As the need for skilled science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) workers grows, schools and districts nationwide are revamping or expanding their Career and Technical Education (CTE) STEM courses and curricula. “A lot of schools have been doing CTE for years, [but now] there’s a push for everyone to do it,” says Stephanie Haas, CTE teacher at CORE Butte Charter School in Chico, California. “In California, there’s a push for students to be both career-ready and college-ready…It’s more about the skills [employers need],” she contends.

While CORE Butte already offers CTE courses in STEM-related subjects like information technology and agriculture, “we are currently setting up a medical CTE pathway that will start next year…[W]e will be offering medical biology, medical anatomy [and] physiology, global health, special health projects (vaccinations), and health care career explorations. We plan on using HASPI (San Diego’s Health and Science Pipeline Initiative; www.haspi.org) medical science lab curriculum to help focus the application of our science courses on the medical/health field,” she relates.

“With the [nation’s] constantly growing and aging population, medical [staffing] needs are huge,” Haas asserts. “A lot of kids think the only medical careers are [as a] doctor or nurse, but there are other career paths they don’t know about, [such as] pharmacy technician or phlebotomist,” she points out. “We’ll [also] cover mental health, surgeries, [and other medical topics]…[Vaccination] is a hot topic now.

“Students will research the topics, then be exposed to the argumentation process,” she explains. “[Students will be asked] what discourse [they will] have. What will they say based on their research and the evidence? We’re already doing a lot of this in our classes; we’re just adding the career aspect in the pathway.”

At CORE Butte, “some CTE classes are like college classes…Some students are doing independent study,” Haas reports. “Students want to learn [the material] because it means something to them [career-wise]…It gives kids that buy-in.”

One challenge with CTE is that “career pathways don’t always fall in with No Child Left Behind and testing,” she observes. Fortunately, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and Common Core State Standards (CCSS) “offer more justification for career pathways,” she maintains. “CTE is a way to get to the NGSS.”

John Vreyens, science and CTE teacher at Chino Valley High School in Chino Valley, Arizona, agrees. “Our CTE standards are more like the NGSS standards than our state science standards. It’s more about performing a task than knowing a litany of facts. My CTE course (biotechnology) informs me on the way I really should be teaching my biology course.”

Giving Students More Choices

At Bremerton High School in Bremerton, Washington, “our ninth-grade science course is called STEM 9. We have it identified through our state as a CTE course, but our kids get science credit for it, rather than CTE credit. It meets all of the CTE requirements for leadership [and] employability, and [supports] NGSS and CCSS for [English language arts] and math,” says Emily Wise, one of Bremerton’s STEM 9 teachers.

“We encourage all ninth graders to take it,” and most do, notes Wise. “If students are enrolled in geometry [in ninth grade, instead of algebra], they can go directly into biology [as ninth graders], but they miss a year’s background in science.” STEM 9 also provides chemistry and physics background, which gives students an advantage. “They’ve had PBL (Project-Based Learning); [they] can delegate tasks and accomplish projects better than those who skip STEM 9…It helps a lot. I can see the difference in my chemistry students,” she relates. 

“We’ve looked at the differences between CTE and traditional STEM courses a lot. We looked at 21st-century skills, rubrics, and requirements from the CTE department,” she recalls. For example, she and her colleagues considered “employability skills: How [could we] grade that? We do a lot of career exploration as well: What do people in STEM careers [actually] do?”

Wise believes “measuring students’ growth over time is easy with the [NGSS] science and engineering practices.” For example, teachers can consider “how good are [students] at tasks like writing a conclusion?”

“We also offer three other elective science/CTE courses for [grades 10–12]: Biotechnology, AP Environmental Science [APES], and Environmental Technology and Design. All of these classes can be taken as elective science or for CTE credits, depending on students’ credit needs and their post–high school pathway plans. This offers students flexibility in their science coursework, but also offers the 21st-century skills of a CTE class,” she contends.

