About The Association for Career and Technical Education® (ACTE)
ACTE is the largest national education association dedicated to the advancement of education that prepares youth and adults for careers. The Association for Career and Technical Education was founded in 1926 when a Coca-Cola cost a nickel, when Calvin Coolidge was president, and 10 years after the federal government began funding “vocational education” through the Smith-Hughes Act.
Career and technical education (CTE) as we know it today, has its roots in the founding of the United States. From the start, a strong knowledge base and skill set for citizens were considered important. ACTE is committed to enhancing the job performance and satisfaction of its members; to increasing public awareness and appreciation for CTE; and to assuring growth in local, state, and federal funding for these programs by communicating and working with legislators and government leaders.
It is the mission of ACTE to provide educational leadership in developing a competitive workforce. ACTE strives to empower educators to deliver high-quality CTE programs that ensure all students are positioned for career success.
This relationship is important to our network for several reasons.
Creates a powerful partnership:
- This partnership helps mobilize a large institution to promote the career academy model by building upon CTE pathways to propel and grow the career academy movement to the next level.
- Ford NGL will leverage the Ford NGL U products and services to support ACTE members and the organization’s career academy section.
Aligns with a policy powerhouse:
- ACTE staff and members were exceptionally important in ensuring the passage of an improved and strengthened Perkins reauthorization, and they work on a host of other important federal legislative and regulatory policies.
Harnesses the strengths of allies:
- Workforce development through CTE coalition: ACTE requested Ford NGL co-lead the Workforce Development through CTE Summit 2.0 to help national association build their members’ support for CTE and career academies. This work will continue through various face-to-face and webinars, and Ford NGL will continue to co-lead this work. This collaboration will support ACTE’s growth in CTE and encourage more association engagement in Ford NGL communities.
- National partnerships and connections: ACTE and Ford NGL will work together to build national partnerships that will support our collective work and network.
Leverages talent:
- This relationship leverages ACTE’s infrastructure and marketing ability to help tell our Ford NGL Network stories.
- It will also bring the Ford NGL conference to ACTE CareerTech VISION conferences thus providing additional value to the membership of both organizations.
We are exceptionally proud of our relationship with ACTE. We are excited and energized about the possibilities it holds for our collective success in advancing the Ford NGL Community-connected Career Academy Model.
First Big Project with ACTE: Workforce Development Through CTE Summit 2.0
Ford NGL was asked to co-host, design, and run the Workforce Summit in 2019. This was due in part to a successful launch of the first summit in December of 2018 attended by members of the Ford NGL team. ACTE’s strategy was to bring together a coalition of associations representing thousands of companies, most of which face serious workforce shortages. Thus began a conversation with ACTE regarding the development of a larger relationship including the management of the 2019 Workforce Summit, as well as laying the groundwork for a career academy track at Visions 2019 in Anaheim.
The 2019 Workforce Development Through CTE Summit 2.0 expanded to include a coalition of over 50 associations representing over 54,000 member companies across the country. On December 2nd, we ran a carefully facilitated, highly interactive, one-day session. The Ford NGL meeting designers and facilitators used their deep knowledge of meaningful employer engagement combined with ACTE’s expertise and knowledge on associations, to design the day-long session.
While Ford NGL is working with its communities locally to engage local employers, collaborating with associations will drive member engagement both nationally and within local communities. We believe this two-prong approach will help build support for CTE and career academies nationally.
Three key takeaways came out of this event.
- There is a time and talent deficit. We learned that 43% of association members felt they were at the “beginner” level of experience in working with their K-12 counterparts. We also learned that 33% of association members spend 21-30 hours per week on workforce issues. What this data tells us is that associations and their members spend a great deal of time working to solve talent development issues and could benefit from a robust pipeline of qualified employee prospects coming out of secondary and post-secondary institutions.
- There is an eagerness to be part of the solution. Through a carefully facilitated agenda — the ACTE and Ford NGL team were able to scaffold the associations’ learning on how we better engage with educators to become meaningful partners using the 3A’s (Advocate, Advise and Assist.) The one-day session ranged from hearing from a futurist, developing the portrait of a work-ready employee, learning how to engage from successful models, doing a Strength, Needs, Opportunities and Barriers exercise, and developing an action plan using the 3A’s for their association. There was a lot of energy and great excitement from the attendees.
- There is more support needed. When asked what the attendees needed from future meetings, it was clear that they wanted:
- More collaboration with the members to share success stories and to avoid missteps.
- Support in reaching out to districts to start conversations.
- A central place for materials, resources, toolkits, and successful practices.
Ford NGL was able to share a lot of resources from the Ford NGL Powerful Partnership Process to help the association in the efforts, and we will be part of the ACTE team that helps to address the three takeaways in 2020. We look forward to working with ACTE and the industry associations to build upon the work that took place at the Workforce Development through CTE Summit 2.0. Those efforts will include a face-to-face visit at one of our Ford NGL communities and a series of virtual meetings.
