Relevancy Toolkit
Making education relevant to the lives of students today ensures that students find meaning in their education, empathy in their work, and power in their ability to make their world a better place.
This Relevancy Toolkit was developed for career and technical education (CTE) administrators or staff and other school or district leadership that want to improve the enrollment, participation, and completion of students, particularly those that may be underrepresented by gender or race, in CTE programs.
Research has shown that programs that attract and provide service learning opportunities that are relevant to a diversity of students will benefit all students as evidenced through the achievement of higher academic outcomes, regardless of their the socioeconomic status (SES) or grade level. In fact, the achievement gap between high- and low-SES students who had longer exposure to relevant service-learning declined.
Further, this research tells us that if implemented well, a program such as the one this toolkit was created for will help to:
Encourage more underrepresented or marginalized students to prepare for careers and become leaders in programs that are nontraditional by gender or race.
Communicate information related to the richness, breadth, and importance of diverse student’s participation and completion to college and careers in CTE and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education broadly.
Foster research and practice supporting the creation of equitable learning environments that will ensure students’ academic success leading to entry into the workforce in highdemand technical fields.
