Career and Technical Education in Kentucky

On October 16, pursuant to an executive order issued by Governor Steve Beshear, the Office of Career and Technical Education was merged with the Kentucky Department of Education’s (KDE’s) Carl Perkins branch to form the KDE Office of Career and Technical Education (CTE). Associate Commissioner Dale Winkler will head this new office. I am personally very excited about the potential to elevate and integrate career and technical education within the department.

Why is this so important to education and the economy in Kentucky? Here is one example.

Governor Beshear recently proclaimed October 5 as Manufacturing Day in Kentucky. The National Association of Manufacturers, the Manufacturing Institute, Kentucky Association of Manufacturers and the Foundation for Kentucky Industry have designated the day as a launch point to emphasize the many values of manufacturing.

Governor Beshear stated that “manufacturing is a wonderful career path for highly skilled workers within a crucial sector of the economy. The manufacturing community is a key economic driver in the Commonwealth, representing $27 billion, or 17 percent, of Kentucky’s GDP, with more than 215,000 people working in manufacturing in Kentucky.”

This week, I had the opportunity to tour an exciting program that is focused on manufacturing. I visited the Toyota Advanced Manufacturing Technician Program (AMT) at the Toyota Georgetown manufacturing plant. The AMT program has become a national model of how business can collaborate with education to create bright futures for students. In collaboration with numerous school districts in the region, Bluegrass Community and Technical College and other local businesses, students are offered a two-year intensive program that combines the technical, work and academic skills to prepare students for manufacturing jobs.

Of interest to me was the statement that over 600,000 manufacturing job openings are available in the U.S., and industry is having a hard time finding workers with the technical skills and work skills to fill these jobs that pay a living wage. What great news for students in this program and other similar programs across the U.S. It also was exciting to hear that there is significant interest to expand this type of program in Kentucky.

In talking with the students and instructors, I heard several suggestions for the new Office of Career and Technical Education. Among these suggestions was the expansion of our Project Lead the Way program, integration of more rigorous academic skills in career and technical courses, focusing instruction on projects and application of academic and technical skills in an integrated fashion, allowing communities to focus on specific job sector courses rather than one-size-fits-all courses, and heavily involving business and industry in career and technical programs.

Kentucky has focused on elevating and integrating career and technical education. Our Unbridled Learning accountability model gives equal weighting to college and career readiness with bonus points for students who graduate with both. Jobs are available for students who graduate with career and technical skills, as evidenced by the number of job openings in manufacturing.

Over the next few years, I hope our CTE program -- through the integration of academic and career/technical -- will provide numerous opportunities across the state that are similar to the Toyota Advanced Manufacturing Program.

Kentucky Focuses on Career and Technical Education

This week, Governor Steve Beshear signed an executive order that brings the Office of Career and Technical Education (OCTE), located in the Education and Workforce Development Cabinet, into the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) as a new office. The new Office of Career and Technical Education will be led by Associate Commissioner Dale Winkler, Ed.D. The merger is effective October 16.

This merger is the result of several years of work. The concept surfaced during meetings with the Governor’s Task Force on Transforming Education in Kentucky, and there were several key recommendations from the task force that led to the formation of a Career and Technical Education advisory group to work through the steps needed to complete the merger. Staff from KDE and OCTE worked behind the scenes to coordinate the necessary steps to make the merger a reality.

The OCTE has 54 Area Technical Centers across Kentucky, and the KDE career and technical education staff work with all high schools that offer local centers and high school course offerings. The merger builds on the excellent collaboration that has been happening between OCTE and KDE over the past few years and is a reflection of the outstanding staff we have in both areas.

Superintendents, principals, teachers and students will not see a lot of immediate impact from the merger. Much of the collaboration has already happened. The adoption of a new accountability model based on 2009’s Senate Bill 1 that is now called Unbridled Learning elevated the focus on career and technical education through a measure called college- and career-readiness. Through collaboration with the Workforce Investment Board, the Governor’s Office, and the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, we have a focus on “work-ready” communities across Kentucky. Work-ready communities provide additional leverage and support to ensure that high school graduates are prepared for job, military and citizenship opportunities available in the future. The Education and Workforce Development Cabinet has developed industry sectors that the state will focus on to bring jobs to Kentucky citizens.

