Giving Compass' Take:

• Lauren Barack reports that in spite of declining offerings, Career and Technical Education (CTE) classes are popular where they exist. 

• How will automation impact the future of CTE classes? How can funders help schools build CTE programs that best serve students? 

• Learn how CTE can prepare students for a skills-driven economy. 

Gary Bernstein believes the industrial arts classes at Frelinghuysen Middle School in Morristown, New Jersey, are some of the most essential students can take. Pupils must agree: Even though the program is an elective, most students choose to take the class, and in the 6th grade the course is part of a cycle of electives.

Bernstein not only talks about bridges — how they allow trucks carrying almost everything consumer buy, to get to local grocery and corner stores — but explains the physics and engineering behind how they’re constructed. He’s even seen the impact his teaching has had, as one of his former students helped design and construct the new Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge over New York’s Hudson River.

“It’s literally the most important class outside of the core classes because it’s the only subject where kids can use knowledge and skills from all their classes,” he said in an email. “There is a serious shortage of people who 'know how to do things' in our country.”

That shortage may stem from what the Brookings Institution found as a “decline” in the number of career and technical education (CTE) classes being offered in high schools. Over nearly 20 years, between 1990 and 2009, the number of credits earned in CTE high school classes dropped by 14%, according to its 2017 report, “What we know about Career and Technical Education in high school.”

Still, in some schools, woodshop and other industrial arts courses are alive and well.

Read the full article about Career and Technical Education by Lauren Barack at Education Dive.