findings, and recommendations for further research.

Full-length versions of the original studies are also available here on the NRCCTE website. Our two latest Research Snapshots are:

Community College Access and Affordability - Marisa Castellano and Laura T. Overman

Career and Technical Education Pathway Programs, Academic Performance, and the Transition to College and Career - Natasha Lekes, Debra D. Bragg, Jane W. Loeb, Catherine A. Oleksiw, Jacob Marszalek, Margaret Brooks-LaRaviere, Rongchun Zhu, Chloe C. Kremidas, Grace Akukwe, Hyeong-Jong Lee, and Lisa K. Hood

Vo-Techs Are a New Elite, Local Districts Complain

Bergen Academies has received more than 1,500 applications from eighth graders for about 250 seats, drawn by advanced classes in linear algebra and robotics, a stem-cell research lab and, coming soon, a simulated stock-trading floor. The president of the school's parents' association calls it "a private school without tuition." Housed in a sprawling red-brick complex, the school splits its student body of 1,100 into seven career-based academies in science and technology, engineering, medicine, business, telecommunications and computer science, culinary and hotel administration and the arts.

Read more at the New York Times website.

Read more News from the Field and the NRCCTE.