CPE News

On the last day of March, nearly 200 educators, industry professionals, and community partners gathered at CCAC Boyce Campus for the Consortium’s Future Ready Partnerships Conference. The day centered on a shared goal of building meaningful partnerships that prepare students for the future while helping employers connect with educators who are preparing their future workforce.  [...]

When organizers at Carnegie Mellon University and Phipps Conservatory began planning an event to help students learn about the spectrum of jobs involved in sustainability, they wanted it to be different than a career fair.  “We wanted to create an environment where employers can take a little more time, talk about their own experiences, their […]

Educators everywhere are grappling with AI in their schools and classrooms, as professionals and with students. Many of these conversations focus on what tool to use and when to use it, or about how to “future-proof” students from the continually evolving nature of AI tools. These conversations aren’t bad, but they aren’t the full story.  […]

Ranked as the nation’s second-largest energy producer overall, Pennsylvania also stands among the top 10 clean energy employers in the country. The Commonwealth’s clean energy sector boasts nearly 105,000 jobs, including more than 13,700 in Allegheny County, as well as employment growth that’s more than five times the state’s overall rate.  All that adds up […]

In the aftermath of No Child Left Behind and the high-stakes testing era, districts across the country had a collective moment of clarity; years of instruction driven by testing culture had created a growing gap in what students were learning in K12 education and what they would need to be successful adults in a dynamic […]

Responding to the rapidly growing population of students attending regional schools who do not have English as their first language, the Consortium is offering an ESL/ELL Student Success Workshop on April 17, 2026 at Lutz Elementary School in the Baldwin-Whitehall School District. The focus of this workshop will be on sharing practical strategies, programs, partnerships, [...]

In collaboration with Partner4Work (P4W), the Consortium has been convening school counselors and educators focused on career readiness in a new initiative, Career Connections Network (CCN).  Last spring, P4W was approached by school leaders who asked if they might bring this group together to help them share their work, learn from each other, and better […]

Educators looking for ways to help students get a taste of college or career learning experiences can point them toward Neighborhood Learning Alliance (NLA) for options. Through NLA’s High School U (HSU) program, students ages 16-18 can earn college credits and explore careers in any of four fields—Business, Healthcare, Technology & Robotics, and Trades in […]

After five months together, two cohorts of school and nonprofit leaders completed their courses, learning about and applying the principles and strategies of human-centered design (HCD) in their work. Despite the differences in format and length (one 25-hour virtual course and the other a 50-hour in-person course), participants in both classes learned about the fundamentals […]

Starting July 2026, Pennsylvania’s new Career Education and Work Standards (CEW) will replace the original standards from 2015.  We don’t typically get excited about standards, but the new CEWs came as a pleasant surprise. Perhaps most importantly, the standards mark the closest that the PA Department of Education has come to formalizing a statewide Portrait […]