The rise and spread of CTE is an education success story. With 98% of school districts offering some kind of CTE programs and over 11.2 million students enrolled across the country, these programs are exposing learners to new careers, skills and possibilities at a remarkable scale. States are investing. Students are enrolling. The foundation is strong.
But students are telling us they want more. They love hands-on learning, the connection to real work, and the skills they are building. What they’re asking for is what comes next. How does this experience lead or connect to the next one? How do I keep building on what I have started?
Too often, CTE is a step rather than a staircase if it is not intentionally implemented and connected to the larger learning goals of a system for its graduates. Additionally, despite the participation numbers stated above, the number of CTE completers is strikingly low. This isn’t a critique of CTE. It’s an invitation to think about how individual experiences can connect into pathways that build momentum over time. When students see how one experience leads to another, learning compounds. Skills deepen. Confidence grows. What starts as exposure becomes expertise.
CTE in Isolation
When CTE courses are disconnected from the district’s larger learning design or their commitment to their Graduate Portrait, even the most engaged students can lose momentum. For example, a hypothetical sophomore takes Introduction to Automotive Technology and discovers she loves diagnosing problems, working with her hands, and understanding how systems function. The class ends. Her schedule moves her to Chemistry next semester. No one connects her newfound interest in automotive systems to the physics of motion or the chemistry of combustion happening in her other classes. In her Senior year, she remembers how much she loved that automotive course but doesn’t know how to pursue it further. Was it just an elective? A one-time experience? She moves on, unsure where that interest could have led.
When CTE is siloed from the rest of a student’s educational experience, students may gain valuable skills but struggle to see how those skills transfer, stack, or connect to what comes next. The course provides exposure, but without intentional bridges to other learning experiences, internships, or deeper exploration, that exposure can remain isolated. The experience becomes a moment rather than a beginning.
At least 43 states offer CTE dual or concurrent enrollment, meaning that the CTE courses at the very least count toward college credit. But this alone is not enough to count as an itentional pathway.
What Becomes Possible with Intentional Connection
Personalize and Partner
Find local businesses that have demand, build relationships, work with intermediaries, etc. Offer CTE programs that lead to these careers. Create internship and CCP opportunities that are embedded within the program.
Example from the Field: When Community Need Meets Student Learning
In Porterville, California, the school district faced a puzzle. They had purchased an electric bus fleet to meet the state electrification requirements, but the buses kept malfunctioning. The students in the district’s automotive program had the mechanical skills but no experience with elective vehicle technology. The local workforce had the same gap.
The two-sided demand of state-level electrification goals and workforce development goals led the district to form relationships with the local community college and a local EV manufacturer to help the automotive program enter the 21st century. Students in the automotive program now learn to work on electric buses and other electric vehicles, getting both high school and college credit while developing skills the local economy actually needs. They’re not just learning about EVs in theory, they’re diagnosing real problems with the district’s actual buses. Not only are they getting real-world experience, but they are doing work that matters.
This didn’t require abandoning the existing automotive program. It required asking: What does our community need? How can student learning address real challenges? How do we connect classroom learning to authentic application? The answers created a pathway that serves students and the community simultaneously.
Build Pathways That Stack
If a student finishes a healthcare course, could they shadow professionals at a local clinic? Could they volunteer with a community health organization? Could they work on a capstone project researching health equity in your community?
Based on our work with the Kauffman Foundation’s Real World Learning initiative in Kansas City, we’ve seen firsthand how a variety of experiences naturally lead into each other and reinforce learning for young people. They build confidence, capacity, and clarity about what they want to pursue. The most successful pathways programs often follow a trajectory of experiences that specialize over time and provide both on and off ramps for learners.
- Foundation Experiences: These experiences should start in middle school and freshman year and are all about building skills and awareness. This includes skills like ideation, design thinking, and leadership.
- Connection Experiences: These experiences are all about linking learning to the real world. While these experiences should span all of the years, it will most likely be found in client-connected projects in freshman and sophomore year or in internship experiences Junior and senior year.
- Agentic Experiences: These experiences involve entrepreneurship and capstones and are often co-designed or fully designed by the learner. The Advance CTE Career Clusters Framework describes Entrepreneurship and Management as cross-cutting clusters that should be embedded in all CTE sectors. At the same time, work by Julia Freeland Fisher and others highlights the importance of building and maintaining social capital.
By creating stackable pathways and credentials that move from skill building to immersion to full agency, learners are more likely to graduate ready for success in what’s next.
Example from the Field: Intentional and Responsive Pathways Progressions
In Tacoma Public Schools, CTE has been re-engineered into pathways that are relevant, measurable, and human-centered. The emphasis has been rooted in coherence across schools, departments, and community partnerson and refining pathways that are high-skill, high-demand industries.
Not only are students able to participate in Lead 253—leadership development through student organizations (CTSOs)— and Jobs 253—opportunities to earn a paycheck while training (internships and worksite learning)— but they are also able to traverse a three-level sequence either in-person, online, or in a specialized building.
- Level One (Introductory) includes survey courses, goal setting and accruing industry-recognized certifications and college credits. Level Two
- Level Two (Concentrator) includes more advanced study, more specialized and rigorous credentials and dual credit. In addition, in the “In-Person” model, this splits into three different “Strands.” This allows students to take multiple concentrator courses to personalize their learning within the same general field.
