Elevating CTE as real‑world science.
Our Purpose
Our education system and labor market are pulling in opposite directions — and no one group can fix that alone. College‑first pathways still dominate, even as millions of well‑paid technical roles go unfilled and many degree‑holders are entering a professional landscape that no longer resembles what they trained for. The CTE Science Alliance exists to address the part of this problem that lives in our shared story — how we talk about career and technical education. We unite industries, educators, and national organizations around a single, evidence‑based narrative: CTE is applied science, a critical source of the nation's technical talent, and a full part of the STEM conversation.
Our Role
The CTE Science Alliance is a national communications and convening initiative focused on one goal: making the science inside skilled work impossible to ignore — so CTE is recognized as serious applied science, not a second-choice path. We do not run programs or set policy; we shift understanding. Our work pairs research, labor‑market data, and real‑world stories to show the physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering already embedded in CTE — and turns those insights into practical messaging tools leaders can adapt locally.
Who We Are
The CTE Science Alliance was founded by professionals who have spent careers at the intersection of communications, advocacy, and workforce development — and who have seen firsthand how much ground is lost when industries address the talent pipeline in isolation.
The Alliance grew directly out of the CTE Teach-In, a national program that has demonstrated something most workforce initiatives never achieve: genuine, measurable community-level impact. The Teach-In has generated local television news coverage in 7 out of 10 school markets in every campaign to date. That track record established both a proof of concept and a network of relationships among CTE leaders, school districts, employers, and associations — the foundation the Alliance is built to scale.
That foundation informs everything about how the Alliance operates: practically, across industry lines, and with a permanent structure designed to outlast any single funding cycle or policy moment. Founding Partners and champions help co-create the tools, demonstrations, and convenings that make CTE's role in America's skilled STEM workforce impossible to ignore.