About
History
The Coalition for Workforce Development through CTE (WFD-CTE Coalition) evolved from a Business Advisory Group in 2018 as a vehicle to better engage with the employer community. This transition focused on several foundational elements:
- Participation in the WFD-CTE Coalition is without any membership requirement
- Participants are predominantly representatives of employers, particularly industry trade associations along with individual employers and a small cohort of educational institutions that bring strong employer-educator expertise to the WFD-CTE Coalition
- Serve as an advisory group to ACTE’s Strategic Partnerships Department
The Coalition was organized through a charter that was developed outlining their objectives and relationship to ACTE as an advisory group. The Coalition holds regular monthly virtual meetings and hosts an annual Summit in conjunction with CareerTech VISION.
The Coalition’s mission is to address the nation’s skills gap through a collaborative approach that connects business and industry, employers, workforce development efforts, and career and technical education programs to achieve a skilled and diverse workforce.
In 2019, the WFD-CTE Coalition expanded its partnership through a collaborative approach with Ford Next Generation Learning (Ford NGL) that has a historical emphasis on business partnerships with career academies. This partnership continues as an essential element of the work of operating the WFD-CTE Coalition.
In 2021 the WFD-CTE Coalition moved to better organize itself and created an Advisory Council to provide leadership and operating objectives for the Coalition. At the March 2022 ACTE Board of Directors meeting, the Board approved a new Liaison to represent and report on the Coalition’s work. The current WFD-CTE Advisory Council members are here.
The Coalition’s mission and activities are outlined in the Charter. Fundamentally the Coalition’s work is to support ACTE’s efforts to serve its members with input, activities and advocacy around strong and successful employer-educator partnerships that can ultimately address the talent pipeline shortage that their industry sectors are experiencing.
In preparation to leverage the work of the Coalition and provide direction on how it can best serve ACTE’s efforts, a coalition representative is working with ACTE’s Board members to ensure the Coalition can best accomplish meeting the needs of the CTE community.
