Developing a Model for Industry Engagement at the New York City Department of Education

The objective for this capstone project was to identify ways to strengthen the New York City Department of Education (DOE) Career and Technical Education (CTE) initiative with a focus on its marketing and communications strategy. The Capstone team aimed to determine the most effective strategies to strengthen partnerships among the DOE, NYC high schools and CTE industry partners; to enhance the recruitment of interested students in the CTE program; and to expand and to deepen industry engagement. Given that the value of a CTE education is not well understood, the team identified an important opportunity to better communicate the program’s successes to the wider community.

To gain a holistic perspective, the team reached out to stakeholders within New York City. This included interviewing and/or surveying industry engagement coordinators, high school principals, assistant principals, middle school counselors, CTE alums and DOE staff members. Interviews were also conducted with individuals in other states and other organizations running similar CTE programs to understand best practices globally.

Based on the research, the team identified key strengths of CTE, including program relevance and curriculum flexibility, and a proven system for long-term teach retention. Any new policies and practices for future engagement must reflect the following key challenges: (1) funding and human capital constraints (2) alignment between industry and DOE (3) pre-high school student understanding of CTE (4) student exposure to selected trade (5) teacher professional development (6) parent-student generation gap and (7) a lack of systemic understanding with regard to long-term career pathways for students and parents. Beyond this, the team recommended a focused approach in aligning expectations between industry and DOE, parents and students, and schools.