Career & Technical Education Overview

  • Career and Technical Education is about helping students, workers and lifelong learners of all ages fulfill their working potential. First and foremost it is about high school and college education that provides students with:
    • Academic subject matter taught with relevance to the real world, often called contextual learning
    • Employability skills, from job-related skills to workplace ethics
    • Education pathways that help students explore interests and careers in the process of progressing through school
    Colorado CTE provides quality educational programs emphasizing core academic content, postsecondary & workforce readiness competencies, technical skills, and seamless transition to further education or employment. CTE ensures a thriving Colorado economy by providing relevant and rigorous education that is connected, responsive and real. Colorado CTE has created a standards site that houses all of the current CTE standards for each content area: 

    Signed into law in May 2008, Senate Bill 08-212, also known as “Colorado’s Achievement Plan for Kids” or CAP4K, was a landmark education reform initiative that created for the first time in Colorado a truly aligned preschool to postsecondary educational system. In addition to requiring a review process of the academic standards, Senate Bill 08-212 also called for the State Board of Education to "take into account any Career & Technical Education standards adopted by the State Board for Community Colleges and Occupational Education, created in Section 23-60-104, C.R.S., and, to the extent practicable, shall align the appropriate portions of the preschool through elementary and secondary Education standards with the Career and Technical standards."

    Through this process, the updated comprehensive occupational standards and competencies were grouped into CTE content area:
    • Agriculture, Natural Resources and Energy
    • Business, Marketing and Public Administration
    • Hospitality, Human Services and Education (Family and Consumer Sciences)
    • Health Science, Criminal Justice and Public Safety
    • STEM, Arts, Design and Information Technology
    • Skilled Trades and Technical Sciences
    • Alternative Cooperative Education
    These content areas have been aligned and verified with the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics; and reading, writing and communication. Additionally, all CTE content areas were aligned where appropriate to Colorado standards for science; social studies; health and physical education; postsecondary and workforce readiness; music; visual arts, theatre, dance and world languages.

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