Perceptions of Career and Technical Education in Montana: How Did A Nation at Risk Effect Workforce Education in the Late 20th Century and Now?

Career and Technical Education provides students of all ages with the academic and technical skills, knowledge, and training necessary to succeed in future careers and to become lifelong learners. It marries educational objectives and workforce skill sets identified by industry as critical and in high demand. Demand for employees with these skill sets are critical, yet employers are having an increasingly hard time filling these positions. Have stigmas and biases created by education policy such as A Nation At Risk, as well as, the resulting education shift from Career and Technical Education as a part of a well-rounded public education to College Preparatory curriculum in high schools created a “four-year or bust” societal norm?

Testing, best practices, and the teacher intellectual

Linking A Nation at Risk (1983) with the testing fetish that followed the No Child Left Behind Act (2002), Robert Bullough explores the perceptions of the good teacher and of good schooling that dominate American public education. Arguing that while training has trumped education as the commonplace conception of teaching, the “inventive mind” noted by William James (1911/1899), indicative of the teacher working as an intellectual, still stands at the core of quality education. Teacher intellectuals with inventive minds love and ponder ideas, theorize, criticize, experiment, and re-imagine their practice in relationship to educational aims that matter and that go beyond achieving high scores on a standardized test.

School Change

This chapter examines the changing nature of schools and schooling with special emphasis on the ways in which policy influences university teacher preparation. Policy regime frameworks are ideological drivers that construct, delimit, and direct school change. The chapter traces influences that have shaped the current market-based system of education in the United States, addressing landmark cases such as Brown v. Board of Education, the report A Nation at Risk, and the ongoing standards and accountability movement. The chapter concludes by locating the role of teachers within the neoliberal pressures associated with contemporary education reform.

Moving From Risk to Hope: Count Us In

In “Moving From Risk to Hope: Count Us In,” the author describes the report entitled From a Nation at Risk to a Nation at Hope released in January 2019 by the Aspen Institute National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development. The report and related brief, Building Partnerships in Support of Where, When, and How Learning Happens offer recommendations for how the education sector can support social and emotional learning and development. This article offers a reflection on the Nation at Hope report recommendations for the youth development field and professionals. There are significant opportunities for the youth development field to partner with other sectors, intentionally support social and emotional learning, train professional staff on strategies to support learning and development, and research our efforts in ways that are accessible and foster practice. It is a critical and hopeful time for the youth development field to honor our history, employ the recommendations in the report, and build our youth development knowledge and practice in light of what we now know about how to optimally foster learning and development.