- Level Three (Capstone & Application) focuses on real-world application through capstones, worksite learing or a pathway practicum. .
Example from the Field: Specialized School within a School
The School for Environmental Leadership (SEL) operates as a specialized “school-within-a-school” program integrated into Terra Linda High School in the San Rafael City Schools district in California. This model allows students to attend a public high school while participating in a stacked, four-year cohort experience focused on environmental sustainability, leadership, and entrepreneurship.
Students apply in 8th grade and, if accepted, enter the program as a cohort in 9th grade. They take a specific set of core classes together (English, Social Studies, Science), which are taught through an environmental lens. The curriculum often includes partnerships with local community colleges (like the College of Marin), allowing students to earn college credit for some of their specialized coursework.
9th Grade: Leadership in Environmental Action and Design (LEAD).
As ninth graders, students participate in community projects as small teams (5–6 students). These semester-long projects addressing local issues like waste diversion, water conservation, or wildfire safety. Additionally, they participate in a design challenge where students create a model house that produces as much electricity as it consumes, learning about renewable energy and efficiency. During this year, they focus on building the following skills: public speaking, research, professional email communication, and facilitating meetings.
10th Grade: Community building and policy change.
As tenth graders, Instead of semester-long projects, sophomores take on a single, deep-dive project for the entire school year and they shift their goal from “action” to systemic change. Students work to write, advocate for, and implement actual environmental policies within their school or local city government. During this year they focus on persuasion, understanding government structures, and long-term project management.
11th Grade: Sustainable Enterprise and Engineering.
As eleventh graders, students create a comprehensive business plan for a sustainable product or service. They pitch these ideas to a panel of investors and experts. In addition, they take a hands-on class where they learn to use power tools and build physical solutions/products. During this year they develop financial literacy, entrepreneurship, design thinking, and product development skills.
12th Grade: Professional application and reflection.
As twelth graders, students leave the classroom to complete a year-long internship with a local business, non-profit, or government agency in the sustainability sector. They also compile a comprehensive portfolio reflecting on their growth over the four years and focus on professionalism, networking, career readiness, and self-assessment.
Making Transferable Skills Visible Across Disciplines
One of the most powerful ways to extend CTE impact is by helping students recognize that the skills they’re developing transfer beyond a single course or career field. This can be done by designing across disciplines, connecting outcomes for these course transparently to a Portrait of a Graduate, or simply through intentional reflection. When CTE teachers and content area teachers collaborate, transfer becomes intentional rather than accidental. Students don’t have to make the connections alone. The system makes them visible.
In a CTE course on construction, students learn to read technical documents, collaborate on complex projects, and troubleshoot when things go wrong. Help them see these same skills in their history class when analyzing primary sources, working on group presentations, and revising arguments. When students recognize the transfer, they see themselves as more capable across contexts.
When students see their CTE skills as transferable, everything changes. They’re not just learning to weld or code or design. They’re learning to think systematically, communicate clearly, collaborate effectively, and solve complex problems. These are the transferable skills that matter across every context.
Actions You Can Take This Semester
You don’t need to redesign your entire CTE program to create more momentum. Start with one cohort of students and one intentional connection.
Start and Keep Going
Take a look at your CTE courses and see if there are discrete connections you can make to other assets in the district. This might be core classes, a portrait of a graduate or other graduation requirements like service learning. Consider how to keep momentum going even through slight changes in direction.
Make One Connection
Reach out to one local business, nonprofit, or community organization. Explain what skills your students are developing. Ask if there’s a way students could apply those skills in their setting. Start with a small pilot. Maybe three students, one afternoon a week, for one semester. Learn what works. Adjust. Expand.
Or look within your building. Which content area could teachers help students see transfer? Could your automotive students bring their diagnostic thinking to a physics unit? Could your culinary students apply their project management skills in an English capstone? Start one conversation. Design one integrated unit. Notice what students discover about themselves.
Grow Entrepreneurial Thinking
Not every student needs to start a business, but every student benefits from thinking like an entrepreneur. They identify problems worth solving for their community. They right size the challenge. They design solutions. They test, learn, and iterate. They recognize opportunities and take initiative.
This semester, look for ways students could take what they’re learning in CTE and use it to address real challenges. Could your construction students design and build something the community needs? Could your technology students create an app that solves a problem at school? Could your agriculture students start a garden that supplies the cafeteria?
When students move from learning skills to using skills to create something that matters, ownership shifts. They’re not just completing assignments. They’re building something real.
An Invitation, Not a Mandate
We’ve built an impressive foundation of CTE programs across the country through which students are gaining exposure, building skills, and discovering possibilities they wouldn’t have encountered otherwise. This isn’t about doing more for the sake of more. It’s about finding ways to connect what you’re already doing so that one experience naturally flows into the next.
Momentum doesn’t require perfection. It requires one intentional connection. Then another. Then another. Over time, those connections become pathways. Students experience learning not as a series of isolated courses but as a journey that keeps building, keeps opening doors, keeps moving them toward what’s next. Try getting as far as you can see. From there, you’ll be able to see a bit farther.
