Education Effectiveness of Cte

¶ … Connecting Education and Careers feature articles concentrating on the advocacy issue as it regards Career Technical Education (CTE) and its funding. Intriguing aspects of how important CTE is to the educational community and why fully funding CTE is so important was discussed at length and in detail. Stating the importance of funding CTE's, one article espouses the fact that "if we want CTE and funding for it to stay in the forefront of lawmakers' minds, we can't be too busy to advocate" (Knue, 2014, p.

26) while another expert writes "we know that CTE programs play a huge role in the success of students at every educational level, but the decision makers for our programs are not always so knowledgeable" (Desetti, 2014, p. 17). It has long been held that CTE's are conducive to students learning through 'hands-on' types of experiences through partnerships with employers and that such experiences truly assist those students in a myriad of ways.

It's known that initially public school systems were set up to accomplish much the same things, but it is a commonly held perception that today's public schools are oftentimes not as efficient in achieving those goals as they could be.

As an example, Horace Mann was reknowned for establishing the public school system in Massachusetts, but in order to establish it he had to get the idea approved by the legislature and he did so by approaching "wealthy business people and asking them to lobby on his behalf, telling them they would make more money if their workers were better trained" (Pawlowski, 2014, p. 34). This was advocacy at its best.

It seems that in today's educational communities however, there are more proponents of Common Core than there are advocates of providing students with the opportunity to really learn; to experience job-related skills that translate into achievements. Additional articles and studies have confirmed that importance such as the one that declared "CTE means a new kind of learning. It's a kind of learning that takes the students beyond the classroom and shows them unlimited opportunities" (Young, 2014, p. 39).

Advocating for those unlimited opportunities is something that oftentimes is sorely lacking in the educational community; both for financial and educational opportunities. Desetti writes that "there are multitudes of ways to get your message to your Member of Congress" (p. 17) but that care must be taken in order to accomplish the advocate's objective. Desetti states that "each can be successful in different circumstances, and care must be taken to choose the right delivery method for your message" (p. 17).

He suggests that the advocate use email, written letters, social media, the telephone and even face-to-face contact when it is very important to get your point across...in person. Desetti suggests that the face-to-face contact is the most effective manner for accomplishing goals because it provides instant feedback, and can help establish rapport between the participating parties. Meeting face-to-face with one's political representative is oftentimes difficult however, and other forms of advocacy may be more effective at those times.

In recent years, social media has become an extremely effective manner for garnering support from like-minded individuals. Social media is also available in an ongoing and consistent manner by politicians and policy makers. One of the disadvantages of using social media is that it is very quick to move on to other topics, and the attention span of its users is not notably high. The subject matter should therefore be concisely stated and not overblown or overdone.

Other advocacy suggestions include using corporate partners to ensure that your message gets across to those who provide funding and make policies. Corporate partners can also provide funding on its own as well as a myriad of opportunities to participating students. Nancy Jackson writes that "when schools and employers have opportunities to work together to plan for workforce needs, teachers receive valuable input from industry that allows them to better prepare students to fill immediate needs" (2014, p. 18).

This type of corporate assistance translates into good public relations which also plays a role in influencing local, state and national politicians. Corporate partnerships help to "ensure that classroom content matches workplace needs" (Jackson, 2014, p. 17) and those matched needs provides knowledgeable workers for those corporate partners who also donate election funds to the politicians. It seems as if everyone benefits from this type of relationship. Corporate partners then become effective advocates.

Individual advocates need to be prepared to remember and talk about those relationships as well as the effectiveness of CTE's overall. Desetti offers five ways in which advocates - whether advocating for funding or for effectiveness - can make a.