 We are recording this because we're super excited to be able to use this, not only for those of you that are able to attend today and I know Dr. Milton has plans to engage everybody but also for how we'll be able to use this as a resource for professional learning both broadly across the state as well as locally within your regions, your districts or your schools moving forward. So with that said, my name is Jason Klein. I am one of the members of the NIU Illinois CTE project team that's working alongside the Illinois State Board of Education's CTE and innovation team to support professional learning curriculum development and the development of instructional materials for CTE as well as one of the things we'll be moving into this year is teacher recruitment and retention to ensure that we have high quality and diverse CTE teachers across the state. So with that said, we are today kicking off we some of you were here a couple of days ago when we we tried kicking off our summer speaker series. And the theme for this summer speaker series is CTE for all students and for each student. And so we're looking specifically at laying some foundation, if you will. And there are many, many people across the state will get into that the second half of the speaker series when we engage with our educator panels, but at really looking at what Perkins terms special populations, as well as the concept of non traditional careers and helping support students in those non traditional careers. And, and so that's what we're what our focus is of our summer speaker series. I know that we have Heather on in the room from the from the is bees CTE and innovation team and I won't put Heather on the spot but I do want to welcome everybody on behalf of Marcy Johnson and Heather and the rest of the is the CTE and innovation team. This is core I can tell you to the behind the scenes conversations that they are always having it is it is quite impressive to me, coming to this from from the work that that you do that I've done in school districts to see the kinds of questions that are being asked within that team to to say how can we support educators better in in doing this work with more students more effectively and and digging into really supporting each student. So with that said, we are super lucky today to kick off with Dr Milton is here with us from Michigan, Dr Milton works in the Michigan Department of Education. He has a wide body of experience that she is going to be sharing with us. As we look at the elimination of barriers for students with CTE at coursework and access to those courses and so at this point without further ado, we're going to turn it over to Dr Milton. Dr Klein, I am happy to be here today with everyone. Just a little bit about myself, you know as Dr Klein said I have been with Michigan Department of Education 10 years now, and I work with the post secondary, my post secondary CTE partner to actually write the legislation. I work in legislation for special populations. I support administrators, educators and students and answering questions and providing guidance to our special population students. In addition, I'm also a data coordinator and analyst so I analyze data to see how student outcomes can be improved for our special population students in Michigan. So I'm going to share my screen here, my presentation. And can you all see that. Yes, good. I see heads nodding so good. So I am going to talk about, as Dr Klein said the elimination of barriers for individual CTE students. I have some objectives for my presentation. I'll talk about which special populations student categories are under Perkins five legislation. The barriers that exists for students who are in each special populations category, the strategies and tools to eliminate those barriers, how to analyze data to address and eliminate barriers. These are resources that I'll share with you, and then I'll take your questions and answers. And if you have a question throughout my presentation, feel free to stop me and ask the question, or you can put your questions in the chat. So, what are the different special populations categories, do you know, and I think we have a poll. Let's go to the poll and see what you know about students and special populations. Here is your poll. Is it is a category students who are homeless students who are migrants students who are in the juvenile justice system system system, or students with a parent in the armed forces, or is it a BD above a B and D above. So it looks like we have everyone, and you all did a good job 11 out of 12 said a B and D, and that's correct. So, students just a note about this students were in the juvenile justice system are not part of Perkins five special populations categories. Some states have separate funds available through Perkins legislation to support students in juvenile justice facilities. So a B and D all those students are in special populations categories. Okay. Right, get back to my slide. So, these are the special populations categories. We have students who are in foster care, or who have aged out of the foster care system students who are homeless students with a parent who is a member of the armed forces, or is on active duty. Migrant students English language learners students who are from economically disadvantaged families students who are out of workforce. Students prepared for non traditional bills single parents and students with disabilities. And you will notice a red by some categories, and these categories were added during Perkins five legislation. You will also notice migrants on the list. This migrant category aligns with the every student succeed act. So this, since as the alliance with Perkins legislation I also included, you know, migrant category here. So I will talk about, first, the barriers that affects students in each special populations category, and then talk about some solutions to these barriers. Okay, hold on one second the poll came up again is this is freezing my screen up here. It should be gone now. Okay, let me stop sharing and share again. You still see it you can click the X in the upper right corner to eliminate the poll from your screen. Hopefully our participants should not be seeing it now either. Okay. Yeah, that looks good from here. There we go. Okay. The first category I am going to talk about is students with disabilities. So some