Common state standards are nothing new to the field of education, but until recently one area did not have a set of standards to call their own: Career and Technical Education. With guidance from the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium, or NASDCTEc, the standards were created as the result of input from people working in education and business throughout 42 states.

I recently received a link to a slide show gallery from The Daily Beast, an aggregator news website affiliated with Newsweek. The title of this gallery was “20 Most Useless Degrees” and No. 1 was Journalism, No 4 was Advertising, No. 14 was Photography, and No. 16 was Art.  The gallery does not explain why they are the most useless degrees, but you can draw conclusions based on the statistics that were provided for each occupation.

The intent of the Programs of Study (POS) is to align academic and career and technical standards to postsecondary education institutions. By combining academic rigors, career education, and work standards, students will be be prepared for both postsecondary education and the workplace. The development and implementation of the POS is funded by the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Improvement Act of 2006. Specifically, the purpose of Perkins is to provide individuals with the academic and technical skills needed to succeed in a knowledge- and skills-based economy (http://www.acteonline.org/perkins.aspx#background).