Opportunity Gap Analysis Workshop

Opportunity Gap Workshop

The Career Technical Education Opportunity Gap Analysis initiative provides training, resources and support to help state leaders identify and address gaps in access to high-quality CTE.

About the Initiative

Achieving Advance CTE’s commitment to fostering a culture of actionable, transparent and trustworthy data in every state requires state Career Technical Education (CTE) leaders to cultivate data literacy to maximize collection, analysis and use of data to identify gaps and improve learner outcomes. 

The Opportunity Gap Analysis initiative consists of several stages of professional development: two half-day workshops delivered by Advance CTE;  ongoing technical assistance including a community of practice and individual coaching; and access to a suite of tools including a dashboard template, workbook, facilitation guide, practical strategies for addressing specific opportunity gaps and more. Through this support, participants not only develop technical data literacy skills, but also an equity mindset to apply to all analysis of CTE program design and delivery. State leaders are empowered to not only use these tools themselves, but to train other state and local CTE leaders to utilize strategies and tools gained in their own institutions through a train-the-trainer model. 

This tool is part of a suite of tools, resources and training opportunities developed by Advance CTE to support the field at every stage of their equity journey to ensure all learners have access to high-quality CTE programs and limitless opportunities. 

This initiative is generously supported by the Joyce Foundation.

Impact

Since Fall 2021, Advance CTE has supported five cohorts encompassing 33 states and U.S. territories and over 350 CTE leaders in learning about and using the Opportunity Gap Analysis Tool. 

Follow-up surveys show over half of the state CTE leaders participating have incorporated the data and root cause analysis processes from the training into policies and practices on conducting a Comprehensive Local Needs Assessment (CLNA). Additionally, 73 percent of the state CTE leaders participating have incorporated the use of the list of practical strategies into processes to mitigate or transform inequitable systems that limit access to CTE programming.

Contact Us

Any questions about this training can be directed to Jessi Maddox at [email protected].