questions to ask some barriers is do these students have equitable access to CTE programs. Students given their access to enter and complete CTE programs what are the local programs recruitment policies and procedures for recruitment of these students. And when students do finally, you know, enroll in the CTE program, can they complete the necessary technical requirements of the CTE program. The new CTE teachers, you know, have the support and the training they need to teach students with disabilities that our CTE teachers they have the technical expertise, but they may need assistance with assistance with presenting the curriculum to students with disabilities. And last do students have other resources and supports they need to complete a CTE program. So these are all potential barriers and questions that we can ask about students with disabilities. So what are some strategies and solutions that we can help for students with disabilities. So for student recruitment, we can partner with special education and the rehabilitation services staff to recruit students into CTE. In particular in Michigan, I work with my Department of Special Education. I work with the Michigan Rehabilitation Services, our Bureau of Services for Blind People, to help recruit students into CTE. We can share information at the state level about how CTE can benefit students with disabilities. And this information is also shared with our local programs. And they are encouraged to partner with their local special education and rehabilitation staff. So if more, you know, state and local agencies have access to CTE information, that's good. So for students, we can share this information with others so we can get CTE students into CTE programs. One other organization that I work with is that called the Michigan Interagency Transition Team. And this organization is focused on a statewide transition plan to support students with disabilities. So this involves CTE disability rights organizations, community mental health, and many organizations throughout the state that support students with disabilities. So what I do is I, my role is I come in and I discuss CTE and how CTE can benefit students and how they can transition from high school to a career or to post-secondary education. And I explain the benefits of CTE, such as work-based learning and earning a credential that they may be able to use for employment. Okay. Also, one other strategy to improve students' performance in CTE is to have the CTE staff participate in the student's IEP meetings. It's important for us to collaborate in special education teachers and support staff so we all understand the accommodations or modifications that students need in a CTE program. So I was a special education teacher for 10 years before working for the Michigan Department of Education. I went into the CTE classroom and supported students and I worked with the CTE teachers. And the students would also come to me when I was in the resource room and I would help them with their CTE assignments. I would make accommodations for them and modifications. And so we worked together in partnership to support the students. Okay. What are other states doing for students with disabilities? Let me see if I can slide here. So we talked about the teacher's training that students may need for accommodations and modifications, but students also may need resources and other supports to support them, such as technology devices. So examples would be like if a student has a physical barrier in a CTE classroom, they may need a certain desk to fit a wheelchair under, or a student who is visually impaired may need a screen reader. I had many students who had learning disabilities, so they may need extra time to complete a project. So work with the special education staff to determine the unique needs of each student to support those students in being successful in CTE. Now, I did some research and I went out to see what other states are doing to support students with disabilities. So in North Dakota, they developed a grant program called Enhancing CTE Educational Opportunities for Students in Special Education. So this program awards up to $2,500 to local program, to local Perkins V recipients to increase enrollment and performance of learners in special populations. So North Dakota makes connections with the State Department of Education Special Education Committees and state teacher organizations to support students with disabilities. Also, the State of Arkansas developed a model for supporting learners with disabilities through a partnership between the Arkansas Department of Education, the Special Education Unit, Transition Services, and the Division of Rehabilitation Services. So these are some other examples in other states of how students are being supported in CTE. So the homeless and foster care students, these students experience, you know, similar barriers, so I kind of put them together to talk about what barriers they experience. So they experience, you know, barriers just meeting their basic needs. They may not be stable in their living situation. They may not have access to adequate food, clothing, or shelter. You know, that according to, you know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs until a student's basic needs are met, they may not, they may have difficulty, you know, achieving academically. So when I was in the classroom, I would actually bring in, you know, snacks for kids to eat so they would be able to focus on the academic content. These students, you know, they also may have high rates of mobility. They're constantly moving around because they don't have a stable place to live. They lack shelter. They may change schools constantly. They may experience social emotional issues. They may lack the tools necessary to perform academic tasks, and they have lower rates of high school completion and employment. They may have some barriers or some solutions to address these barriers. So at the state level, I collaborate with McKinney-Vento homeless and foster care liaison through the state of Michigan, and I encourage my local programs, local CTE programs to do the same. I also have partnerships with these liaisons and they can help children. As far as emotional supports, social emotional learning has the following benefits. It improves academic performance. It fosters positive attitudes and