“[The] CTE [designation] doesn’t necessarily mean the courses have no rigor. Our CTE classes are very rigorous,” asserts Briana Faxon, who teaches STEM 9 and APES at Bremerton. Her assertion is borne out in the description of the APES course: “AP Environmental Science is a rigorous and demanding course…In order to be successful, students should be highly motivated, a skilled reader, a critical thinker, and a problem solver.”

Most students who take APES “have earned their science credits already…[This year, only] five out of 25 students are taking [APES] for CTE credit,” she reports. “I get valedictorians in my class, along with [students headed for] community college and potential dropouts…It’s sometimes frustrating, and sometimes rewarding. They learn from one another, and learn we all have to work together. It feels like it levels the playing field in a good way.”

“We try to pull in so many different projects so [the courses] can appeal to [a wide range of students’] interests,” says Faxon. “We’re constantly changing our projects. We have the flexibility to do that,” she explains. When the teachers need help, “we have an advisory board for our STEM CTE courses that includes science and engineering professionals. They provide their expertise to us.”

And though students take the AP test in May, APES continues through June, so Faxon has time to assign a career research project. The project helps because in college, “if they change majors, they are familiar with other careers in science fields,” she contends.

“Our district CTE director is also our district science director, and she has been instrumental in bringing these courses to our high school, and has been very supportive of our science teachers as we work to integrate science and CTE in order to better prepare our students for college and careers. The work has been challenging, and we are far from done, but I really enjoy being able to promote both our science program and our CTE courses because I firmly believe in them,” Wise maintains.

“Emily and I [tell students], ‘Here are the college skills you need.’ [We want the] doors to be open to any career students want to pursue, and that they’ll have the skills they need,” Faxon asserts.

Integrating Science in CTE Courses

Ed Engelman teaches integrated science in seven of 12 CTE courses offered by the Delaware-Chenango-Madison-Otsego Board of Cooperative Educational Services (DCMO BOCES) in New York. He co-teaches with the CTE instructors of such courses as Auto Technology, Security and Law Enforcement, and Carpentry and Building Construction. “Eight school districts send juniors and seniors [to DCMO BOCES] for half a day…This [arrangement] is very different from the self-contained technical high school model,” he explains, and the courses are “quite different from the courses taught in [students’] home schools.”

Every five years, the courses “go through the recertification process. We map the curriculum and show that the students are receiving 108 hours of science over two years,” he reports. “Credits are awarded by the sending districts,” he adds.

The number of CTE courses has grown somewhat in recent years because “students are looking for meaningful experiences. There are many students who learn better by doing, especially kinesthetic learners. [CTE] appeals to those students,” he contends.

“Many CTE students feel [traditional] courses and testing aren’t real. Repairing a car or creating graphic arts posters is real work; it produces a real product,” he observes. In the Visual Communications and Graphic Design course, for example, students photograph macroinvertebrates and create identification cards for them that will be used by various organizations. “Even though some of the students don’t like insects, they know the cards will be used,” he maintains.

Second-year students are exposed to a real-world work setting by a short-term placement or job shadowing experience. Engelman believes many students would not graduate without CTE courses because they “act as a motivator like sports does. [The students] do well in school because they like the hands-on experience.”

In addition, CTE can be “a place for kids with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) to succeed” because in CTE courses, “they’re moving about, and more active.”

Most of the students ultimately enroll in college because a high school diploma is no longer sufficient for many careers, Engelman points out. For example, automobiles “are much more complex than they used to be. Everything is just so much more wired,” he remarks.

“The more motivated, or those who want better-paying jobs, go to two- or four-year schools afterward,” he reports. He believes the CTE students have an advantage over their more traditional peers because they “have a better idea of what they’re getting into, a better all-around feel for it” as a result of their hands-on experiences.

This article originally appeared in the April 2015 issue of NSTA Reports, the member newspaper of the National Science Teachers Association. Each month, NSTA members receive NSTA Reports featuring news on science education, the association, and more. Not a member? Learn how NSTA can help you become the best science teacher you can be.

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