How do we ensure grades in Career and Technical Education truly reflect skill mastery, workplace readiness, and student growth? This session highlights how Sno-Isle TECH Skills Center and New Market Skills Center are transitioning from traditional grading to competency-based grading (CBG) systems designed to improve clarity, consistency, and equity across programs. Partnering with SREB, both centers defined shared employability skills, performance levels, and descriptors applicable across pathways while preserving flexibility for program-specific competencies. Through teacher leadership teams and full-staff collaboration, each center developed its own employability rubric, building shared ownership, stronger expectations, and alignment with industry standards. Participants will engage in an interactive learning experience that includes analyzing sample rubrics, participating in calibration conversations, and applying guiding questions to their own schools or districts. Attendees will leave with practical tools, implementation strategies, and a professional learning framework to support the transition to competency-based grading in their own CTE programs.
SchooLinks is the key to elevating CTE programs. This session shares real-world strategies to utilize the new state-wide HSBP platform to its full potential. Drawing from a pilot district experience, participants will learn how to deepen career research, track work-based learning and volunteer hours, and use the Course Planner to support CTE pathways. The session will also cover managing worksite tours and college and career visits, building financial awareness, and using the Opportunity Board to connect students with job shadows and internships.