behaviors. It decreases negative behaviors. It improves the emotional health of students, and it has a lasting impact on students. It also returns on investments. One organization that we use here in Michigan and CTE is called CASEL, C-A-S-E-L, for social emotional supports for students. CASEL stands for Collaborative for Academic Social and Emotional Learning. It's a nonprofit organization that partners with education institutions to share research, webinars, and other strategies to improve the social and emotional learning of students. So addressing the social emotional aspects of students will enable students to improve in many areas of their lives and decrease barriers in the CTE program. So another solutions or other solutions are to develop a transition plan for students so that they have a clear path from high school to post-secondary education or out into career so they have a guide of where they're going to go. Most students who are in foster care and homeless, they need physical health, they need psychological emotional well-being, life skills, ethical behavior, they need healthy family and social relationships, educational attainment, and they need constructive educational and occupational engagement and civic engagement. And we can all give these items to these students if we partner with our foster care liaisons as well as our McKinney-Vento liaisons. So the next category is English learners, and I have a lot of information on English learners. Of course, English learners, they may have difficulty speaking, reading and writing and understanding the English language. And the curricula that English learners are exposed to in both general education and CTE courses are not often personalized or relevant to their interests and learning levels. So what are some strategies and solutions for English learners? So actually, when I went out to do research, CTE is a very good place for English learners to be because according to the Institute of Education Sciences, CTE programs provide skill-based, career-relevant language instruction in authentic hands-on settings. And this is a valuable strategy for English learners. Also, CTE programs offer connections for students to extend their network because many of these students are immigrants, they're coming from immigrant families. So this helps them, CTE helps them build social capital within the education arena as well as the workforce. What are some other strategies and solutions for English learners? You know, sometimes I've heard that funding is an issue to support our English learners. So a resource for this would be to work with the Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act to try to get other funding for these students. Again, the State of Ohio, they partner with or they braided funds together with the English Learner and Immigrant Students Act, which is part of Title IX of the Every Student Succeed Act. And so by them braiding funds, they were able to give the students culturally responsive career counseling as well as career exploration opportunities. So that's another strategy is to grade funds. I know we've braided funds at the State of Michigan. I work with our special populations to get other funds to support students. What are some other strategies to help English learners? So we should not give a one-size-fits-all for English learners. Some students may need help with reading. Some need help with writing. Some need help with improving speaking skills. So find out the unique needs of the learners and adapt to the instruction to focus on those unique needs. Within the State of Michigan, we have what's called bilingual specialists. I encourage, I work with the bilingual specialist at the state level and I encourage our local programs to also work with those bilingual specialists to help English learners in the CTE program. Here's another strategy. There is technology that can be used in the classroom to support our English learners. There's scannable technology. There's technology on smartphones. There's word walls. There are vocabulary lists, audio directions. We can use technology to facilitate language translation, visual dictionaries, and translation apps. So there are many technology tools that can help our English learners. Okay, so those are English learners. The next category is students with a parent in the armed forces or an active duty. What are some barriers? So these students have very unique needs because they have parents who are being deployed into active duty or these parents move around frequently. Students may show signs of stress. They may have an inability to function in school. They have high levels of emotional stress. So what do we need to do to help these students? They are transient. They have to move when their parent moves possibly. Then they may feel that they don't have a consistent routine because they are transient students. So what are some solutions that we can offer to families and students? We can refer these students to counselors to receive assistance with emotional distress. We can try to retain the classroom activity and make it predictable and have structured schedules. If a family member has to deploy or they are reassigned and the student has to move, develop a competency checklist. A competency checklist shows the skills that the students have learned in the current CTE program so that when they move to the next school, they can take this competency checklist to the next school and the next CTE program. So the teacher will have a list of skills that the students have mastered. They can continue learning in the CTE program. Also, when I did some research, there is an online tutoring program and homework help called military.tutor.com. This will give the students some consistent routine if they have a place where they can go to stay current with academic work. Also, I know the state of Michigan has, through Veterans Administration at the state level, they have an education department. So last year I reached out to Veterans Administration Education Department and I had them give professional development to Michigan CTE staff on what is needed for these students to be successful. So Illinois probably has something similar. So that's another strategy that can be used to support these students who have parents and the armed forces in our active duty. Okay, the next category is students who are