Dive Brief:

• The Onondaga Cortland Madison Board of Cooperative Educational Services in New York has stepped up its partnerships with local businesses by offering students embedded career and technical education programs at those businesses.
• District superintendent of OCM BOCES, J. Francis Manning, writes for District Administration his program embeds classes in two physical therapy facilities, a local car dealership, the public television and radio station and a community center that has Head Start and Early Head Start programs.
• Students get the benefits of real-world experience and exposure that could help them in college and career, and the adults in the school as well as the businesses learn a lot through the collaborative model, too.

Dive Insight:

Companies across a range of fields report skills shortages hamper their business operations and opportunities for growth. Career and Technical Education has been identified as a key strategy to bridge the skills gap, and many high schools have begun working with local businesses to align curriculum based on what they want in future employees. Community colleges have long pursued these types of relationships, though a focus in the K-12 sphere of making students “college and career ready” has inspired high schools, especially, to foster such connections.

For a long time, preparing students for careers was seen as being in opposition to and inferior to preparing them for college. Now rigorous science, technology, engineering and math-focused programs help prepare even the most academically advanced students for careers, guiding students through pathways that require postsecondary credentials, too.