The Fayette County Board of Education in recent months has discussed aspects of enhancing the school system’s offerings in the state-mandated Career, Technical and Agricultural Education (CTAE) initiative. Though no action was taken, the school board on Dec. 1 received a CTAE update presented by school system CTAE Coordinator Lisa Collins.
Collins offered an overview of the state laws mandating CTAE participation and gave examples of what the school system might do to provide additional courses and training for Fayette students to meet their academic and career interests.
Beyond the large number of existing CTAE course offerings and citing Health Sciences as an example, Collins said the school system might want to include additional pathway courses that meld with student interest, industry demands and college admission requirements. Some pathways do not currently offer the number of courses, three in total, needed to meet state requirements.
The 2010 BRIDGE Act adopted by the Ga. General Assembly mandated that middle and high school students be provided with career counseling and regularly-scheduled advisement to choose a focused plan of study, Collins noted.
House Bill 186 in 2011 mandated that the state’s curriculum be aligned with the national career clusters, a grouping of occupations according to common knowledge and skills. Clusters are broken down into pathways representing a sequence of courses at the secondary level aligned with post-secondary programs, Collins said.
Collins noted that Georgia adopted the 16 career clusters and added a 17th: Energy.
Each career cluster contains a number of associated pathways.
Fayette’s identified pathways include advanced accounting, automobile maintenance and light repair, architectural drawing and design, audio-video technology and film, business accounting, business and technology, computer science, early childhood care and education, engineering and technology, entrepreneurship, food and nutrition, graphic communications, graphic design, JROTC-Air Force, JROTC-Army, teaching as a profession, web and digital design, sports and entertainment marketing, therapeutic services/allied health and medicine, and law, public safety, corrections and security.
According to the Ga. Dept. of Education, all students will select a career pathway that matches their interests and aptitudes. Each pathway will have three or more specific courses in a sequence so that students will graduate from high school college and career ready.