economically disadvantaged. What are some barriers that these students face? These students may lack resources to carry out academic tasks. They don't have the necessary resources. They may lack adequate transportation to and from school and they may lack food and shelter. These students experience some of the same barriers as our foster care and our homeless students. So what are some strategies and solutions for these students? We can provide free books, materials, tools, uniforms, you know, computers, internet hotspots and other resources to help these students be successful in CTE. And I know many of our local programs, CTE programs in Michigan use Perkins spots for some of these items such as computers to help these students be successful in CTE programs. As far as transportation, we can provide some transportation, get transportation vouchers, you know, give them bus passes, offer them knowledge reimbursement so they can get back and forth to school. Ensure that students have access to healthy food and nutrition by providing meals at school. We can locate a local food bank distribution program in our local school communities and also on our college campuses to help these students. In the state of Michigan, when students are out of school, we have a meal program set up to help students so that they can continue eating throughout the summer months to give these kids adequate access to food. Okay, the next category is single parents. So single parents, they may feel isolated in school. Due to being a single parent, they feel like they stand out. They have may have lack of access to childcare and do this due to their, you know, responsibilities of being a single parent. They may have difficulties with attendance, completing assignments and participating in different school activities. So what can we do to help single parents. So we can have single parent support groups to help these students. We can build a community for them of support and social networks to help them feel not feel so isolated. You know, teen parents and separate CTE programs at actually access when they have access to CTE program that can lead to employment so they can sustain their family with a living wage. Okay. We can also, you know, accommodate these single parents by offering courses in many different ways. We can have synchronous online courses, synchronous, we can have face to face hybrid courses, we can offer courses at different times of the day to accommodate the single parents responsibilities. Okay, the next category is students preparing for non-traditional fields. What are the barriers that these students experience? So some students do not enroll in CTE programs because they don't feel like they should, they feel like, well, boys do that, girls don't do that. So there are stereotypes associated with different CTE programs. So girls, for example, well, it's been said that girls don't like math or science. So when these stereotypes exist, you know, students are less likely to enroll in CTE programs. So there's also a lack of career information about opportunities and non-traditional occupations in the pre-high school grades for students preparing for non-traditional fields. So what are some of the solutions that we can use to help students enroll in programs non-traditional for their gender? So information about careers should be exposed early in the child's education. The research I did said middle school, I think it should be even earlier than middle school, it should be an elementary school. Students should be exposed to different careers non-traditional for their gender. Okay, and that way they identify careers for traditional and non-traditional career fields in CTE courses, they're able to identify it. We should arrange for classroom observations in CTE classrooms. So in many local CTE programs in Michigan, they have what's called a family CTE night in which students and families have the opportunity to go to CTE and visit the classrooms. And actually in each of these CTE programs, there's a student ambassador that isn't in a program non-traditional for their gender that actually explains the program to students and families. So they get to see, oh, there's a girl in this program, so it may be okay. My daughter who was in CTE, that's how she got exposed to science and she chose the health science field in CTE. So we should expose students and have students visit the CTE classes early on. We can also work with business and industry to create job shadows and site visits with small groups for both traditional and non-traditional students. Okay, what are some other strategies and students to prepare students for non-traditional fields? We can bring in professionals and role models from the field to speak to our students in the CTE classroom. We can demonstrate common activities. These professionals can demonstrate common activities and projects and arrange for onsite projects that relate to their career, to the career that they would like to go in. We can also work with the guidance counselor to assist students to be introduced to non-traditional career fields and enrolling in CTE programs and courses. So another strategy is to work with peer groups. We can involve non-traditional students in recruiting new students, just like I said, like with Career Night, you can get a non-traditional student in a program that can introduce the CTE program to other students. Okay, migrants. These are students that have to move across the country and cannot remain in school all the time. So their most significant barrier is mobility because they are constantly transitioning. So infrequent moves and economic hardship make education hard for these students and they may fall behind academically. What can we do to help these students? So educators can create a positive environment for students who are migrants. Since students, you know, they may constantly transition, they find themselves in unfamiliar new classrooms, and that makes them feel isolated and lonely. So teachers can help students feel a sense of safety and trust by assigning an older student to act as mentors or buddies for these new migrant students in the classroom. Teachers can also incorporate the students' experiences within CTE lessons, and this will help build the students' strengths. So by incorporating lessons that focus on the students' diverse experiences and