This study responds to a national conversation about the role that Career Technical Education (CTE) might play in meeting workforce demand for soft skills. It is challenging for CTE programs to offer soft skills for several reasons. Both educators and employers tend to associate CTE with hard skills, or technical skills and therefore the programs…

Purpose: This study aimed to understand the experiences of community college career technical education (CTE) faculty that used extended reality to improve their program of study and prepare students for proficiency and skill attainment in workforce development. How faculty adapted to learning various pedagogical practices for distance learning,…

Exploring Summer Youth Employment Programs: Increasing Access Through Career Pathways builds the case and provides actionable recommendations for state-led support in the intentional alignment of summer youth employment programs (SYEP) with career pathways and the work-based learning continuum, including through Career Technical Education (CTE).…

Community colleges are attempting to bridge America's widening blue-collar skills gap through workforce development programs promising living-wage jobs that don't require four years of college. While trade, construction and manufacturing companies are starving for talented workers, these fields also suffer from an image problem, one fueled by…

The driving force of California's growing innovation economy is talent. However, there is also a growing mismatch between the type of talent in demand and the type of talent in supply. This paper describes why one of California's best options for closing this talent gap is to expand and modernize the State's apprenticeship system. [Additional…

The responsibility to deliver college- and career-readiness education programs and services has evolved to include an array of organizational partnerships and alliances. Some act as intermediaries or hubs that coordinate communications, policy, and curriculum with state and local districts. Others operate whole-school models within a school…

A governor's State of the State address is an opportunity to outline policy priorities, highlight past accomplishments and reflect on the condition of the state and country. In 2018, 17 governors are serving their last year in office, having reached the end of their term or deciding not to seek re-election. Many of them used their State of the…

Many employers report difficulty finding qualified candidates for jobs, while millions of American workers are under- or unemployed. At the core of this issue is a startling perception gap involving the skills needed for workplace success. Postsecondary educators -- including those at community colleges -- who prepare workers live on one side of…

The California Community Colleges, through the Economic and Workforce Development Program (EWD), is an incubator of educational and workforce development that collaborates with industry to develop and deliver cutting-edge career and technical education (CTE) skills training. Guiding the work taking place at the regional and state levels is the…

Objective: In the first study of its kind, the impact of excluding noncredit enrollments in calculations of spending in community colleges is explored. Noncredit enrollments are not reported to Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), but expenditures for these efforts are. This study corrects for this omission and provides new…

The California Community Colleges, through the Economic and Workforce Development Program (EWD), is an incubator of educational and workforce innovation that results in a growing economy for California. The system collaborates with industry to develop and deliver cutting-edge career and technical education (CTE) skills training so Californians can…

The Certification Data Exchange Project (CDEP) was launched in 2012 to provide a model for sharing industry-recognized credential attainment data. Increasingly, employers and education leaders are recognizing the value of industry credentials to verify the knowledge, skills and abilities that students bring to the workforce. As states take steps…

Employers currently struggle to find workers who possess the necessary skills to fill job openings, and this skills gap is projected to grow. By 2025, 30 percent of all job openings in California--or a total of 1.9 million jobs--will require some form of postsecondary education short of a four-year degree. California's education pipeline is not…

The National Fund for Workforce Solutions and Jobs for the Future, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, launched the Youth/Industry Partnership Initiative (YIPI), to learn how employer-led industry partnerships could addressing the crisis of youth unemployment--7 percent of American youth (age 16-24) are neither in school or…

This report is a compilation of California's responses to the four questions that the United States Department of Education (ED), Division of Adult Education and Literacy (DAEL) poses annually to all states and territories receiving federal supplementary funding from the Adult Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA), Title II of the Workforce…