The Plato Courseware CTE Library 2015

Evolution of Career & Technical Education (CTE)

Although education has several key goals, most of us agree that K–12 education should help prepare students to be college and career ready. So, it’s strange to recall that a decade or so ago, the parallel idea was mainly to ensure that students were either college or career ready. Back then, “career ready” simply meant being “job ready”—not necessarily being provided with a viable career base for the future.

All of that has changed in the past decade or so. Many students who prepared narrowly for jobs have found those jobs to be dead ends or in fields that have rapidly morphed beyond their training and experience. At the same time, some college-bound students have learned that neither high school nor college has adequately helped them develop the basic skills in personal communication, collaboration, organization, self-representation, and technology that employers need and expect from their professional staff.

To address those learning disconnects, states and national professional organizations over the past few years have systematized and revamped their standards in the program of Career & Technical Education (CTE). Nearly every state in the union has worked hard to redesign its CTE standards into coherent courses and plans of study, organized for the most part into the 16 Career Clusters® defined by the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium (NASDCTEc). In addition, state departments of education and state institutions of higher education are working together to ensure that plans of study can smoothly and coherently flow from K–12 into post-secondary education. All of these changes add up to an amazing curriculum evolution over a very short time.

The Plato Courseware CTE Library

From our first CTE courses, released in the fall of 2013, Edmentum has been committed to building a substantial CTE Library for our customers, reflecting the quality of the latest Plato Courseware standards and providing substantial breadth and depth of content. In the spring and fall of 2015, our customers will see more evidence of that commitment. Following is a summary of what’s to come for CTE in 2015:

Course Contents and Design

All new CTE courses in 2015 are being developed to meet the latest Plato Courseware standards. All previously released CTE courses will be updated to these course standards, to include:

• Unit structure and assessments
• A new streamlined workflow and interface
• New technology-enhanced (TE) assessments and interactions
• 100% mobile optimization

A Broad and Deep CTE Library

A substantial number of new courses will be added to the CTE Library in the spring and fall of 2015. With these 2015 course additions, the CTE Library will offer customers:

• 73 semester courses addressed to meet state CTE standards
• Two key foundational courses: Career Explorations and Essential Career Skills
• Introductory “principles” courses for all 16 Career Clusters recognized by NASDCTEc
• Deep pathways in popular Career Clusters where online learning is especially well-suited, including:
  • Arts, A/V Technology, and Communications
  • Business Management and Administration
  • Finance
  • Health Science
  • Information Technology
  • Marketing

A rich and effective CTE program can help all students be more successful in college and in their careers. Edmentum is proud to provide schools with some of the tools that they need to make college and career readiness a reality. Interested in learning more about partnering with us to expand your school’s or district’s CTE offerings? Check out our new Career & Technical Education Library Packages.