richness of the students' culture and languages, this helps the students' self-images and also their sense of self-worth. Okay, the next category is students who are out of workforce. This category really applies to post-secondary students in CTE. So, but I'm going to include some barriers here that these students face. They may have the stress of, you know, remaining in a CTE program and looking for employment because many times these students are just trying to care for their family. So what are some strategies for these students? We can help these students identify transferable skills to connect instructional relevance and build an opportunity for these students to enter high demand career fields so they can support themselves and that offer good benefits, get careers that offer good benefits for themselves and their family. So we can identify employment-based training such as a work study, subsidized employment and apprenticeships that provide wages while attending school for these students. So, there was a mouthful and there was all the 10 categories of special populations. So I'm going to stop and see if you have any questions for me so far. Please do feel free to unmute yourself or to drop questions in the chat. Rodrigo, Bill and I are all keeping an eye on the chat and we'll be happy to also call out your questions there. Okay, now I've talked a lot so I'm going to let you all discuss what I've just talked about. So I'm going to divide you up into some groups and these are the questions that you will talk about. What are some other potential barriers that you think of that may hinder students from enrolling in and completing CTE programs? How can the solutions and strategies that I have just shared assist students in being successful in CTE programs? And if you have other solutions and strategies that I haven't shared that you want to share, you can share them. So you're going to choose a person to record and you're going to choose a person to report out. So I think you're going to be divided up into, I don't know, four or five people per group. Let's see what time it is. So why don't we do that for about 10 minutes and then we'll come back and we'll report out what you have. So you should have a join on your screen now. So enter that group that you have on your screen. And I'll see you in 10 minutes. Thank you. I think I'm going to bop into Heather's group. There's no one else going into room three. Will you stay out here, Rodrigo? So if Dr. Milton comes back and then you can also help get some of these other folks. So I will be back. Rodrigo, can you tell me how to pronounce Melissa's last name? Melissa, let's see. Oh, from our office. Yeah, from your office. Gotcha. I can tell you in a second because I don't know that I remember her last name. O-B-L-E-S. Let me see. I just started here two weeks ago. No, it's all good. So Robles. Robles? Robles. I just want to make sure I get it right at the end. Robles. Okay, thank you. No, absolutely. And then did you want them to go for 10 minutes for this discussion? Yes. So let's see how long has it been so far. It'll be about five minutes in a minute. Okay. Yeah, 10 minutes should be good. Yeah. Thank you. No problem. Okay, thanks. Rodrigo, how much longer do they have about a couple minutes? They have 30 seconds. Almost done. Okay, thank you. No problem. Rodrigo, can you let me know how everyone has returned? Yes, I think we have everyone's back. Okay, thank you. Sure. All right. How was your group discussion? That was a quick 10 minutes. So how many groups did we have? We had a total of four groups. Four groups. So who would like to report out first? I can do that for our group. I was in a group with Bill and Julian. Okay. We talked. We, most of our conversation, we talked about the importance of counselors and of other support people like I was sharing in our region. Some districts using Perkins money, others using local money have had, have added the role of college and career counselor. So a dedicated person that doesn't have like a alphabetical part of counseling as an A through L general counselor. And how that's really taken some of the pressure off the general counselors and provided for more robust career advising. Julie ends at a post secondary institution. And she really talked about the work that they do with their high school counselors to make sure that their high school counselors understand their post secondary CTE programs and how best support students and advise students. That might be interested in dual credit in those programs while in high school or just interested in those programs post high school. Okay, thank you. Those are all good strategies. I know within the state of Michigan we have special populations counselors to focus on students and special populations to give them the support they need. So who else would like to report out about group two. Sorry, that was group two so maybe group one. Thank you very good. I'm happy to go for us. We have a group with Brian and Brian and Amy. The big barriers we talked about were transportation is a bit of a barrier, finding people to fill the positions is a bit of a barrier. The two biggest ones we talked about were the parents who discourage students from applying to these programs because they have some misinformation about status and whether or not it's desirable to be engaged in these programs. And trying to overcome that is one of the biggest barriers to the CTE program and then the other one we talked about is barriers, particularly with for students who have low grades and low test scores who are prevented from applying for them, or who are given a lower priority in terms of the admissions process. Thank you. Thank you. So in Michigan, we have the same type of barriers where parents discourage students. That's why we encourage, you know, parents and families to go out to the CTE programs and actually visit the programs because students who complete CTE they can sometimes make more money than people who go to college. So we need to stop gearing. I think students just for college. There are also other pathways that students can take to be successful in life. So thank you bar for those comments. Okay, how about group three. I'm really not certain what group number we were but I'll report for our group. Anyway, we talked about the support staff you had mentioned in your presentation