Career Technical Education (CTE) and adult education share a common goal: helping learners build the skills, knowledge, and connections they need to pursue meaningful careers and greater economic mobility. Yet, often these systems operate alongside one another rather than as connected parts of a broader talent development system.

As states consider how to better align education and workforce systems around the goals of learners and employers, there is more than just opportunity to bring CTE and adult education closer together – there is a real need. Stronger connections can help learners navigate transitions, access needed supports, and re-enter education and training when their pathway changes 

Two national organizations, Advance CTE and COABE, supporting state CTE and adult education leaders, respectively, are taking steps to make this connection happen. To explore this opportunity, Advance CTE’s Senior Director of Policy Nithya Govindasamy and Associate Director of State Policy Dan Hinderliter spoke with Coalition on Adult Basic Education (COABE)’s CEO Sharon Bonney and Board President-Elect Hector Martinez about the intersection of adult education and CTE, what greater systems alignment could look like, and how national organizations can work together to strengthen pathways for learners.

What does CTE mean in the context of adult education?

Sharon: CTE is an important opportunity for adult learners to build skills that can lead to good jobs while also helping employers address vacant positions. At COABE, we have seen this through partnerships with organizations such as NCCER and SkillsUSA to establish chapters representing adult learners across the country.

Hector: CTE and adult education need to be thought of together. Adult education is often stereotyped as being primarily about language acquisition or earning a high school diploma, but it can provide much more. Adult education can support learners through career pathways and learning that extends beyond preparation for a single career. At its core, we want to help people move from learning to earning. Learners are looking for opportunities that can help them build a better life. That focus on empowerment and belonging is an important connection between adult education and CTE.

Adult education is often stereotyped as being primarily about language acquisition or earning a high school diploma, but it can provide much more.

Where does adult education fit into The Connected Path: A Shared Vision for Opportunity & Empowerment Through CTE?

Dan: The first principle of our shared vision for the future of CTE, stewarded by Advance CTE,  focuses on co-designed systems. We need stronger alignment between CTE and adult education, including meaningful on- and off-ramps that allow learners to enter, leave, and return to the CTE continuum.

That also means thinking about CTE programs as places where learners can develop a sense of belonging and build professional networks. The skills and relationships learners develop should be transferable and continue to support them in different settings throughout their careers.

Nithya: Dan mentioned codesign. Part of that is that we want state agencies to develop aligned talent development strategies that recognize that anyone can be part of the workforce at any point in their lives. This is not simply about educational opportunity and preparation in high school. The average age of a community college student is in the mid-to-late 20s, so when we talk about aligning CTE systems, we have to think about learners of all ages. That means balancing industry needs with learner needs.

There are also important connections around integrating academics into CTE and helping learners transfer skills across settings. Those principles are relevant for adult learners, whose education and skills development often extend beyond a traditional classroom experience.

What could stronger alignment between adult education and CTE look like at the state level?

Nithya: From a learner perspective, people do not necessarily think about these programs in terms of the systems that fund them. They experience transition points. Our systems need to work not alongside, but together at those points so that learners have access to the right educational supports and wraparound services when their original pathway does not work out as planned. That means better educating the professional implementing programs across the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act (Perkins V), Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), and other programs about natural system connections and the terminology being used to improve higher-level collaboration and learner transitions. 

Dan: Braiding funding can create opportunities to use federal, state, and local resources for complementary purposes and serve more than one population. For example, a technical college facility that primarily serves learners during the day could potentially be used in the evening to connect with people who work during the day. There may also be opportunities to share instructors and other non-financial resources.

Another opportunity is data. States do not always make full use of the data systems available to them to connect, share, and report data that might matter to other agencies, which can make it harder to tell the complete story of how learners move through education and workforce systems.

Hector: We also need to think about workforce needs now, not only the needs we anticipate several years into the future for high school students. Adult education is an important part of bringing people who are currently on the sidelines into the workforce by helping them build the foundational skills they need to get ready to work.

CTE can be a critical partner by providing the technical skills and infrastructure needed to support these learners now.

What can states learn from Kansas regarding CTE-adult education collaboration?

Hector: In Kansas, collaboration between adult education, higher education, and the community college system has been going well. When I took office, we began with braided funding grants and then started a conversation with the Kansas State Department of Education (KSDE) about creating a stronger pathway for learners from high school through a college degree. Part of that work has been thinking about what happens when the “perfect” pathway does not happen. What about students who leave high school, become disconnected from education, or never return to complete a certification? We need to identify who is leaving and why so we can provide additional support.

