A new reportcommissioned by the Walton Family Foundation examines the state of career and technical education, or CTE, in northwest Arkansas. The results indicate the region could do better aligning programs completed with industries likely to produce high quality jobs in the next five years. Katherine Robinson, a program officer at the Walton Family Foundation, said only three of the top ten mostly commonly completed CTE fields in the region are leading to jobs with high wages, high skills and high growth.
"There also needs to be worked to help expose students to those areas younger, you know, say we talk back to middle school when we look nationwide at other programs," Robinson said. "That are really successful at this. They're starting career exposure, fifth sixth grade of getting students interested in fields and aware of fields and potential opportunities."
The report found that the four most commonly completed CTE fields in northwest Arkansas schools are based in agriculture. The report estimates the region’s agriculture jobs will grow by about 180 total jobs in the next five years, while other fields like healthcare and social assistance are expected to grow by thousands of jobs during the same period. Robinson says the report can help direct a regional approach to better career and technical education.
"What do we maybe need to add in order to really build out opportunities in these sort of recommended career fields so that it's not so siloed and it's not just some pockets of students and districts where they happen to be, have this opportunity, but really think more regionally," she said. "About how do we help all students have access to these kinds of high-quality programs?"
The study was conducted by Insightful Education Solutions and can be found on their website.