you know the designated personnel for areas and like a special populations coordinator of sorts which could be of extreme value to the organization. So I think a barrier for some of our schools is that they just don't have those resources in place. And as Cassie mentioned you know some of the schools are getting a college and career coordinator I have one school in my consortium of schools that has that, and it makes a huge difference it makes the pressure off of the designated academic counselors for scheduling, but yet move and just can focus on apprenticeships and getting these kids connected to careers. We did talk about in our group. We're starting to see a shift within our society, I believe, but it's slowly taking that ship takes a little while to turn and getting the message into our elementary schools at that elementary level and we're really focusing on the middle school kind of in our region. I think, you know, it's the long game, you know we're not going to see an immediate shift but it's it's the long game so we talked a second barrier that we talked about was our schedules within our schools, don't allow for our students to maybe take some of the electives have the opportunity to take early on in their high school career so they're entering some of these career fields or pathways their junior year which we want to try if we could really just kind of make a change within our schedules, it would be advantageous for our students so we talked about scheduling being a barrier. Thank you, Gail. In our last group. Would you like to report out please. Our group hasn't reported and while I'm happy to defer to Susie in particular I do want to make a connection between part of what we talked about and what Cassie had mentioned, and that is that Cassie talked about the counselors we just heard more about the counselors. We talked about almost the match partner for the counselors as we ramp up work based learning. It takes a unique role really to support that work there's a lot of logistics we and that helps get at some of the barriers and overcoming those barriers for individual students. The building of relationships, which is of course very time consuming, especially initially with business and community partners, and then those relationships need to be sustained as people change roles. And then the third piece is, if we really leverage those relationships we can get at our instructional goals through those relationships to and and help those people learn from from the educators. So let's give feedback on for example on the in Illinois we have our list of essential skills or cross sector essential employability competencies, along with the technical competencies per career pathway, and and not only what to give feedback on but also how to give feedback right. A lot of those people may not be typically working with 16 or 17 year old and so. So there's a lot that can come from roles like that and we'd love to see in addition to an increase in counselors and maybe some specialized counselors like has just been talked about college and career counselors or counselors to support special populations. And also this this other role set to support work based learning and and those kind of partnerships specifically. Okay, thank you. Those are all good strategies thank you so much for sharing. So, I am going to share my screen again and go to the second part, you know my presentation. The second part of my presentation. I'm also a data analyst for the state of Michigan for CTE programs, and I dig deep into the data and break it apart to see where the gaps are, and to see, you know, which students are not being supported, you know in CTE. So, I'm going to see how I'm going to talk about how data can also decrease the barriers for students and special populations and help them to have, you know, successful outcomes. So we can do this by disaggregating our data and breaking it apart into pieces to see which special population student categories are not getting into certain CTE programs or not completing and so forth. One other tool that we can use is the comprehensive local needs assessment which is required under Perkins 5 legislation. So, what data elements can we look at to help our special populations students so we can look at our Perkins, you know core performance indicators. And I looked on the Illinois website and I do see data broken out by core performance indicator. I didn't see too much about special population students, but I did see overall how data is broken out. So we can look at you know how students perform some of our indicators are math reading science, you know the graduation rate so we can look at those things by special populations category to see how students are performing. We can look at students student enrollment year on a yearly basis I look at the enrollment is the total increasing for our special population students who are enrolling in CTE programs. We can look at the concentrators you know concentrate traders we did students complete at least two courses in a CTE program completers did students complete an entire CTE programs. Those are some of the questions that we can ask. Also, in the state of Michigan, we also break down our data by work based learning. We can look at look to see what type of work based learning did each student participate in by special populations category. Was it just career awareness was exploration that they have some type of career training preparation, or did they participate in apprenticeships are our students in special populations receiving the work based learning that they need and not just at the career awareness level. Another aspect that we can look at is career and technical service organizations, which we are starting within the state of Michigan to look at, you know which students are participating in CTS O's by special populations category. So those are some of the data elements that we can look at to see how students are performing. And another one is, like I mentioned the comprehensive local needs assessment so we can ask questions on the CLNA about how our students be being recruited into CTE, what barriers do students and special populations face. Are there certain career clusters that students are not being enrolled in. Are they underrepresented in certain career clusters, or are they over represented and other career clusters. I know