Given the unique challenges to expanding CTE on the “frontier,” Advance CTE launched a year-long initiative to unpack the biggest challenges and identify promising practices from across the country.
Based on interviews with over a dozen state secondary and postsecondary leaders – in addition to local practitioners and national experts – Advance CTE released a series of briefs and accompanying tools highlighting promising practices around four of the most pressing challenges to expanding access to high-quality CTE pathways in rural communities: ensuring that all CTE pathways are of the highest quality; connecting rural learners to the world of work; providing diverse pathway options; and, strengthening the rural CTE teacher pipeline.
Rural CTE Strategy Guide
This guide offers a series of questions for state leaders to use as they reflect on current efforts to expand access to high-quality Career Technical Education (CTE) and career-focused pathways and experiences in rural communities and to identify future opportunities and actions.
This cheat sheet is designed to help rural policymakers identify leverage points across federal education and workforce programs to support and expand access to high-quality rural CTE at both the secondary and postsecondary levels.
This brief from Advance CTE's CTE on the Frontier series describes how states like Nebraska, South Dakota, Idaho and Mississippi are working to improve the quality of local career pathways to meet industry needs and expand opportunities for rural learners.
This brief from Advance CTE, the second in the CTE on the Frontier series, explores how states can bring the experience of work-based learning and employer engagement directly to rural learners through simulated workplace experiences, innovative satellite campuses and mobile labs.
This brief from Advance CTE, part of the CTE on the Frontier series, profiles how states such as Nebraska, Alaska, North Dakota and Idaho have leveraged strategic partnerships and technology to reach economies of scale and offer a wider breadth of career pathways to rural learners.
Strengthening the Rural CTE Teacher Pipeline
This brief is the fourth, and final, installment in the CTE on the Frontier series. The brief explores one of the most pressing challenges rural schools and institutions face: strengthening the pipeline of qualified CTE teachers and faculty.