Our immediate concern is to find efficiencies through the merger in order to offset reductions in career and technical teachers that were a result of recent cuts in the state budget. Through the merger, Dale Winkler and staff have identified a number of efficiencies that have led to replacing teachers in critical career and technical centers across Kentucky. Throughout the early stages of the merger, this will continue to be the number-one focus.

There will be several additional areas that Associate Commissioner Winkler will be leading as a result of the merger. The integration of the Kentucky core academic standards with career and technical courses will continue. Also, we will continue to work on identification of nationally recognized industry certifications that are aligned with the 16 career pathways. The implementation of Senator Jack Westwood’s career pathways bill also will be a high priority.

Thanks to the leadership of the Governor, General Assembly, Kentucky Association of Manufacturers, Kentucky Farm Bureau, Toyota and other business and education leaders, Kentucky is demonstrating to the nation our continued leadership in helping all high school graduates to meet the standards required for college and career readiness. Our high school graduates will have a brighter future thanks to this merger.

More Options, Opportunities for Students

The last few days have seen significant action around implementation of recommendations from the Governor’s Transforming Education in Kentucky (TEK) task force. For a full listing of the recommendations, go to http://kytech.ky.gov/TEK_final_report_draft.pdf.

During the Kentucky Board of Education (KBE) meeting on December 7, Tom Vanderark with Open Ed Solutions and David Cook, director of the Division of Innovation and Partner Engagement with the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE), presented the actions to follow up on the TEK recommendations concerning virtual learning and earning dual credit. The three key actions that we asked KBE to focus on are:

1) changing the role of KDE from being a provider of digital learning to being a regulator/broker of digital learning
2) addressing the legislative changes necessary to change from a traditional textbook approach to a focus on instructional resources that would include not only traditional textbooks, but also digital resources
3) addressing the legislative changes necessary to have funding for digital courses follow the student


These three actions follow closely with the recommendations from the Bluegrass Institute and the Digital Learning 2020 report. We are currently working with legislative staff to draft legislation to address these key actions. While we certainly want to move forward to provide our students with equity and access to dual credit courses and high-quality content, we also want to be very careful to avoid some of the pitfalls highlighted in an article published by the New York Times this week: http://nyti.ms/rrJsED

Also this week, Office of Career and Technical Education Director Dale Winkler presented recommendations of the Career and Technical Education committee, which also were follow ups to the TEK report. His PowerPoint presentation may be accessed here. We look forward to working with the House and Senate Education Committees during the legislative session to put these recommendations in place.

Governor Steve Beshear appointed the Transforming Education in Kentucky Task Force in the fall of 2009. The task force presented its report in February 2011. It is exciting to see many of the recommendations coming into focus for the 2012 legislative session. Stay tuned for updates on our progress.

Given the upcoming holiday season, there will not be blogs for December 23 or 30. We will return on January 6. I hope readers have time over the coming holidays to enjoy activities with family and friends.

Career and Technical Education: Innovation and Integration

In 2009, Governor Steve Beshear created the Task Force on Transforming Education in Kentucky (TEK). Over a 15-month period, the TEK Task Force met 10 times and hosted a statewide community forum in which more than 1,500 Kentuckians shared their views on improving education in the Commonwealth. On February 21, 2011, the TEK Task Force released a report, Breaking New Ground: Final report of the Governor’s Task Force on Transforming Education in Kentucky, which contained 35 recommendations derived from this process.

One of the recommendations made in that report called for the Secretary of the Education and Workforce Development Cabinet and the Commissioner of Education to establish a steering committee to develop a comprehensive statewide plan to implement a new model of secondary career and technical education (CTE) with an emphasis on innovation and integrating core academics, 21st-century skills, project-based learning and the establishment of full-time CTE programs. This plan was intended to be implemented by the 2012 General Assembly.

This week, the steering committee reviewed the first draft of a discussion paper that addresses the recommendations from the TEK Task Force. The discussion paper included the recommendations from six study groups. These groups were focused on sector strategies; curriculum and programs; assessment and accountability; professional development; operations; and Perkins fund management. The study groups included stakeholders from across the CTE spectrum.