within the state of Michigan we have many special population students enrolling in culinary, and I don't know why that is but when I look at the data I saw that and why we need more students in Michigan enrolled and stem, you know CTE programs. Okay, so those are some of the questions that we can ask. And I had a group activity for this but instead of you know putting you into other groups, another group, I'm just going to open it up to the floor and tell me how you have used data if you have. I'm a data nerd so everybody doesn't use data but if you have used data to examine student performance in CTE and see how students can improve. Please share your experience with us. We had EFE directors like myself and Brian and Gail this fall or spring I don't know. The time has blood together participate in a workshop that advanced CTE put on, and it was all focused on using your data to define gaps and then using their model of. To to kind of determine why those gaps might be occurring and problem solve around that and then so they had this very, you know, this dashboard tool in Excel that we were able to. Take the data our state gives us and plug in and you know different sections lit up different colors, you know, that meant different things, you know, percentage point gaps and things like that so. That's my most recent experience and we saw trends around. Like racial ethnic differences in choice of pathway. I don't remember the special ed students in culinary trend. I don't like that you were sharing happens in Michigan. I don't remember seeing that one, but. Definitely we saw certain racial ethnic groups. Kind of. In high in pathways at a higher rate and those pathways were sometimes the pathways that pay less. So we talked about that that day and did some other. Examples. Okay, well thank you for sharing. That's all good information. So data is just that data it tells a story. And people don't sometimes understand that you'll tell a story about where the gaps are. And those students, they're not getting an opportunity to perform. So anyone else would like to share. Okay, let's go on then. So these are all the references I use for my presentation. And I want to point out the National Alliance for partnerships and equity. There is a very good organization. I had the opportunity to serve on the executive board here during the past year. They specifically focus on a special population students and equity and CTE. They have a lot of the resources on their website. They give professional development. I work with them on a yearly basis to give professional development to our CTE staff. So I encourage you to go out to their website and look at some of the resources that they do offer. And these are some of the other references I use for this presentation. So what questions do you have for me. I hope this was helpful to you. None. Okay. I'll start with a question. And the question I'll start with is what what advice would you give to a local district based on what you've seen work in in Michigan with people have been particularly successful at breaking down barriers. For students in special populations are getting students into non traditional career pathways as a starting place to like just get the ball moving what would be a great first step that you would recommend. A great first step would be to we have our local CTE programs that are not performing as well partner with another program within the state who is performing well. The local program has high numbers of non traditional students, high percentage rate of, you know, completers and concentrators and CTE programs. We have the other local program partner with another program so that they can get their performance up. We know that we have to do regional improvement plans. So in their regional improvement plan they will specifically lay out how they plan to improve, you know, student performance as far as non traditional students and other areas within career and technical education. So that's that's what we do. Since we're a local control state to, we have to put it back on the locals for them to help each other. We try to help as much as we can at the state level by guiding them. Does it answer your question. Yeah, that's a that's a great answer my follow up and and and I certainly would welcome answers from from the rest of the group but is in Illinois in our context in Illinois and this might look different in different regions. And if you don't want to answer know that I'll be curious to come back and talk about it with people who are we're in the audience today as well as those who who watch later on. What do we think the barriers to like those kind of partnerships across districts will be what what can we do to build a culture in Illinois to and maybe we have one already that's one of those things where I'm not really sure I've been in examples in school districts where we've been really great at partnering with neighboring districts and I've been in situations where the opposite has been true so I'm curious about about people's thoughts about that and we certainly had welcome answers if there are answers either on muting yourself or in the chat, but I'm also happy to turn it back over to Okay, so I'll go on. So, um, this is getting to the end of my presentation. I want to give a very special thank you to Illinois State Board of Education, Career and Technical Education, the Northern Illinois University Career and Technical Education project team. Dr. Jason Klein and his staff, Rodrigo Lopez, Melissa Robles and William Rose, thank you so much for your support and putting this presentation helping me coordinate this presentation for Illinois educators I appreciate it. And with that, that is the end. There was one thing that Dr. Klein did put in the chat that I noticed during the group breakouts about students in juvenile justice facilities. I also support those students at the state level in Michigan, and we have partner I have partner with National Institute of Work and Learning I found them through research and they support our students in juvenile justice facilities with career readiness so it's all tied to CTE. So that's just another resource for you if you're interested in that. With that, that is the end. This is my contact information. You are welcome anytime to call me or email me if you have questions about this content. Thank you for listening.