The Connected Path: A Shared Vision for Opportunity & Empowerment Through Career Technical Education (CTE Connects) sets forth a charge for states to develop codesigned statewide talent strategies, expand opportunity for all learners, and align skills learned with those requested by industry. Federal laws like the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act (Perkins V) and the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) offer mechanisms for such alignment, and states, spurred by federal pushes to realign education and labor initiatives, are finding new and innovative ways to align state agencies around education and workforce priorities. 

As a steering committee member of the Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship, we see youth apprenticeship as a prime avenue to align initiatives, create systems that work for learners and employers alike, and limit duplication of effort. While multiple states have already aligned their Career Technical Education (CTE) and apprenticeship systems, many states are just beginning this journey of finding the system that works best for them. This blog highlights policy changes and realignments states have made this year to ensure apprenticeship opportunities of all types are accessible to learners and aligned with state priorities.

Standing Up New Structures

For multiple states, 2026 was the year to create and implement new structures. Mississippi, Nebraska, and South Dakota each passed legislation this session creating a State Apprenticeship Agency (SAA), which designates authority over program standards, approval criteria, and administrative priorities. These states join at least 32 other states with a designated apprenticeship agency.

In Mississippi, H.B. 1696 established the Office of Apprenticeship as the state’s official apprenticeship agency, operating under the Mississippi State Workforce Investment Board. The Office is charged with setting labor standards for both youth and registered apprenticeships, and with supporting, assessing, and regulating programs statewide, including work toward a nationally recognized apprenticeship completion credential. The law also creates the Mississippi Apprenticeship Council to recommend strategies for strengthening the links between education, apprenticeship, and other experiential job-training programs.

Nebraska took a similar path with L.B. 847, which created the Nebraska Office of Registered Apprenticeship within the state Department of Labor to serve as the state’s apprenticeship agency. The office will develop standards for a state apprenticeship credential, set requirements for pre-apprenticeships and apprenticeships, and approve or deny registration for new and existing programs. A companion Nebraska Apprenticeship Council will advise the office and help build public awareness of apprenticeship as a career pathway.

South Dakota rounds out this group with S.B. 63, which created a State Office of Apprenticeship inside the Department of Labor and Regulation. The office will promote registered apprenticeship as a workforce development tool, set apprenticeship standards, and resolve disputes between the parties to an apprenticeship agreement, with the department secretary responsible for program and performance standards, registration procedures, and technical assistance. Governor Larry Rhoden has since announced that expanding youth apprenticeship and building bridges to the high school curriculum are next on the agenda.

States Build Structures for Cross-Agency Alignment

Other states already had the operational pieces in place, they just needed a stronger mechanism to get education, workforce, and higher education agencies talking to one another. Colorado and Utah both passed legislation this year to build the governance scaffolding needed to connect the agencies that already exist and discuss policy and practice.

Colorado’s H.B. 1317 created the Postsecondary Talent Development System Transition Advisory Committee, housed in the governor’s office, to recommend how the state should restructure and integrate its higher education and workforce programs. The 27-member committee draws from secondary and postsecondary education, workforce boards, employers, organized labor and apprenticeship programs, and must submit a transition plan to the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee by November 1, 2026, with recommendations for a restructured Department of Higher Education. That plan is expected to address coordination between the Department of Higher Education and the Department of Education’s postsecondary workforce readiness work, including registered youth apprenticeship, pre-apprenticeship, work-based learning and other career-connected learning programs. Colorado’s postsecondary talent system currently spans more than 20 divisions across seven state agencies, so this conversation will require everyone at the table.

Utah, meanwhile, enacted S.B. 195 to create the Statewide Youth Apprenticeship Governance Council, which clarifies and defines roles and responsibilities for administering youth apprenticeship, coordinates cross-agency implementation, and develops statewide strategies for expansion, participation, and data collection and reporting. The council builds directly on a study commissioned under a prior bill, which found that Utah’s youth apprenticeship system lacked a shared operational definition across its four core agencies. Formalizing that coordination in statute, rather than leaving it to informal relationships, gives Utah’s system a structure built to outlast any single administration.

States Standardize Definitions and Sharpen Priorities

A third group of states focused on their existing systems, updating definitions, renaming offices, and tightening the connective tissue between CTE, apprenticeship and workforce priorities.

Georgia’s H.B. 1302 touches nearly every corner of the state’s CTE and workforce apparatus. The law renames the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement as the Governor’s Office of Education and Workforce Strategy (GOEWS) and places the State Workforce Development Board within it, charging the office with coordinating education and workforce preparedness efforts across agencies. It requires the Department of Education, the Technical College System of Georgia (TCSG), and GOEWS to jointly prepare a combined Perkins and WIOA state plan, and it designates TCSG as the state’s apprenticeship agency, which must now apply to the federal Department of Labor for SAA recognition. The bill also updates Georgia’s definitions of “apprentice” and “apprenticeship program” and adds new definitions for “pre-apprentice” and “pre-apprenticeship program,” while renaming the High-Demand Apprenticeship Program the Top State for Talent Pre-Apprenticeship and Apprenticeship Program to reflect its expanded scope. Governor Brian Kemp has framed the law as the centerpiece of his Top State for Talent initiative.

Vermont’s S.173 takes a narrower but no less important approach, tightening up the state’s existing apprenticeship framework with an equity lens. The bill directs the Vermont Apprenticeship Advisory Board to ensure that registered apprenticeship programs address barriers to participation and completion for underserved communities, and expands the definition of “underserved communities” to explicitly include people affected by prior incarceration, rural residents, those lacking transportation or high-speed internet access, and veterans. It also updates Vermont’s definition of youth apprenticeship to clarify that youth apprentices are enrolled in a CTE program and haven’t yet completed high school, and requires regional CTE centers to spell out, as part of program registration, how they’ll help apprentices translate credit toward a full apprenticeship and how staff and employers will be made aware of youth labor protections.

A Shared Blueprint, Built State by State

Alignment in a state doesn’t happen by accident. It takes deliberate policy choices about who holds authority, how agencies talk to one another, and whose definitions govern the system. As more states take on this work, Advance CTE will keep tracking these policy shifts and sharing what we learn through our work through our membership and through PAYA. If your state is in the early stages of aligning CTE and apprenticeship, or is looking to strengthen an alignment model already underway,  Aligning CTE and Youth Apprenticeship and our recent look at Kentucky’s TRACK program are good places to start. Visit our state policy tracker for more information.

Resources:

• Explore how states can better align CTE and youth apprenticeship to expand opportunities for learners and strengthen connections to the workforce in the Advance CTE resource, Aligning Career Technical Education & Youth Apprenticeship: Expanding Education Options & Strengthening Workforce Connections.
• Explore more than a decade of state CTE policy through Advance CTE’s interactive tracker, searchable by state, year, system, and topic in the State Policy Tracker.