The Chicago Public Schools serve 100,000 high school students. About 20% of those students participate in Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs, which provide them with industry-focused technical instruction and work-readiness preparation that supplements the district’s core college prep curriculum.

Historically, outcomes of CTE students were no better than the rest of CPS, despite the additional investment in these programs.

Investing in Chicago's youth

This year, CPS launched a ten-year plan to revamp career and technical education and consolidate the 300+ programs into 80 higher-quality programs. CPS has invited CWIC to drive several components of this plan and to help drive student development and accountability to 21st century skills. 

CWIC has responded by:

• Developing a tool for assessing the career readiness of all 20,000 Career and Technical Education (CTE) students, measuring a consistent set of industry-relevant skills


• Re-designing student internship placement processes to place a greater number of students without expending additional resources


• Creating an internship forecasting model used for targeting business engagement efforts based on the supply of work-ready students


• Designing and developing a six-month Student Career Development Series on how to prepare for and maximize work-based learning experiences.  These experiences are on the critical path to college and career opportunity.