Data can help us better understand these transitions. We want to understand how many students who leave the KSDE system before 12th grade later enroll in adult education, while also recognizing that not every adult learner comes through the K-12 system.

There are also opportunities to connect CTE and adult education more directly. Accelerating Opportunity Kansas, for example, supports students entering programs that combine CTE and adult education. We have seen increasing interest from students seeking to take advantage of those opportunities, and data can help us support them better.

Why is it important for CTE and adult education professionals to work together and learn from one another?

Hector: Educators in each field have important differences in their backgrounds. In CTE, many instructors are industry experts but may not have extensive backgrounds in education. Adult educators, meanwhile, engage in significant professional development around instruction and creating the context for learning.

That creates an opportunity for both fields to learn from one another, particularly around contextualizing learning and creating systems that support educators from the state level all the way to the classroom.

Dan: A rising tide lifts all boats. There is no reason to gatekeep information that could benefit learners across systems. We can help one another recontextualize what we are learning and apply it to different settings. Keeping information siloed does not help us achieve our shared goals. One of the greatest advantages of membership organizations is the opportunity to learn from peers. There is a significant intersection between our memberships, and we can create more opportunities for people to learn from one another and bring those lessons back to their state agencies.

Nithya: Advance CTE primarily represents state CTE directors and others who administer Perkins V funds, including teams and agencies in some states. As demographics change, we need to move beyond preconceived notions of what a CTE learner looks like. A CTE learner could be an 11th grader, a 20-year-old who is underemployed, or someone looking to upskill or reskill into a new field. Joint professional learning could give both fields an opportunity to learn together while highlighting states and partners doing innovative work.

Sharon: COABE’s members include state and local administrators, and teachers of adult education, paraprofessionals, and other educators.  Building stronger bridges between the two can strengthen career pathways and ensure adult learners are part of the conversation about talent development. State [adult education] directors are also members of COABE, creating another natural point of connection. Ultimately, we want to demonstrate how CTE and adult education can strengthen talent pipelines and contribute to economic mobility.

We would like to see more opportunities for members of both organizations to learn from partnerships that are working well. There is significant overlap in the learners these systems serve, but not as much coordination between the systems as there needs to be. 

There are opportunities to develop webinars, public service announcements, and resources such as playbooks or toolkits that can help both audiences understand the opportunities created by adult education and CTE. We also see an opportunity to work together in the advocacy arena.

Hector: This collaboration has the potential to change how we recruit, instruct, and retain students in the classroom. When we connect the strengths of adult education and CTE, we can create more responsive systems that support learners throughout their journeys.

Why was COABE interested in becoming a foundational supporter of the CTE Connects Vision?

Sharon: It was an opportunity to demonstrate that adult education wants to be a partner. Adult education has not always been at the table or viewed as a partner in these conversations. Given the work happening with organizations like NCCER and SkillsUSA, there is a natural fit for adult education to be a meaningful part of the talent pipeline.

Hector: There is also an opportunity to build the professional development that adult educators need to better understand how CTE works and to highlight the collaboration already happening between local adult education programs and Perkins-supported programs. One challenge at the state level is that adult education systems may not have the information or structures they need to intentionally establish career pathways. Strengthening the connection between the two fields can help address that.

Nithya: We appreciate the push to connect adult education to CTE. While collaboration may already be happening locally, we need stronger national models for what collaboration between these fields can look like. Ultimately, we are advocating for many of the same populations of learners and for greater opportunities for those learners.

To truly partner, we need to advocate in the same direction rather than simply existing alongside one another.

Looking ahead

Creating stronger connections between adult education and CTE will require more than individual partnerships. It will require states and national organizations to think differently about how systems are designed, how resources are aligned, how data is shared, and how learners move between programs.

The opportunity is to build a more connected talent development system—one that recognizes learners of all ages, supports them when their pathways change, and brings together the resources and expertise needed to help them move from learning to earning.

For Advance CTE and COABE, that starts with continuing to learn from one another, bringing adult education to the table, and identifying opportunities to work together on behalf of the learners and communities both fields serve.

Recap: CTE and Adult Education Collaboration

• • As the concept of a lifelong learning journey becomes the norm, there is a natural partnership for CTE and adult education to support learners who see their needs through transitions, not systems. 
  • States can facilitate this partnership through braided funding, shared terminology, and mapping learner journeys and their accompanying data points to better understand and support transitions. 
• CTE Connects, the shared vision for the future of CTE stewarded by Advance CTE, provides opportunities to better connect CTE and adult education through codesign programs with education and industry; integrating academics across both CTE and adult education programs; and intentionally designing programs to build professional networks that foster empowerment and belonging