Recently, I had the opportunity to review CTE programs in China and Brazil. These countries are among the fastest-growing in jobs that have a positive impact on the economy. In Brazil, I was particularly interested in the rapid decision-making process to implement CTE programs that meet the sector needs of the country. Given that Brazil is hosting the 2016 Olympics, there is a huge unmet need for construction workers and other skilled workers to address infrastructure needs for the Olympic games. Through this focus on career and technical education and alignment with the jobs that are needed, Brazil is enlarging and strengthening its middle class.

While traveling to Brazil, I read Tom Friedman’s new book – That Used to be Us. Friedman promotes the theory that many of the countries (China, Brazil, India and Russia) have taken a page from the U.S. in promoting education, infrastructure and innovation, while the U.S. seems to be mired in a political quagmire of inaction. As I was watching the excitement and commitment to career and technical education in Brazil, I could not help but think Friedman got the title of the book right.

I hope that our General Assembly will follow the recommendations from the CTE committees and integrate/elevate career technical education in this state so that Kentucky graduates are prepared for the world that they will face and the jobs of the future.

Next Steps for Transforming Education in Kentucky Task Force

On February 21, the final report of the Transforming Education in Kentucky Task Force, Breaking New Ground, was released to the public. This task force was appointed by Governor Steven L. Beshear in October 2009 and worked over a period of 15 months studying Kentucky’s education system in order to provide recommendations to the Governor for transforming the state’s education system to meet the needs of 21st-century students.

The report contains 35 recommendations “... that would serve as a blueprint for how schools throughout the Commonwealth can make prompt and significant gains in school readiness, student proficiency, the closing of persistent achievement gaps, graduation rates and college and career readiness and how elected leaders can develop a supportive state policy environment.”

As commissioner, I will be pushing hard for three major areas of the recommendations from the task force.

The first effort centers on career and technical education (CTE). While we have some excellent programs in Kentucky through both the Education and Workforce Development Cabinet Area Technical Centers and the Carl D. Perkins programs at many of our high schools, the Governor’s task force recommended that we look at ways to elevate and integrate CTE. We will be convening a work group very soon that will include key legislators and other stakeholders. We will be asking this group to make legislative and budget recommendations for the 2012 session that will elevate and integrate career and technical education. CTE is a major tool for our efforts to increase the number of graduates who are college/career ready.

The second area of focus is alternative education. Over 75,000 students in Kentucky are in some form of alternative education; however, our data system to track the progress of these students is in great need of improvement. We will be convening a group of experts to develop legislative language and budget language for the 2012 session that will hopefully address three areas of improvement. The first area is a definition of alternative education. We must develop a definition that includes a continuum of alternative education. Alternative education could include but not be limited to behavior programs, digital learning, blended learning, early graduation, dual credit, mastery based, performance-based and other non-traditional approaches that we have not yet developed. Second, we must do a better job of tracking the data for alternative programs. We must track attendance, assignment, student results, interventions and funding. Finally, we need to address assignment to alternative programs not only for students but also staff.

Readers will recognize the two areas (career and technical education and alternative education) as major components not only of the Governor’s task force but also the graduation bill that was proposed in the recent session. These two areas have the potential to have a huge impact on graduation rates and college/career ready rates.

Finally, we will see a continued focus on early childhood education. I strongly support and will work with the Kentucky Board of Education to support, in the upcoming legislative session, the recommendations from the Governor’s task force toward funding for full-day kindergarten and increasing the number of children served in preschool programs. At the Kentucky Department of Education, we also have begun work on a Program Review for primary grades that would include kindergarten readiness standards and assessments, diagnostic assessments in primary grades and tracking students from kindergarten entry to end-of-3rd grade proficiency in math and reading. We hope to add this Program Review in the 2012-13 school year as part of the accountability model.

The Governor’s Transforming Education in Kentucky Task Force recommendations are alive, and many groups are working to implement the recommendations. We will have an annual report to the Kentucky Board of Education and the citizens of Kentucky on our progress.