Advancing CTE in State and Local Career Pathways

Five states— Colorado, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Oregon— have been chosen through a competitive application process to participate in Advancing Career and Technical Education (CTE) in State and Local Career Pathways System, a three-year project managed by Jobs for the Future through a contract with OCTAE. Technical assistance has been provided to assist these states in building their capacity to integrate CTE Programs of Study (POS) into their broader career pathways system development efforts. Participating states have worked with a coach and subject matter experts to help them develop and implement their action plan and achieve their goals. In addition, the U. S. Department of Transportation (DOT) invested funds to support activities that focus on Transportation Career Pathways.

The Departments of Education, Transportation, and Labor have worked closely to project future employment, skills, skills gaps, and training needs within the transportation industry and its subsectors over the next 10 years.

The six transportation subsectors examined are:

  • Trucking Transportation
  • Highway Construction and Maintenance
  • Transit and Ground Passenger Transportation
  • Rail Transportation
  • Air Transportation
  • Maritime

Data across the six modal subsectors reveal the following strong workforce trends:

  • Across these six modal subsectors, the transportation industry faces major demographic challenges with job growth, retirement, and turnover.
  • Transportation industry employers are expected to hire and train roughly 4.6 million workers, an equivalent of 1.2 times the current workforce, to meet the needs of growth, retirement, and turnover in the next decade.
  • Preliminary analysis indicates that projected annual job openings are 68 percent larger than annual completions of related educational programs across selected transportation occupational groups. This highlights a significant skills gap that must be addressed to meet expected industry demand.
  • The jobs in greatest demand are semi-skilled and skilled jobs in operations and maintenance. For every future job opening in central services or construction in the transportation industry, there will be an estimated two jobs in maintenance and 21 in operations.

A fact sheet and full report are available below.

Strengthening Skills Training and Career Pathways across the Transportation Industry: Fact Sheet (PDF, 540 KB)

Strengthening Skills Training and Career Pathways across the Transportation Industry: Full Report (PDF, 4.36 MB)

Final Virtual Meeting for the Advancing CTE in Career Pathways Project

July 20, 2015

We're excited to present the recording and presentation slides from July's Advancing CTE Virtual Meeting. You can find a recording of the virtual event at: https://vimeo.com/134222631.

Thanks to those of you who joined; we think it was a great experience!

National Association of State Directors of Career and Technical Education (NASDCTEc) Spring Meeting Concurrent Session #1: Advancing CTE within Career Pathways Systems

Presenters at this session discussed OCTAE’s recent three-year initiative to assist states in the integration of CTE programs of study with state and local career pathway systems. State leaders from Colorado, Kansas, and Minnesota shared resources developed during the project, with a particular emphasis on employer engagement strategies. The Transportation Learning Center provided additional information and resources to assist in the development of Career Pathways in transportation.

Moderator:

Robin Utz, Branch Chief, College and Career Transitions, Division of Academic and Technical Education, Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education, U.S. Department of Education

Presenters:

Xinge Wang, Deputy Director, Transportation Learning Center

Cindy LeCoq, Assistant Provost for CTE, Colorado Community College System

Connie Beene, Director of Federal Initiatives for Technical Education, Kansas Board of Regents

Debra Hsu, Associate CTE Director, Minnesota State Colleges and Universities

Project Leader

Mary Clagett
Director for Workforce Policy
Jobs for the Future
mclagett@jff.org

OCTAE Contact

Nancy Brooks
Nancy.Brooks@ed.gov